Jigabachi AV

Polygoblin

I'm doing the Jigabachi AV from Ghost in the Shell SAC. I want it weathered with discolored/replaced paneling and presented in two poses, grounded with landing gear exposed and in-flight with her turret trained. This project is intended to improve hard surface skills, build familiarity with vehicles, and to provide some advanced texturing practice. 

Here is where I'm at so far. Critiques are always welcome. 

Polygoblin

front cockpit section



also I decided to attach an archive of the Jigabachi AV reference from the episode in question. just in case anyone wanted to provide some detailed feedback on my work. *Added to the top post*

Polygoblin

Cockpit/nose

Polygoblin

more body work. middle section was a challenge

kohg

This is looking pretty neat. Will you be baking it down to a low poly?

Polygoblin

yes, down to AAA specs 

kohg

I hope you give it some flavor of your own, texture wise that is, because from the reference, it looks quite bland.

Polygoblin

I plan on using real helicopters as reference for texturing. nothing toon or stylized. will only be color matching to the reference, because I agree

Polygoblin

I redid all the navigational lights into LED arrays and finished the tail section. It's become clear I will need to do a high frequency detail pass, pulling objects from actual helicopters to fill in the gaps across the model. Hoping that will keep things from looking bland and unfinished.

Polygoblin

Finished modeling the intake for the notar. Also made some significant changes to the overall scale, as well as changes to other parts like the rotor blades and rubber tubing which I think really helps the look.

Polygoblin

got some freelance gigs, did an art test, and finished off another side project after that so this heli gathered dust for a few weeks. back on it now, finishing the HP.  Still planning to do a high frequency detail pass, going to enlist the help of the ADN toolkit to speed up the greeble stuff.

Most recent components to be finished is the rotor base, the turret's main gear, and the turret's support arms. Only modeling left to do before the detail pass is the landing gear inside the packs on each side of the turret.

Polygoblin

went ahead and made a front 3/4 shot that has the new render setup. critiques on presentation also appreciated.

Polygoblin

Finished the turret landing gear, finished locking mechanisms, fixed some problems w orientation, and also made tweaks to the material/render setup

keket

Mmmmm, looking so good! Have fun unwrapping this buddy! :P

Polygoblin

it's going to be an adventure! thx man

Tomiajayi

looks perfect man!

Polygoblin

thanks! 

here's a shot from farther out showing everything balanced on legs

keket

The only thing I'd say with the renders is tone down the reflection a bit, I'm finding it a bit hard to pick up on stuff on the right as it all kinda, merges  

circa86

Awesome! Love this helicopter since the first time I saw SAC.

Ged

great subject matter and really well executed model so far! its so great to be productive and learn new stuff at the same time

Polygoblin

@keket thx, I separated the ground plane to a render layer.

@circa86 & @Ged much appreciated, thank you kindly! I'm a big fan of the show too. always wanted to do this heli

finished the detail pass and posing, but am still working on the in-flight beauty shot. here are the shots of it on the ground. 

pmiller001

Very cool, polygoblin!
i have a question about how you approached this. Did ou model each piece seperately then place them? or did you model them in place? 

Polygoblin

thanks pmiller001! I usually dry fit things to make sure they work, then figure out what I need to do to best make use of local transforms. but if you're asking about floaters, there's only a few. this was a modeling exercise from the start. 

pmiller001

Very cool! thank you polygoblin!

DragonGuard

This is some cool stuff. Could we maybe see a wire from some of the curved surfaces with vents and panel lines and such? I hate doing panel lines and circles on curved meshes, but yours looks really good.

Polygoblin

thanks! yes, this was a lot of curved paneled surfaces. it was one of the reasons I chose to model it. weird rendering issues just popped up in the viewport but I'll post a proper breakdown at the end. 



while it was nice to get serious practice at fundamental sds, studies quickly proved how slow and destructive it is. Not to mention it makes an somewhat unreadable wireframe. I've dabbled with other non-destructive modeling methods during production but still used support loops throughout this project. think my time of support-looping everything has come to a close in my next project, now that I have a firm grasp of sds, I'll be practicing other non-destructive methods of modeling built towards efficiency. 

Polygoblin

a few detail shots since this stuff will hardly be seen later

Polygoblin

did some studying and put together a beauty render of the heli in-flight. thanks to those who've provided feedback! 

Polygoblin

render setup and iteration
 

Biomag

I am looking forward to see the final textured version. So far it looks really good, but I would go with a renderer closer to the images from the series (getting a more military look and less shiny CG), but that is just personal preference

Polygoblin

thx. yes the shot was looking flat when rendering the hp so I decided to go with a more dynamic look. agreed. 

this is what I'm aiming for in the textured gameres version

Biomag

This will look really nice. I think for the high poly, to show off the modeling, the shiney surface is fine, but once you get the game ready this will be a very fitting style

Polygoblin

glad you agree. it was a tough choice but suitable for what I'm aiming to do. 

Biomag

Yeah, its really hard to interprete what GITS would look like when you go away from the stylized look. Sometimes it feels like they themselves don't know how high tech they want things to be. But as most non-cyborg equipment looks very realistic, I woudl expect it to be something like this. Maybe just a bit more towards the stealth bomber looks - as they have this 'spec ops' feeling, but most probably nothing flashy. In any case I am looking forward to see your textured version

Polygoblin

still chipping away at this, almost ready to unwrap

Polygoblin

Beginning the unwrap. How does this topology look? Wanted to throw a lot of polys at it to be sure it'll look good from all angles and close-ups. And remain optimized, of course. Still deciding how I'll break up the maps. Any advice there would be helpful. 




Art Blog post

pmiller001

dzzayum, this retopo is looking mad tight! I'm glad I get to see this again. 

Kroma!

Looking nice so far, the HP renders are cool. I was wondering how you went about the retopology for the low poly?

Also, if you wanted to cut down a few more tris you could take a look at some of those domes and collapse edges. Not sure how much real difference it will make in today's engines but it may help your unwrap performance at least! See these images (not made by me):

Polygoblin

Interesting. Shading can get wonky if you collapse it down too hard with the edge loop method but it looks like that geosphere method is a great solution, and I can still keep the center point. Thanks!
 

Kroma! said:

Looking nice so far, the HP renders are cool. I was wondering how you went about the retopology for the low poly?

All the retopo was done in Maya. Mostly just breaking down HP meshes and using Quad Draw, w a few parts done fresh by hand for convenience. 

Kroma!

Polygoblin said:

All the retopo was done in Maya. Mostly just breaking down HP meshes and using Quad Draw, w a few parts done fresh by hand for convenience. 

Oh right, it looks really clean (the body) considering it's Quad Draw. I'm guessing you used Relax to get even density?
Glad the images helped, looking forward to the next update!

Polygoblin

Learned UVLayout during the process of this unwrap. Being able to manage UVs in a new way has been exciting and I’m eager to make more use of it.

Two and a half 4k maps:

Blog

Polygoblin

Set up the bake groups and Substance Painter scene. Here’s the initial bakes. A few things to fix but projections worked out well.



Blog

momentum

wow I want to print these! Are any on thingiverse?

Polygoblin

not yet. I'd like to set it up for print sometime. just not on the priority list atm

Polygoblin

Bakes are ready. Standard projections from different distances per bake group, no hand tweaks to the cages.

I’ll need to handle the main paint and a paneling technique first. Have an idea for the latter, just have to work out a prototype in Painter.

Polygoblin

Texture progress and paneling work. Planning to discolor certain skin tiles to add variety. Need to flesh out materials and animate the landing gear next.



 

Polygoblin

Paneling, rivets, paint, and dirt/grime. Next step is animating the landing gear and getting the emissive stuff fleshed out. 



feedback always welcome.

Polygoblin

Landing gear and more rivets on areas prone to skin stressing. Need to get two poses finalized, finish decals, work out a method for stressed skin, and then it's just pushing materials until the finish line.  

Polygoblin

All posed. Figuring out the presentation then finishing the materials off

Polygoblin

Lighting, decals, and more material work. Getting there

viktor_kiseliov

Great work, Polygoblin. Was interested to watch you process.