Soviet inspired tracked transport
interpolator
Hi, I've been working on this project for a while and I just felt like posting it to get feedback but also to put some pressure on myself to work more. I plan to finish the highpoly and then make a lowpoly and bake textures so that I can import it into Unreal 4.
It's inspired by the Soviet vehicle DT-30:
My vehicle is meant to be a sort of road train with the vehicle I'm building now being the "locomotive".
Its articulated like the DT-30 and the second section will be where the "wagons" are attached.
This is the first blockout of the main section for the vehicle. It's quite big and uses wide tracks as its meant to drive in snow.
Adding basic details. I used a script made by Erik Karlsson to make the tracks which was a great time saver.
This is where I'm at right now. I've added bolts and other details to the front part of the articulated vehicle but the trailer is still very basic. I'll add a few more closeup images in the next post.
It's inspired by the Soviet vehicle DT-30:
My vehicle is meant to be a sort of road train with the vehicle I'm building now being the "locomotive".
Its articulated like the DT-30 and the second section will be where the "wagons" are attached.
This is the first blockout of the main section for the vehicle. It's quite big and uses wide tracks as its meant to drive in snow.
Adding basic details. I used a script made by Erik Karlsson to make the tracks which was a great time saver.
This is where I'm at right now. I've added bolts and other details to the front part of the articulated vehicle but the trailer is still very basic. I'll add a few more closeup images in the next post.
Replies
This is a render of the engine compartment, colours and some of the geo is still WIP.
It's inspired by the engine deck of the Tiger II tank with some added pipes and net covers.
This is at the back of the first section of the vehicle, below the engine deck. I added plates with bolts and piping but I'm not entirely happy with how it currently looks.
Hydraulics for the plow at the front of the vehicle. The hydraulics became a bit complicated but I wanted the plow to be able to pivot at the centre and also to be able to be lifted up from the ground.
I added the flatbed to the back of the second half of the vehicle. The support for the 5th wheel isnt finished yet but its the piece I'm going to fix next. The two electric engines that power the winches might be a bit too large, so thats something ill have to take a look at.
Hydraulic link between the two sections, its based on the DT-30 hydraulics but instead of a drivechaft I've added fuel lines instead since the second half is self-powered. I'll have to do a second detail pass to add a bit more but I like how it looks.
I also changed the hydraulics for the plow a bit but nothing major. Since I refined the hydraulic cylinders for the wagon link I updated the plow hydraulics aswell.
Made the support for the 5th wheel, I'm not entirely happy with how it turned out but it looks alright. I might change the side rails and remove the sprockets.
I played around with the material for the support a bit to try and make it look like cast metal but I'm still a novice when it comes to materials in Modo.
Front view, I want it to feel a bit cramped but at the same time there is a lot of space to fill
Drivers side with steering wheel and instrument panel.
The things on the bottom corners of the windows are heaters that counteract condensation on the windows.
Radio operator/map table. Its hard to get a good angle for the camera to show everything.
I've tried to fill out the front center of the "bridge" with a working desk and a map table, I'm not entirely happy with how the drawers on the map table are looking.
Feedback would be appreciated
Since you mention UE4 as your endgame, have you considered using deferred decals? See here and here. I've found them to be excellent for the T-55 type vehicle I'm working on. I'm also using Piotr Bieryt's welds as decals, which you might find useful.
I've heard about deferred decals but I havent looked into until now. I'll definitely try it out and I hope to get it to work.
Thanks for the links, learned a lot more about the decal system. The zbrush brushes look awesome but unfortunately the gumroad page says theyre currently not for sale :frowning:
@griffitii
I'm not very experienced when it comes to modo materials or rendering but I'll give it a try it when I'm finished with the inside
@RustySpannerz
Thanks!
Drivers view, the instrument panel isn't done yet and neither is the steering wheel. Its one of the things I've yet to finish. The window heaters look a bit weird but I'm not sure what to add to make it look better.
Here is a good look at the inside. I've updated the chairs to be subD, I'll take the cushions into zbrush when I'm done and make them look like leather.
The handbrake and side panels, I might change the side panel as it look a bit odd but I'm unsure how to make it better.
Closeup of the radio operators radio, Its one of the more intricate objects. Ignore the flying bits in the image, they're part of the WIP radar that's next to the radio.
I'm trying to make the small pieces have fairly round edges, even though the reference is a lot sharper, to try and make the normals look good when I make the lowpoly.
Feedback is always welcome
Finished drivers view. Instrument panel is done, I might make some adjustments to button layout but I feel pretty happy with how it is right now.
The buttons and dials in the lower right corner feel a bit too spaced out and not detailed enough so I might have to do something about that.
Now I just need to finish the area behind the radio operator and do the window shades.
This is the (almost) finished bridge interior. I've added T-beams to the roof, finished up the radar doodad, tiled pattern for the floor, updated chair and the cabinets in the back (not pictured).
I've still got a few pieces to finish but its almost done
EDIT: better render
This is the finished (almost) interior. The one last thing I need to make is a headset for the radio operator.
I've considered making a coat and hang it on the seat or wall but I don't have Marvelous Designer and I'm not sure what a good way to make it in Modo would be. Perhaps one of those Russian fur hats but at this point I just want to be finished with the highpoly.
The last piece for the highpoly is done
Now I need to start with the lowpoly and get into UVing all of this.
Really looking forward to texturing the vehicle
The lowpoly is currently split into a lot of separate UVs and Im wondering if its best to combine them into one or two large ones?
It would make it easier to work with if there were only a single texture but it would have to be very highres, would an 4k or 8k texture be too much?
Image: Separate UVs highlighted with colours.
I'll see what you guys think and I'll work on the outside in the meantime
I would have seven materials of which 3 would be tiling.
The details on the tiling materials would be floating decals.
This is the current progress for the interior textures. I've spent time learning Substance Painter and Designer and loving both so far!
Feedback is always welcome
Ive done a quick test to try out the workflow Im going to use with deferred decals and secondary UV masking that I learned from this post
Above is the result of the material masking. Ive used deferred decals for the rivets and lines. The base paint is a tiling 512x512 that I made in Substance designer and I have a tiling rust + tiling dust textures for the details.
Im using a secondary UV set for masking out which areas will be rusty and which ones will be dirty, im also adding the largescale roughness variation with the mask.
This is the material setup at the moment. The mask is in the middle controlling the lerps and I have a global texCoords to control the texel density for the tiling textures.
Im soon done with the "lowpoly" (more like mediumpoly) for the rest of the tiling areas of the vehicle so I will post that when its ready.
The tiling meshes use 3 different tiling textures: Base (paint), Rust and Dirt. I also have a channel for changing the roughness, I could add more if I need to but I think those should suffice. The mesh will look better when I've added the deferred decals.
The problem I'm having is that the resolution of the tiling UV mask map (which has all the UVs laid-out, including instances and mirrored geo) might be too low. At the moment the masks (front half and back half) are 2048 but I probably need to make them 4k if I want better transitions between materials.
There is some problems with the masking order that I need to fix. The rust should be "over" the bare metal as well but currently the metal is blocking everything else. Shouldnt be that hard to fix. Metal material needs work as it looks weird at the moment, I should probably make it way more rough.
Feedback is always welcome
can you please explain how did you go about creating the coiled wire for the walkie-talkie thingo in modo?
I recorded a short video here: https://streamable.com/jxnqx
I am using a script called quickpipe to make the edge into a cylinder.
There might be a better way to do it but thats the one I used
UV mapping them and trying to keep a somewhat equal texel-density was a bit annoying.
Next step is doing the texturing inside Substance painter and designer to finish the tiling textures and to make the unique textures.
I also need to do the detail decals, such as a unit designation on the side of the vehicle and a red star (cant not have a red star on a soviet vehicle right) and some other smaller things.
Engine deck with tiling net texture, most of it is mirrored.
Deferred decals at work, turned out pretty good and Im happy with the result
Cable is using its own texture at 512px but I might reduce it if it doesnt look too horrible
Lots of mirroring and instancing here. You can see the tiling on the sprockets on the fifth-wheel support. The base of the fifth-wheel is also using a lot of mirroring.
Back of the vehicle and a good view of the tracks. The holes in the tracks are made using an alpha with some supporting geo inside, turned out pretty good
Feedback is always welcome
Thanks, I hope its not too clean since its supposed to be an old and worn down model :>
I know what you mean though
Thanks!
@Josh203
So am I
https://www.textures.com/download/metalaircraft0066/50055
It oculd break the tiling effect and looks damn good.
But it's just a suggestion, your model is already far better than i could do
Thanks!
Its a good idea and I hope to be able to do something like that. The problem I ran into is that unreal engine only allows for 16 texture samples to be loaded into one material and since I need a unique normal/albedo/rough per map it limits it a lot. I read that they made it so you can add more now but I haven't yet looked into how you'd do that.
Progress pic from the interior. Its taking a long time to texture all of this, the fact that I'm new to substance painter isnt helping either.
Its a great program and I love using it, finding new features all the time
I'm hoping to be done with the interior soon but i still have a lot of stuff do to and a lot of tweaking.
There are a few images of the interior here and Id love to hear feedback on what I can improve or change
View from the front right of the interior:
View from the front left:
Drivers seat:
This is about where the camera would be in a game, its a bit dark because of UE4s autoexposure.
Approximate view from the radar/radio operators seat. The Radar and radio might be a bit too monotone, Id be interested to hear what you think. I made a quick material for the radar screen that rotates around.
Map table in the middle of the drivers area. The map is temporary, I plan on making a custom map of the Yuzhny/Severny Island area which would be more suitable in scale.
The chairs are meant to be able to slide along the rails on the floor.
The walls and floor are tiling 256px textures that are tiled and masked using a 512px texture to get the variation. It turned out pretty good I think.
Does anyone know of a good way to make glass panes with dirt on one side?
I tried to add dirt to one side and have the glass be two sided but it looked pretty odd.
Id love to hear what you think, is it too green, too dirty, too monotone. Any and all feedback is welcome
For the radar is think that the same kind of effect on the table could do the trick, can't wait to see the all vehicle finished!
For the glass, I useful this in a previous project and it turned Putnam pretty well
https://share.allegorithmic.com/libraries/723
Thanks! I tuned down the scratches on the side table a bit to better match the rest of the vehicle. I also added more weathering to the radio table.
@Danface
Nice, do you have any images of your project? Most of my text is "accurate" but I just use google translate so the grammar is probably off on a lot of it.
I'll definitely try that glass material, thanks for the link
For the text, it was a pain because typing what you want in English and have it churned out into Russian, pasting it back and going Russian > English, you'll see how bad it can turn out. I searched a whole bunch of actual Russian transmitters and military radios to get the phrases right as they can use the same words, but because Russian takes up such a lot of space (4 lettered words in English could be 8-9 lettered words and fitting that onto a tiny display is a nightmare). So I'd usually find stuff and copy what I see using a Russian onscreen keyboard (http://russian.typeit.org/) see what it says and if it's accurate to what I need, I'll use it. I began to keep a collection of military russian phrases like "Frequency setting", "Transmittion configuration", "Broadcast Receiver" and so on in a psd library I could copy and paste from when needed but it took a good while. Once it made sense when going from Russian to English, I'd feel happy putting it onto my texture although sometimes copying something letter for letter from Russian to English still made no sense but I used it anyway as it was 'technically' accurate if it was used back then with real people and they understood it just fine.
Thanks! Adding more stuff to that side is probably a good idea, I'll add a few things to see how it looks.
@Danface
Looking good, are you working from a real vehicle like a P-40 1S12 or making stuff up like I am?
@mvdrocco
Haha, yeah that's a good idea. I don't know why I made it that way, I just assumed it would look like that. I'll see if I can adjust it to look more like a soviet medkit (like this but bigger).
Thanks for the feedback everyone
It it looks great though so keep up the good work and I hope the glass shader is what you’re looking for
And it's plausibly buildable soviet nuts, the best kind of nuts. It already looks like it's on it's way to go mess up some kulaks