First time modeling in Maya looking for some advice! [WIP]

Krato

I purchased MayaLT 3 days ago and I've been going through tutorials and what not trying to understand it. I figured I should take a break from the tutorials and see If I cant create someone of my own without guidance. I'm new to this stuff, I'm trying to keep the Ngons out, limit the tris, and not create wasted polys. I think I'm doing all right however my "all right" could be your horrendous, so please shoot me some advice / tips. 

I'm not satisfied with the panels on the top of the tank, they have the right shape but I feel like the poly count could be smarter, I'm just not sure how to actually improve on it. 

The turret mouth closes into a single vertex. i know it's not critical since its not intended to be seen, but is there a better way of handling that instead of making 9 or so tris?

I've been working with a lot of references from google as well and I'm not really sure how to handle the body plating that goes in the front of the tank


GIF: https://gyazo.com/2b08ac514e9dec70acea6f8fcdd55cd4






These are some of several areas I haven't really figured out how to 'honestly' recreate:


Thanks!

Brian "Panda" Choi

Nice confident foray into this.

1) Regarding the tank barrel, not really.  

2) What can help here, as you've done already, is to just model those pieces as floating pieces of geo.  If you need them to be fused, I'd use a script like KTools or Creasse v +1 or AMTools, and use their boolean/union tools to fuse the meshes together.  And then do mesh clean up afterwards.

Unless this is an issue of how to model those specific elements like the forward machine gun port, the driver port, and the side ramp above the tracks?  Can you be more specific.

gastrop0d

Nice work! Though does the circular hatch on the top of the turret need to be capped with such a dense web of polygons? Seems to me like you could cut around 6 edge loops out.

Good luck with the bottom half!

Krato

Brian "Panda" Choi said:

Nice confident foray into this.

1) Regarding the tank barrel, not really.  

2) What can help here, as you've done already, is to just model those pieces as floating pieces of geo.  If you need them to be fused, I'd use a script like KTools or Creasse v +1 or AMTools, and use their boolean/union tools to fuse the meshes together.  And then do mesh clean up afterwards.

Unless this is an issue of how to model those specific elements like the forward machine gun port, the driver port, and the side ramp above the tracks?  Can you be more specific.

Thank you! I should have been more specific! I think, at least as of now, that modeling those gun ports and various other things shouldn't be too hard (knocks on wood*). If I create floating pieces of geo for say, the front and side armor plates, then I suppose I would have the option of creating floating geos for the machine gun ports on top of those if it comes down to it then?gastrop0d said:

Nice work! Though does the circular hatch on the top of the turret need to be capped with such a dense web of polygons? Seems to me like you could cut around 6 edge loops out.

Good luck with the bottom half!

Thank you as well! I really thought it was wasteful too but I wasnt sure what I could do about it. I'll see if i can figure out how to apply your solution. Is the other hatch fine though? I feel like those long rectangles on the top are problem, perhaps not though. 


EDIT: How should I make the tank tracks? I want to keep each rectangle track segment as one object for the UV so my UV isnt covered in tracks, same for the wheels. Is there a better approach that im not thinking of?

gastrop0d

I'm a beginner as well so take my suggestions with a grain of salt, but couldn't you do something along these lines for the hatch?

Krato

gastrop0d said:

I'm a beginner as well so take my suggestions with a grain of salt, but couldn't you do something along these lines for the hatch?

That's not a bad idea. I beveled the corners as well on the hatch, I'll have to experiment and see if I cant create something similar to that or some variation therein.