High poly missile tank WIP and portfolio

KevinCoyle

I've been working on this High-poly missile tank I designed for the past week now. It is going to be used to generate normal maps for a lower res version. I was curious to see what people thought about it so far. Below I've posted renders of the smoothed version, which is roughly 2 million polys and wires of the high res and the original cage mesh. Note that the way I've been working on this is that I tend to focus on a single area adding detail and extra edges to maintain the harder edge after smoothing, then I move on to another area and eventually connect the poly flow, so at the moment, there are a few areas were the geometry flows a bit funny or pinched where I have edges that abruptly terminate. That all will be fixed before It's finished.






Also I finished texturing my lab environment. You can check it out on my portfolio site www.sagaoflouvado.com

I'm going to be putting up a links page soon if anyone wants me to add their portfolio site to my links page.

Enix

Well, im not sure exactly how normals work, but it seem syou got a little lazy with the high res model . But the end result is very nice, good job. Portfolio looks very nice, some good stuff in there.

KevinCoyle

Thanks,
as for the high res model. Keep in mind it is still a work in progress

StrangeFate

I think there's a lot of randomness in all the details and nothing that looks like it has a purpose, or is identificable as something that could have a function. It's pretty much all bevels and insets over a lowpoly frame.

You should put more time into research and concept (collect related images, steal details, see what elements make something look cool, heavy duty, military etc) of what you're modeling before starting, and get down the kind of details etc that are typical for the object.
After a quick peak at your portfolio i see that most of your work consists of bevels and insets. You need to try to fake purpose, functionality and try to make things look like they're really build (to some extent anyway).

SubD is also rather unefficient for that kind of objects. Most of the tank would look fine without subdivision judging by the last wireframe. I'd rather fix the remaining 10% of the model to work properly too with hard surfaces and save yourself the SubD. Without SubD is looks like a perfectly fine final wireframe. Just make sure to not post the SubD wireframes in the portfolio, just the clean one.

nealb4me

I agree with what has been said so far, but I have a couple of comments to add about the design.

The track links are really chunky yet you have tiny idlers sitting inside there. It would be much better if they were big enough to allow the track to deform with more of a curve.

I am also interested to know how you will attach the wheels to the chassis. Either side you put suspension (of the track) would be really susceptible to damage.

Lastly it has a very low ground clearance further hindered by the fact that you have two big prongs coming out the front.

Sorry to rip into you like that, but as mentioned above you need to consider any design in depth before going ahead. It can only be for the better.

KevinCoyle

Don't worry, I posted here to get ripped apart , in a positive way. Its a good observation, and it brought some aspects of functionality to my attention I hadn't considered.

I admit the design is pretty ill-conceived. I basically went along with "What looked cool to me while drawing", instead of what would be practical and functional, something I should think about for future projects. The bevels and insets are meant to be panels covering internal components as well armor plating, but even then, it was added randomly where I thought something needed to be while drawing.

I appreciate the feedback guys. I'm going to finish this as is for now, but for future projects I'll definatly make sure to do more research and design the details to at least appear to have a function.

gauss

what strangefate said. there's good attention to the small things but larger design considerations are rather curious--with that kind of rather pointy front end i expected it to be a hovertank; the outer edges of it make it look like it wants to take off which is at considerable odds to its tankiness. so please post your further work--and let's see about concepting it a little better before rushing off into the model stage next time

KDR_11k

Remember, surfaces that run perfectly orthogonal to the lowpoly surface cannot be displayed on a normalmap. I'm not sure how well those plates will work there.

Echelon-IV

What program is that? Wings 3D?

dejawolf

well, as a thought, most of the hatches and things sticking out on tanks are maintenance hatches. especially around the are maintenance hatches are contentrated. on the turret, its mostly storage bins, attached everywhere.
the leclerc, for example, has the whole rear turret top, and a few bins on the rear, as well as the turret sides for storage of random jizz jazz soldiers might want to have with them.
another important thing most tanks have, is towing lugs.
a set of rings for pulling tanks out of trouble, when they get stuck.
then theres tools, for fixing trouble, and basic maintenance.
german vehciles are usually covered with shovels, hacks axes, saws.. everything and more, of stuff you'd barely need.

now, a missile tank isn't something that really seems probable, unless there's an extra small calibre gun involved.
missiles are pretty adequate for tank killing on shorter ranges, but on long range, you'd be able to put around 3-4 rounds into a target, in the same amount of time it'd take to fly a missile there.
besides, in reality, more guns isn't neccesarily equal to more effectiveness. more guns adds more weight, and should usually be commanded by more soldiers.
now, on the other hand, if you got 30 individually lockable LOSAT missiles, you got yourself a real tank killer.
i'd still think a 12.7mm, or 25mm gun would do nice for anti-infantry duty.