Workshop #3 - Mechadus

Mechadus

Im gonna give this workshop a go. I started #2 (heh-heh) and got about half way thru, but I really want to get all the way through one of these... They seem like a great opportunity to learn.

One of my neighbors has this insanely large piston from a diesel ship engine. Its too large and heavy to be a weapon, but the connecting rod alone would make a dandy steel club if it had a handle wrapped around it. Its about 35" long and has to weigh about 10 pounds. Its very close in size and design to the one on the bottom right of this photo:



base mesh soon

SyncViewS

Oooooooooh, that's gotta hurt!
- Duke

slave_one

Excellent choice!! .. Don't even want to think about getting whacked over the head with that thing!

Mechadus

Thanks guys.. yea, it would be a slow weapon, but devastating if you land a blow.

I started my hp, but I think I over-worked the mesh so Im probably going to start over again. I think I got the proportions about right, but the mesh could be a lot cleaner... especially the cap piece. Right now I get some nasty bits when I try to add my edge loops around the corners, and there are quite a few loops that could be removed before it gets smoothed. The areas on the cap where the smooth arch meets the square base where the bolts are is proving tricky... any suggestions?

crits always appreciated!





-N!

Mechadus

Much better after a quick rebuild. Once I figure out how to add in the square bits, and the bolts Ill be ready to bring it into mudbox to age it, and then I can get started on the low poly.

heres an obj: http://nicholaikropat.com/NIXPIX/WS3/KROPAT_WIP_01.zip



-N!

EarthQuake

I think with all those very tight edges you will have some problems sculpting it, generally when you bring a mesh into a sculpting app you want evenly distributed, even-sized(roughly) quads. Otherwise you'll get some nasty artifacts around your tight edges(really just too many polys there, not enough in other places).

Depending on what sort of wear you plan on doing, it might be best just to add it with a bump map over your normals.

Mechadus

Thanks EQ. I have encountered the pinched corner effect before. I dont know how to work around the pinched poly problem, so I try to avoid such shapes. For this, all I plan to do is add some basic forging marks like the seam around the outer edge, and vague surface imperfections. When you overlay a generic bump over your normals, thats called a detail map, right?

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Mechadus

Thanks TeriyakiStyle - I had thought about trying to sculpt texture onto a plane to later use in photoshop, but since you mentioned it also, Im definitely going to give it a try.

Mechadus

small updates:

I finally got my base high-poly finished. There are some details around the cap piece that I left out after botching the model like 5 times. I really want to re-re-restart this mesh, but I gotta keep moving forward if Im ever going to finish this thing. I think the HP looks decent, but overall Im not too impressed with my mesh... Im sure I could make it much cleaner. I had a hard time keeping the larger end circular after breaking off the cap piece. In hindsight I think I would have started this with many many more radial segments.. Are there any tricks when dealing with sub-divided circles?

There is a link below to a .OBJ file if anybody would like to check it out. I feel like Im slowly starting to get the hang of these hard surface techniques, but as always, I would really appreciate any and all comments / crits / suggestions.


http://nicholaikropat.com/NIXPIX/WS3/KROPAT_wip_02.zip

-N!

ZacD

Looks good but the little stripe in the middle of the handle needs some work.

I can't wait to see the lowpoly + normal map.

Calabi

I'm not sure what software you are using but in Wings when I subdivide a couple of times I get these indented bits on the bolts.



With the bolts I think you need control edges close to each of the corners, or just hard edges surrounding the parts that you want hard(you dont need to put hard edges on a flat surface within hard edges).

Mechadus

@ ZacD - Yeah, I agree. When I looked at it this morning that really caught my eye as being nasty. On the reference there is an oil channel that runs diagonaly along the inner part of the shaft.. I tried to model it a couple times, but I couldnt ever get my edge loops to play nice. Ill probably work on that a little more tonight.

@ Calabi - I use 3d Max.. Ive never used Wings before, but I just imported my obj and dropped a turbosmooth on it and it looks pretty decent. Im sure my geom could be improved tho...

IronHawk

some of the edges look like they could be a little softer to pick up your bake better and just give some nicer results in engine picking up highlights along edges.

Calabi

Strange it works fine in max, must be a problem from exporting the smoothing groups.

Mechadus

yea, it could be the smooth groups causing the issues. I havent tested my obj in any other apps... Very strange tho.

Okt

Question for you, now this seems to be a rather technical piece of hard surface, also it looks like your working on the objects local system instead of the world. Do you use snapping a lot or do you mostly eyeball your elements?

Mechadus

Okt wrote: »

Question for you, now this seems to be a rather technical piece of hard surface, also it looks like your working on the objects local system instead of the world. Do you use snapping a lot or do you mostly eyeball your elements?

Ive been using a combination of the 2. I use snap constantly to close holes and line up verts. I find max can get buggy when working in local mode tho, so I generally use "parent", which works off the objects local xyz, rather than whatever arbitrary bs max makes up when set to local. For this model I mostly eyeballed, but I created 2 circle splines that I used to align all the verts around the circular sections. Im kinda making this up as I go tho lol

hope it helps

**edit** I use symmetry like a crazed monkey too, which helps keep everything nice and neat.

-N

man_o_mule

ok, this is sweet. the second i saw this i could imagine a character in a game running around with it and smacking guys upside the head.

Jet_Pilot

you got this thing finished yet? lol