Reverse trike thingy, Crits needed and name

TrevorJ

Hello, Long time lurker thought id post something iv been working on and get some feedback. This is a Trike thing i'm modelling for use in a game engine. This is the highpoly 95% done, just wanted to get some feedback before I start making the low-poly version. I guess this thing would be found in a post apocalyptic environment, kind of a Mad Max theme. My goal for this vehicle was to make something with super high clearance that wouldnt roll over at high speeds. I wanted to make something that would have the opportunity for some cool motion when it turned and things. The arms on the front can rotate out or in for more stability on corners. The engine is actually in the back tire if its not immediately apparent.
Oh yeh i also need a name for this thing, if you have any ideas that would be much appreciated.
Thanks

edit: screwed up the links but fixed now

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2788/4465694484_2aae8a961f_b.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2748/4465672172_9c10d0887e_o.jpg
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4007/4464896699_6839491732_o.jpg
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4033/4464788773_8d30df830a_o.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2777/4464788781_dfce693a06_o.jpg
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4032/4464788887_7503a18fdf_o.jpg

P442

the big wheel and the cockpit look awesome, but i don't know about the two front arms. They make this craft look fragile. Also, the hanging wire seems poorly placed. I mean, that's probably an important wire thats just sort of dangling out in the open. And the cockpit has that ram in the front, but you'd probably just break the front arms if you rammed anything.

Slave_zero

Although the overall design looks quit appealing the construction it self has some major flaws.

1. As P442 said those front arms look quite fragile.
2. (and to me even more important) When your speedbike ist accelerating it would just flip backwards. Even if it would accellerate at a moderate rate an awesome backflip seems to be unavoidable by design of the vehicle.

As we are talking about a speed bike going with insane velocities the above problem should be considered in your design. Atm even an untrained observer will recognize that this design will not be able to accellrate very fast. So in result the design isn't believable as a whole.

To fix this I think you have the following options:

1. You need to add mass (volume) to the front such that the massdistribution is a littl more balanced and spread over the whole contruction to provide stbility while accellerating.

- Problem with this solution will be: As soon as you have a decent believable design you'll pretty much kill the uniqueness of the design and end up with something like a regular scifi-motor-cycle. So maybe it isn't the best approach.

2. Change the model that the backside is the front. Speak: Excahnge front and back. This will mean alot work and kill your initial idea of an reversed speed bike. And you will face a similar problem like described above. But now the problem occurs when your model is supposed to decellerate.

3. Enlarge the front support such that they can support the vehicle when doing really hard decelleration. Add another (cool looking) supporting element to the backside.
Maybe also not the best solution.


In the end I think scifi models are always a trade-off between designs and functionality. Of you concetrate too much on one of the aspects you'll either end up with an insane designs which will never ever work the way they are meant to be or you will have designs which keep quite close to existing realworld-designs, because those have proven to have quite good functionality and are mostly improved by several iterations of design and functionality.

Conclusion:

You have an ambitious design / concept at hand. And I think it won't be easy to find a nice trade-off for the above mentioned problems.

P442

you could always try adding mass to the back end and scrap the front arms, so you have a 1 wheeled vehicle.

maybe something like this from Steven Stahlberg. Even this doesn't really make sense, so you might have to add a pretty girl.

TrevorJ

Thanks guys, P442 one of my original designs was a one wheeled vehicle but i thought it didnt make enough mechanical sense, even with gyroscopes and the fact that they actually exist.

I think with any trike or bike based vehicle theres a destinct possibility of flipping back if you floor it. Its something the pilot usually has to compensate for. Dune buggys can do this quite easily. Dragsters do it even with a big block in the front of it.
http://www.miltonsandtoys.com/images/little%20wheely.JPG
http://image.carcraft.com/f/15662609/ccrp_0612_01_z+ford_mustang_drag_car+crash.jpg

Your right about the arms, i was thinking sort of the same thing. That step up on the bars was for the illusion of bulking it up but i may have to try to beef that up a bit, oh yeh and good call on the wires, they were a total after thought im going to remove them or replace them with rigid pipes.

Snader

That's not flipping back, that's the nose tilting up. Your design will have it's nose go up waay further, up to the point where it passes the center of gravity of the whole machine, and it'll go upside down backwards.
Both cars you just showed have adequate measures to keep the car below a certain angle.


You could take some design gues from this:
-shorter, thicker arms
-cockpit more at the front
-lower point of gravity

Ghostscape

Beef up the wire so its a fat cable, beef up the front of the arm-bars past the step, beef up the step and make it so it sits flat when the vehicle is at a rest (so it is triangular instead of boxy like it is now), and beef up the flared wheel-cover a bit. You don't need to make drastic changes like getting rid of the arms, etc, just significantly beef up the front.

Here is the worst paintover ever, I didn't even bother fucking with the front axle bit (which you should do)



It doesn't have to be engineered to perfection, its just that your current proportions between front and back are like a 1:10 which is just too much.

P442

i think this sort of design would be more suited for a water vehicle or some kind of hovercraft. You also might want to consider having two big wheels on either side, like an old steamboat with a support wheel at the rear to have it make more sense as a land vehicle.

Neo_God

Looks pretty awesome to me, but I do agree with what was mentioned before regarding the legs and wire bits. It looks operational enough, So really to take care of the whole motion physics thing, just say it's equipped with something like an accelerator stabilizing frame lock or other form of fake engineering. I mean, isn't that a perk of making futuristic/fictional machines?

TrevorJ

So i'm done the lowpoly and pulled normals, about to start texturing so i took a render of the highpoly and did a quick paintover. Not sure about the colours yet, nothing seems to really pop. I guess thats the danger with doing a rusty post apoc vehicle. Feel free to crit or do a paintover of your own if you feel like it.

System

Nice progress, the colours look great and dammage/dirt have nice balance. It somewhat reminds me of the new batmobile, was this the source of your inspiration?

TrevorJ

no actually, not directly, but i did like that vehicle alot. my inspiration was a lot of different places. planes, helicopters, mad max vehicles. This website is the best Mad Max reference.
http://www.madmaxmovies.com/cars/madmax2/Pappagallo/index.html

Also
http://conceptrobots.blogspot.com/
http://conceptships.blogspot.com/
you might have known about them, there awesome as well.

System

TrevorJ wrote: »

http://conceptrobots.blogspot.com/
you might have known about them, there awesome as well.

Never seen this before! Nice quality work in there, favorited! Thanks for posting

natetheartist

friggin love it. but it needs more spec!

TrevorJ

Yeh, this is just a paintover ill be texturing over the next couple days, and yeah your right ill try to give it more specular on the final.

AlecMoody

the front wheels need negative camber. Also the concept art shows the bars that hold the front wheels as being slightly spread with a curve in the shape of the bar. The model would look a lot better if you integrated those design features.

Fang

Sweet concept, nicely executed so far, will follow this!

TrevorJ

thanks Fang, Thanks for the crit Alec, the whole front suspension can actually pivot out the center axle, so the arms can go out or in, for cornering purposes. There is a slight curve in the arms, but not as pronounced as my original concept. This model is due for my demo reel, and the low-poly is done, the normals and occlusions already pulled, so i don't really have a chance to change overall shapes at this point, mostly just looking for thoughts on the paint scheme.

gauss

I think the design is sound enough, I think the next step has more to do with getting it finished up in a way that makes it more interesting. Post-apoc vehicles and characters are fun but also very, very popular. So if you want this design to stand out, it's going to need a "hook" that arrests the viewer's attention. Yes, investing in realistic seeming detailing and so on will help but it won't do the trick.

Especially if you're treating it as a portfolio piece, you need to get and hold the viewer's attention. If I were looking through portfolios the sad fact is that I probably wouldn't stop scrolling if I saw this. With that in mind--but also acknowledging that it's basically a finished piece at this point aside from the maps--I want to see some unusual color schemes, patterns, or other surface ornamentation that makes this piece draw attention. Basically you can't go too crazy with a color scheme, so long as you follow through on it logically. Just a few thoughts. It's a good piece but hopefully one to grow on. Good luck.

Kumakay

I agree with gauss about the trike needing to stand out a little. The thing that often happens with post apocalyptic vehicles is that they get too uniform in their coloring. So what gauss said about creating maps that stand out and pop is important. Once you get to the spec maps that might help with that, but try to experiment with different color schemes. Other than the green you could possibly try out some sort of blue, just something to change it up a little.

Also, if this is a scout vehicle, cruising vehicle, etc., then have the textures tell a story of what this thing does so that when someone looks at it they can immediately identify what this thing is used for. Maybe it has some "stickers" on it that are from each of the different drivers that have used it. Or maybe a part on it has been replaced recently with a different texture feel to it. Something to make it feel more real. Anyways, it's a really nice piece and I look forward to seeing it completed. Good luck!

TrevorJ

So iv been busy with weddings and moving lately, finished this a while ago, never did post it though. Got to play with the Marmoset toolbag just recently though so here's the result. nice little program. Crits always welcome.

Bishop

Ugh, mind-gasm. This is amazing to me.