Ballista, Catapult and Cannon

Jacecr

How can I improve these? I couldn't find alot of good references for any of them except the cannon.

haikai

There should be plenty of references for weapons like these. You could probably find a ton of books at your local library if you're having trouble finding it on the internet.

The first thing that jumps out at me is that your modeling priority seems off. You don't put enough geometry to define the silhouette, but you do a lot of beveling of edges and define small curved areas that are less important. If you're working under a strict polygon budget then make sure you're putting those polygons to maximum use. Make sure the shape is interesting, and as a last step try to avoid such perfectly perpendicular and parallel lines. For really low polygon work you shouldn't be worrying about beveling edges and leave that for the texturing to take care of.

Speaking of textures, they are extremely basic right now. Looks like you are using the same two or three material tiles everywhere. If you've got a proper UV layout then you can do a lot more with the lighting in the textures. Again, your references should be key to helping you get a more convincing look.

GarageBay9

More modeled details and textures instead of stock procedural materials would both probably help. : )

Jacecr

i modeled these based on references i had online.I will amp up the textures.Thanks

Jacecr

In which one is my silhouette off.The catapult right?

GarageBay9

By silhouette, he doesn't mean that the actual shape of the machine isn't accurate, what he means is that when you're looking at the profile of any given shape that's part of the model, you've haven't used enough geometry refining and detailing that profile. Good example - you have lots of sides on the cylinders of the torsion arms, but the knob on the smaller handle at the rear of the bolt tray is very polygonal. Cylinders don't need all that many faces to look round, but a sphere does.

You've spend a lot of geometry in areas where they don't help detail or refine the profiles and silhouettes of various parts. Try shifting your focus to refining the profiles of the shapes that make up the objects, instead.

Jacecr

so i should've spent my polys on detailing each piece that makes up the object?I think references will help me with that.It took me a while to figure out how the objects work based on the references I have.The references were also somewhat simplistic.Diagrams , etc.