Steel Battalion Flamethrower

burtonyang

Thought I would share something I'm working on.

Reference:



High Poly:









So I have some questions on what I should do on my model indicated with numbers one through five.

1 - I need some ideas on how to connect that thing without making it look awkward while it makes sense when it operates.

2 - Based on the reference, should I use another floating cylinder to connect them or cut in the model that I have already to finish it?

3+4+5 - No idea what i should add here, seems kind of boring with just a flat surface.

Feel free to give suggestions on other parts of the model too.
Comments, crits, and paint overs are all welcome.

greevar

#1 appears that it should be attached to a sliding slot on the hidden side of what I assume is a gear box. It pushes the piston toward and away from the end of the arm to push #4 up into the slot on #3.

Honestly, I think the whole thing is mechanically flawed. It doesn't look like it would work very well. It just doesn't read as a functioning machine. The business end of the flame thrower is fine, but that actuator makes no sense

burtonyang

Good to know I'm working on something that doesn't make sense :P I can't scrap the project either since I'm stuck with it for a class. I'm thinking about removing the top part and leave the cannon area and add mesh on the bottom so it could become a sentry or turret type of weapon so that it could possibly make more sense.

ajr2764

Interesting concept but I'm not a fan of the back end part of it. I'd think you should scrap the back(from #1 back) that appears to connect into something not shown in the concept. You should add to the design a bit to get more of a functioning flamethrower. Modeling looks clean so far, look forward to seeing more.

SkyWay

My guess? The flamethrower is not a main weapon. It’s connected like that chaingun and that’s why the rear end doesn’t make much sense if you've been looking at these VT pictures with those huge armcannons.

I say make the weapon like it's in the concept it was meant to have an upward "stand-by" position and a horizontal "ready" position, like in the concept.

So

1. The weapon is pointing upwards when not in use, this piston appears to be the mechanism responsible for that. The slide at the back is used for aiming down when the piston is fully extended. Picture that in your mind and it makes odd sense... so connect the piston to the weapon, no complex mechanisms involved says I.

2. From the top of my head : If you want easy, floating cylinder. If you want good looks, cut.

3-5. Concept has nothing in there, I say follow it to retain the clean look of the weapon. Add subtle variation, wear and tear with textures.

Hope I didn't miss anything I haven't played the game, so some mech pilot could come and correct me on these :P

burtonyang

What if I make it into more of a weapon that can be replaced as an entire arm by adding rotators and such? If not it can be more of a sub type of weapon.

SkyWay

It's a sub-weapon now, just like the chain-gun I tried to point out with my ossom photoshop :P

If you substitute the end with what you are pointing there, I see no problem with it being a main weapon.

The thing with these VT weapons, they will almost certainly look weird when separated from the actual unit, like in the concept.

burtonyang

I finished the high poly model; I know I'm missing some few details on the other side, but I didn't want to wait forever for more renders when I noticed they were missing. I'm also disregarding the problems with the design of this object and I'm going with the concept of it. As always, C&C is welcome, anything goes.

ErichWK

Hmm.. a few of your proportions are wrong. Your model seems to be a bit stubby, and the bottom canister underneath the barrel seems to be a bit fatter than it should be.

burtonyang

@ErichWK - You're right, but I need to move along on this prop; I'm bound to have proportions incorrect when I only have one view to work from.

Here's my low poly, it currently stands at 3,462 triangles:

burtonyang

I changed the silhouette of some of the shapes by adding more geometry and baked the normals and applied a base texture pass.

DDuckworth

Lookin pretty nice, do you plan to attach this to anything or just have it as a standalone?

Stromberg90

I think the design is look really simple and flat atm, and as the others have said it's lacking technical function.
And it could be more optimized what I have highlighted in the picture could be done only in the normal map, without the geo.

burtonyang

@DDuckworth - It's going to stand alone even though it's going to look really awkward by itself because of the design problems

@Stromberg90 - I agree with you, but it's not my concept Right now I can only push for a really good looking texture now As far as the optimization, I also agree I could have taken the geometry out but I wanted to make it a little prettier for a possible portfolio piece.

Thanks for all your comments far

Mike Yevin

burtonyang - i think that you will see almost no difference in your model with the optimizations that stromberg suggested. extra geometry like this could potentially lead viewers to assume you are inefficient with your poly distribution. some details such as this are okay to include, but none of the areas circled reflect silhouette and therefore they should be taken out. otherwise its looking great, but i have to agree im finding a hard time figuring out the actual mechanics of it

burtonyang

So I remade the top part of the model. I had extremely optimized as possible only to avoid mapping problems I had. Here are the images:

On another note, I actually modeled out all the screws even though I should have put them in the normal map, silly me.

Okay so on this one, I baked it out with a big map size so I could see if they would have any errors without the map being too small. I used one smoothing group for the entire mesh just like I had it originally and it gave me this with some weird normal on the inward extrusion part no matter what angle I turned the model at.





So I knew the solution to this was the smoothing groups. So knowing this, I used autosmooth instead of using one smoothing group. But the inward extrusion still came out weirdly.





So in conclusion, I left the geometry there so I could avoid that problem, which probably isn't the best solution. If someone knows how to fix this problem, let me know, otherwise I'm going to keep all the pieces the same except for this one.