Hazmat Transport Vehicle

Xelan101

So I'm not quite done with this high poly, but I keep getting bogged down and not finishing it, so I'm hoping with some tips and pushes from poly count I can get off my ass and finish this thing and move onto the low poly and of course the textures.

Any sort of advice or critiques are welcome I really want to make this model shine, I plan on making it a big focus of my portfolio so I need it to be impeccable.

The concept is by the fantastic Gino Whitehall

(http://whitehallstudios.blogspot.com/)

Lonewolf

looking cool, nice concept
i would go with more roundness on the hood part

Ott

Here's some feedback Alex. Keep at it!

SouthpawSid

Ott wrote: »

Here's some feedback Alex. Keep at it!

sheet son. Kill it.
I dig the concept, I look forward to seeing this piece done some justice! Keep at it! :thumbup:

Brendan

The thing I keep thinking is that if you animate it, if it doesn't topple over immediately then it wouldn't look right.

Also there's some funky edge flow going on at the front; look for Ott's biggest circle on his pic; the top-right gape.

Xelan101

So I worked on most or all of what Ott pointed out, and I scaled out the proportions from the front so it's a lot beefier now.


it's kinda hard to see but I added a bit of geometry to the squares Ott pointed out on the top part of the compartment above the cab and I'm going to make them a second set of lights to give them some more purpose.

Any other ideas to add a bit more interest to this thing would be great because I think I'm about ready to move into the low poly... I've spent too much time focusing on this high

Xelan101

Here's the low poly. It totals 15,446 tris. It'd be great if I coul dget some opinions on the tri count, is it too high, too low, should I cut it down in some places and push it further in others.... once I get some feedback I'll start in on the unwrap.

gauss

hold on there, you're still not capturing most of what makes the original so appealing. that's a concept, not a blueprint, so you better not have tried to line it up in a viewport and model it like it was a perfect three quarters view. literalism helps nobody.

i did ~15 or so vehicle concepts on contract for autoassault, an old ncsoft game. toward the end i would hand over a mockup model as well as orthos, because modelers wouldn't ever get the stance right.

look at the concept again. it's awesome, that's why you chose to model it. look at your side profile of your model. does it have any of that same stance, that same charm? not really. because you're treating the concept as a blueprint, and not the start of a process you need to bring your own inspiration and interpretation.
i never liked working with modelers who were too literalist in building out my designs because they didn't bring their own understanding of their own trade to the process. if it came out looking lame they sort of threw their hands up and said "well i modeled what was in the concept."

but enough kvetching. here's a thousand words for you:


this is a really great piece, potentially, you have all that you need to make it great, but for heaven's sake you've got to put some stank on it. your truck looks like it's just going to tip over--make sure the stance looks believable and appealing.

JostVice

the modeling and concept is very nicely, but wouldn't it be silly to use a vehicle like this to transport hazardous materials? It looks like it can get tipped over easily

Looking forward for the textures!

Apocol0id

Looks cool! Though, I find it a little...backheavy. What's keeping it from falling backwards and doing a permanent wheelie?

Xelan101

I agree with all the complaints of it being back heavy, I'm just not sure what to do about it at this stage.

Gauss thanks for all your suggestions unfortunately at this stage of the model it's be really hard for me to try and implement most of them.... I like what you've said and I'll take your points it into account but not until my next piece. I did at least enlarge the back wheels a bit and shift them backwards probably not enough to really realistically make it look stable, but it looks a bit more stable at least. Again thanks for your advice and had you suggested those things while I was working on the high I would have made most of those changes.

Anyways I've bumped it down to 14,072 tris and I'm gonna move forward with the unwrap unless anyone can point out any glaring wasted polys or anything like that.

Thanks for all your crits thus far and I look forward to more as I unwrap and texture.

jeremiah_bigley

Xelan101 wrote: »

Gauss thanks for all your suggestions unfortunately at this stage of the model it's be really hard for me to try and implement most of them....

Really? I don't think it would be that hard. FFD the shit out of that thing. You seem to be still in blocking on most of it so I think you could do it.

Xelan101

Sorry I haven't updated in quite a while I've been focused on more of my school stuff and that kept me away from the truck... anyways here's my first couple passes for the texture I still need to hammer out a spec for it and tighten up the diffuse a bit so any ideas to help make this thing a bit more interesting would be great

Jessica Dinh

Hey, I've seen your latest render and I think if you want to put this in your portfolio there's a couple things you could work a lot more on. The spec needs to be a lot brighter for the metal where the paint has been scratched off. The rust is really randomly placed, I think you could be a lot more careful and subtle how you go about adding that, as well as edge scratches - right now I can tell exactly what brush you are using for it

The colors are not really working either imo - the red just looks out of place and I think maybe just using different shades of gray metal might work better, then sneaking in hues later or something. The yellow headlights is also not good, it looks really cartoony, so maybe tone down the saturation or something. Besides rust I think you can also add dirt. Also maybe try to fake some dents in the diffuse or something.

I think you can make this look really nice, but it needs several more hours and patience! Keep it up, I know you can do it, make this a portfolio piece!!

Xelan101

Here's the latest render Jessica's talking about

it's rendered in 3DS Max with 3 point lighting and a skylight




I agree with her I kinda of got out of control with the rust because I was trying to break up some of the larger forms like the hood, at this point I think I'm gonna add some paint stripes on the hood to break it up instead. I'll tone back the rust in places and try to wrestle it back to places that make sense like the edges and areas where water could pool... I'll try out a different grey and redo my color variation because although I started with some blues and oranges mixed into the base color they've mostly been lost...

As for the headlight I agree completely and that's one of the things I haven't really focused on, I'm gonna be trying to fix them up soon.

Dents and dirt sound like a good idea I'll try and add those in too.

Stromberg90

Well I figured a paint over would be more useful to you and easier for me than to write down everything, cause I think thus has potential once you fix the textures and smoothing issues(flat shading), I would also advise you to try out different color schemes.
Are you rendering this from max or using screenshots, if so it could benefit from a shader like 3 point shader or Xoliul shader you can find them both on this forum if you look around.

Remember this is just my take on it, and if I where doing it for real I would have spent way longer time than what I did on this paintover.
Hope you get some use from it

Xelan101

So I changed up the rust a bit, toned it back in some places and added a bit more in others. I added a bit of dirt, changed the color scheme, I decided on a green very similar to what Stromberg used in his paintover. I cleaned up the hood alot and added a new stripe of paint along it in order to break up the wide expanse of bare metal there.

Still haven't fixed the lights, I'm gonna try and add some more details to the to make them look a bit more like actual car lights...

As for the lighting it's still that flat lighting, there is a 3 point light set up as before but I don't know how to smooth it out. However it's not a big issue at this point because the final product is going to be rendered out from Unreal anyways.

ErichWK

Theres no material definition. Maybe try rendering it real time or in an engine. Your lighting/presentation isn't doing you any favors.

fightpunch

The proportions, compared to the concept are way off.