Krabtank

Mechadus

in keeping with my tradition of basically never finishing any of my personal projects, Ive decided to start a new portfolio piece! (woo) I haven't done anything hard-core mechanical in a while, so I'm going to make myself a cliche Crab-Tank-Robot-Thing-of-Fiery-Cannon-Doom (<sarcasm> because nobody else has EVER made one of those before </sarcasm>). This is not a practical design, and its really only going to be for some eye candy I can stuff in my port (hopefully), but I do plan to cram it in UDK at some point.

I busted out a rough draft last night in a few hours, and I'm happy with the basic design, so on to the high poly stuff.

Ill post updates as I have them, but thanks to family/work/life stuff its probably going to take me a few months to finish it. In the mean time, if anybody has suggestions / crits / comments / bananas or anything else, Id love to hear them.

BenHenry

Looks awesome, keep it up!

SnaFuBAR

needs more legs to be a crab, but otherwise, this is cool.

Mechadus

Small update - The holiday weekend gave me a few hours to pick away at my high poly. I started the base leg. Still many details to be added, as well as the armor plating. It has been a struggle to scale back the level of detail I want to model into this thing to keep it somewhat possible to bake down into a [sort of] low poly. Anyway, crits always welcome.

Snader

For a split second I thought this was going to be the crab from KKND.

Lonewolf

i wanna see more

Pickle

loving it so far.

Mechadus

Update - As I expected its been tough to find the time to work on this, but its been a lot of fun so far. I finished the legs (minus the armor), the frame and the body / powerplant. So far the design is pretty functional, and the range of motion with the legs is pretty decent. Still not what I would call a practical design, but its probably gonna be some good eyecandy if I can finish it.

Hopefully more sooner than later

Lonewolf

looking good

go on!

Computron

what is that sub-d stat thing in the corner in yellow text?

Mechadus

@ Computron - The sliders are part of a setup I use to easily control sub-d levels across multiple objects

Lonewolf

Mechadus wrote: »

@ Computron - The sliders are part of a setup I use to easily control sub-d levels across multiple objects

is that max? how do i get it? O_O

almighty_gir

reminds me of that first boss in FFVIII

Mechadus

@ Lonewolf - It is max, but its not really a script... What I do is use the wire parameters dialogue to wire the sub-d level of a turbosmooth applied to a sphere to the sliders. I then copy the turbosmooth modifier off the sphere, and "paste instanced" onto my geometry as Im working on it. That way the slider controls the turbosmooth on the sphere, and the rest of the model's turbosmooth modifiers behave as instances. Im sure it could easily be made into a script, but I dont know the first thing about how to code it.

@ alimghty_gir - Ha, I do see the similarity... I managed to pose a game Ive never even played :P

Mechadus

last update for a bit - I finished the head (again minus the armor) and the barrels. I just have to knock out the turret body and the ammo canisters and I can start some low poly goodness. woot.

Lonewolf

looking good
what do u have in mind for low poly polycount?

u might wanna soften some edges, like the legs's chassis

Ghostscape

Mechadus wrote: »

@ Lonewolf - It is max, but its not really a script... What I do is use the wire parameters dialogue to wire the sub-d level of a turbosmooth applied to a sphere to the sliders. I then copy the turbosmooth modifier off the sphere, and "paste instanced" onto my geometry as Im working on it. That way the slider controls the turbosmooth on the sphere, and the rest of the model's turbosmooth modifiers behave as instances. Im sure it could easily be made into a script, but I dont know the first thing about how to code it.

@ alimghty_gir - Ha, I do see the similarity... I managed to pose a game Ive never even played :P

That is pretty slick, and I bet you could actually script the setup. I use an instanced turbosmooth to control stuff like that too, but had never considered wire parameters for it.

AnimeAngel

looks awesome. Good idea on the wiring of the turbosmooth. I will have to try that setup on my next project.

Mechadus

Hmm, I was wondering if some of the corners needed to be rounded a bit more. Ill do that next time I work on it. I hadnt really thought much about the final polycount - Its going to be much higer than is practical for a game, but since this is just strictly for my port I figured I could get away with it. I was thinking something like 25k tris and 2x 1024's

If anybody can figure out how to actually script the wiring Id love to know how it was done. I got into using the sliders in my arch viz days - I would wire accent, fill and main light intensity and colors, wind parameters for trees reflection values etc so when I sat down with the client I could change almost anything just by tweaking a slider, vs manually changing values in 150 lights or whatever. The sub-d thing is a great timesaver tho - glad you guys like it!

Mechadus

I more or less finished the high poly. There is still some edge tweaks I want to make, but Ill be starting on the low poly components soon. Woo.

Dimfist

Wicked mad Krabtank. Are those things on the back the shell loaders? They seem a little bit off the main design as far as asthetics. The low poly construction gonna be fun...lol

Mechadus

Just finished the *low* poly. The tri count is almost double what I wanted it to be, but I opted to add more geometry details than I was originally going to for the sake of it being a portfolio piece. Now on to UVs... which is going to suuuuuuck

@ Dimfist - After taking a break from this model for a couple days I came back to it and really see what your saying about the ammo canisters... they totally don't fit. I'm going to redesign them at some point, and try to get something more like my original block model that fits the rest of the model better.

[HP]

Loving that low poly work! Keep up!

Illusive

looking awesome dude, i kinda prefer it without the armour/panels though hehe

Mechadus

Havent had time to work on this because of a relocation, and a shiny new job.. But finally found some time to do some color concept paint overs on the low poly model. Id like to hear what you, the community think looks best.

Lord McMutton

I'm liking Jungle.

chrisradsby

mix between jungle and sci-fi would do it I think

Mechadus

Sweet... I was torn between jungle and desert, but seems jungle is the winner. I like the idea if combining the 2 styles also. Thanks guys

Mark Dygert

This is great, really awesome modeling tons of detail, maybe a bit too much like the new transformers. I guess that could be a new style that just doesn't sit well with me. But it depends on how you do the materials if the forms will hold up or blur together. Still, its very impressive!

Axios

I like desert the most but I think that's just because it's closest to looking like a crab. Wouldn't mind seeing an even redder one to push the crab appeal.

uncle

Jungle! With hanging plants, moss and shit. And exotic birds sitting all over it.

Computron

Attack it's weak point for massive damage.

Mechadus

THREAD FROM THE DEAD!

so... yea... about a year after starting this project I am getting back to wrapping it up rather than let it fall into unfinished project abyss. I am working on re-baking the LP to get some better detail out of it, and then Ill wrap up the diffuse.

I slapped together a scene that I want to finish off to showcase this thing, but Its not really feeling... good. Everything I try to add to it at this point looks bad to me, so its time to get some fresh eyes on it and see if I could do a total overhaul, or if there is potential in this general direction.. the sky and foliage are all place-holder udk assets.

The idea is that this was being built in secret 30 years ago. For whatever reason the project was abandoned, and the facility was forgotten and fell into disrepair. I got the idea from the random photos of abandoned awesome at the bottom of this post.

Thanks for the feedback!

chriszuko

Hey man, Glad to see you back at it! I would focus on the overall colors and lighting before you put the rust and broken textures in. That way you can get a feel for the environment as a whole and really start focusing on how much detail/noise you want to add into it.

I love the tank though! Really awesome design and I think if you combined the dark legs of the sci-fi looking one with the jungle body replacing the digi-camo with the dark scraped metal, it would look pretty swizzle.

Can't wait to see more progress!

Harry

no plain olive drab? no woodland?
also, is it too late to throw in some canvas brass catchers? would really break it up a bit,visually. less shiny/detailed.
Though maybe you plan to do matte outer plates which would be cool

Mechadus

a bit more progress. Got some great crits from folks at work that I think really helped overall. Im still not happy with it entirely, but Ill keep picking away at it till it gets there. Textures are all placeholder for now

chriszuko

Yea its coming along nicely! Just needs to have that nice finished glaze on it. Get all of your stuff in and really kill it!