RedLight Scout (Vehicle Modeling)
keyframe
So, though I'm quite far into the modeling stage (75% or so), I thought I would post my progress on my latest model. I found the amazing concept on conceptships.org a while ago by some guy named leo lasfargue, who I can't really find anywhere else on the internet. As is evident, I choose to do the topmost concept, but they all are pretty insane. I really wanted to challenge my hard-surface modeling skills as much as I could. Anyways, here's what I plan on doing:
1. Finish the high poly by using a kitbash collection of models that I've built over the last couple of years to fill in mechanical details. This is currently saving massive amounts of time, adding tons of cool detail, but it's destroying my framerate and ability to work quickly in max.
2. Take some of the larger metal pieces into Zbrush for sculpting dents and damage.
3. Low poly and bake, which might be hell, hopefully I can stick through this part. I feel like I would have no choice but use a 4k for the amount of detail I want to pack in.
4. Texture exploration, color schemes, the usual.
5. Lastly, I want it to be the centerpiece of a small environment, perhaps a dusty alien planet, with some brief animations. If anyone knows of any tutorials for materials or particles to simulate jet engines in either CryEngine or UDK, I would be more than grateful.
I'm still pretty early in the stages where I can make big modeling changes, so critiques welcome!
1. Finish the high poly by using a kitbash collection of models that I've built over the last couple of years to fill in mechanical details. This is currently saving massive amounts of time, adding tons of cool detail, but it's destroying my framerate and ability to work quickly in max.
2. Take some of the larger metal pieces into Zbrush for sculpting dents and damage.
3. Low poly and bake, which might be hell, hopefully I can stick through this part. I feel like I would have no choice but use a 4k for the amount of detail I want to pack in.
4. Texture exploration, color schemes, the usual.
5. Lastly, I want it to be the centerpiece of a small environment, perhaps a dusty alien planet, with some brief animations. If anyone knows of any tutorials for materials or particles to simulate jet engines in either CryEngine or UDK, I would be more than grateful.
I'm still pretty early in the stages where I can make big modeling changes, so critiques welcome!
Replies
Are all the panels and plates I see along the wing and body in the 3rd pic floaters?
Another thing that you could do to help out with the texturing is to bake down some greeble normal/ao/cavity maps to flat planes, then just place them where you like on your texture flat, almost like a decal sheet of things to choose from. Yeah, it removes detail from your hi-poly model, but if your computer is chugging and its hard to work with, it may be a good solution.
I really hope you end up baking it down. Good luck!
Now, you just need to finish this and get the low-poly and etxture work done, then I'll be really impressed!
I like the overall shapes, silhouette and colors.
Reminds me of Star Wars and Gears of War.
p.s. your signature is hilarious xD
Here's more modeling progress, as well as a few self-indulgent render. Trying to make something pretty that I can show off the final model in - though I really got caught up doodling around in photoshop too long.
I've got to know, this is fascinating!
love the concept and so far youre doing great job!
MOAR!
That's pretty much it Makkon, Every time I finish a new model, I take as many pieces as I can and save them in a separate max file. It's invaluable for projects, I just pull whatever crap looks cool and stuff it wherever for insta-detail. Like I said it really starts to chug up my machine and make file sizes huge, but I hide everything on separate layers, and that seems to work ok. Rendering is the only problem, but aside from that, I'm surprised to not see more modelers using a technique like this to pack their mechanical/sci-fi stuff full of information.
Here's an example - the orange-brownish materials I just arranged from my kitbash file.
Thanks man, you've helped me before on an old post and you've helped me again here :]
if you do ever do that is there a good website you would recommend for random mechanical pieces reference? that would awesome of you if you could
i want to have a go at making a kit but don't really have any old work to take from : )
I have a question about how people make tubes and wires for high-poly models. What's the best way to make them? Do people generally loft splines with a circular shape? Or is there something else that I don't know about. Those smaller wires that you have in your model look so intricate that it makes me think that you had a pretty good system down for making them.
I've used Xref for various things, not for that. It's an interesting idea, but I think I would prefer to keep as much editability before collapsing things for exporting to Zbrush, working with layers and Alt-Q for isolate has been working out pretty well so far.
Exactly - I actually think it works better, a lot of times concepts have "gibberish detail" that you have to figure out what to do with (if not ignore or fake with texture noise), and if you can fill in that information with technically accurate, real, mechanical parts, all the better. I'm very glad that I've been of help to you!
Both. I actually started this by just doing google searches for "mechanical parts", "metal pieces", things like that, and finding random photos cool metal parts. To go further, find references of generators, engines, machinery, and pull the most challenging pieces off of them for modeling; if you find yourself doing a lot of them, heck, you could model a whole engine or something for a portfolio, and it's great practice. Eventually, once my modeling got stronger, I added to my kitbash file from projects, not just specific practice models.
Here are some examples of some images I came up with after a quick google search as examples.
http://www.kollewin.com/EX/09-16-08/4519d1184601814-performance-parts-prius-prius_exploded.jpg
http://www.enhancedsinteredproducts.com/pmparts.html
http://diecasting.china-manufacturer-directory.org/up_files/20100823/Customized-Mechanical-Parts-and-Components.jpg
Basically, two MR sky portals that use mib_blackbody shaders in the light shader for cool and warm temps, with a skylight at .25 intensity. The shader I've been using is a 50/50 blend of a high-gloss light grey and low-gloss matte dark grey arch+design mats.
I have two ways I usually do wires. The simplest - just render splines as cylinders, it's a checkbox in the spline sub-menu. For the ones I think you mentioned, I actually lined up a dozen cylinders, threw on some noise and twist modifiers, and then took that chunk and used a path-deform modifier to loft it along the spline. It ends up looking very complex, because it's a string of a dozen or so wires running along a single spline. I hope I explained this clearly.
Thanks for the the kind words, everyone! It's very motivating.
Also, could you do you show a few close up picture of just the mechanical fill in the wing and the front? With no wireframe and turbosmoothed please.
Also I find it to be odd that things like wires and cables would be hanging out like that. On some vehicles stuff like that works, like construction vehicles, some mechs, etc. but on a fast fighter vehicle I find them odd and misplaced. I can imagine them flapping around as this craft flies, and in outer space with no atmosphere they would just float around.
It seems like you put many hours into this model however the panels looks rather sloppy and could use more work. There are many places where the panels do not line up properly, pinch, crease in awkward shapes, and just have a general haphazard quality about them. They need to look functional, as they are tied to the underlying structure of this vehicle. Look at helicopters and aircraft for reference. I circled some areas above where the panels either are not modeled well, or they create strange/unappealing shapes.
Computron - perhaps, but there has to be some kind of pixel soup to fill in those areas, and it barely takes any time to throw those extra mechanical parts in. I'm going to work at 4k, and really try to optimize texturing and get it down to 2k. I'll try to post some more wireframes of what you asked for later.
The first thing that came to mind when I saw the ship is District 9, I found some concept art:
not quite the same thing, but it's got the loose mechanical stuff and the panels really sell the scrappyness of it.
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Raz I want to see some close-ups of the Mechanical fill isolated, no wireframe and smooth and vice versa, please.
Question.. hard surface modeling generally leave you with a lot of uneven faces thanks to all the support edge loops, how do you go about preparing such a model for Zbrush without the sculpt getting all distorted looking?
Great work, looking forward to more.
That was a bit of a problem. I dropped in as many loops into flat surfaces as I could before exporting anything, to even out the quads, but there was definitely a limit to how much I could do that. I tried a couple things in Zbrush, from using relax, and reprojecting back onto a topologically evened-out model, but that was slow, and time consuming, so I gave that up. The type of sculping I was doing didn't require finesse, though, I was basically beating the crap out of everything, so it ended up not being a big obstacle. A couple times I actually got weird deformations and it kinda worked, so, I was happy to find that out. All of the form and curvature to the model was done in max, so Zbrush was just used for destruction of things, not a lot of finely tuned "sculpting".
I definitely see what you're saying, and appreciate the critique, but I think it will be less of an issue once I get into texturing. I have some specific ideas for how I'm going to chip off paint and rust the metal, that I think there will be enough damage to the ship overall that gives it some unity. I really want to sell this thing being a hunk of junk - well worn, past it's battle prime, falling apart, and I really wanted to "overdo" the dents to emphasize that.
Regarding the kitbashing idea; I've been doing the same, except for character models.
Basically I use an old model to create a new one by essentially making a "shell" around it. The older model will usually be a model I hacked away at for weeks (posting it on here to get critiques).
Saves tons of time since the older model will have the right edge flow or topology solutions in it. The new model then becomes the older model on my next project.
Again, excellent work!