Twisted metal/Mad Max style Perbilt 379 Armor Redesign

Thomas Clewley · Apr 2015

Hey all polycounters, ive been working on this project for a while now and I've came to a bit of a design 'writers block'

I'm trying to create a Perbilt 379 in the style of Twisted metal or Mad max, sort of weaponiazed road vehicles with whats easy to find at the time.

I think my design a pretty weak at the moments so i'm posting up on here for some help with my design. I've given myself a short time scale to do thing so i can get on with texturing or else i know i'll never get it done.

I've gone for a patchwork style armor plating, where the builder has welded different metals together to build up the armor.

Here is my references for the patch work metal;

Here is where i am so far

and here are some basic paintings ive done a while ago in Photoshop to help myself with consepting.

GC_Vos · Apr 2015

This is a very cool looking truck! The welds on that armor plating are nicely done. I think it has the potential for some really nice textures/shading...

Brian "Panda" Choi · Apr 2015

Have you tried looking at Mad Max Fury Road for references? They've got a ton of kitted out vehicles that look and feel aggressive.

Thomas Clewley · Apr 2015

Ye i have been looking at a few, (some examples below). But from what i can gather they don't really use much armor or even real trucks. They seem to like modifying cars into truck then adding a lot of attachments, most not seeming to have any real life function to them.

I can understand this being cars being easier to find in a post apocalyptic world, then adding extra's for appearances shake.

beefaroni · Apr 2015

Your patch work feels a bit off. It has too many angles and it feels like you just took a brush in Zbrush and ran it across the surface.

With the angle part, think about common types of scrap metal that you'd find and really study patch-work metal. I think you will find that you don't have all of those weird sharp angles everywhere.

Otherwise good luck!

woot · Apr 2015

on the example patchwork you posted, all the patches are different sizes of oblong, whereas yours all seem to be random shapes that just have straight sides. try it with making the patchwork out of different sizes of oblong or squares, random shaped metal is super rare as it serves no real purpose.

other than that, design looks and sounds very interesting. nice work.

Thomas Clewley · Apr 2015

Thanks for all the feedback guys, its much appreciated. I was half expecting no responses.

Yes my patchwork armor is well 'broken'. It was a very quick concept idea that i sketched out to see if it worth the time to develop.

Beefaroni - your spot on about it being a simple brush across the surface, i was just seeing how it looked.

So i was wondering on everyone's option on which idea might look best;

A. The patch work armor (once fixed from about feedback)

B. Pig iron armor plating concept (one or two people said it was their favorite of the concept recently)

Thomas Clewley · Apr 2015

I just wonted to say a quick thanks to all those who took the time to help out by comment on this.
Its invaluable to hear others peoples points of views and critiques, it will only ever help my improve. Thank you

Thomas Clewley · Apr 2015

Here what i'm been working on for the past day or so between other projects.
I've completely redone the armor now, went back the conceptsi did.
So with new idea and new meshes hes what I've got.

I have spent more time into this than previously and thus developed the detail a lot more.

I also threw in a unsmoothed truck body for references, i lined it up by eye so it will be slightly off in places but this is just to give you give the idea of how it would look.

There are a few empty space of truck body not covered by armor that may not make senses but they are for meshes not in the scene. The above concepts and renders should help explain what would be there normally.

Brian "Panda" Choi · Apr 2015

Thos riveted plates are much too thick imo. You might want to thin them out.

Thomas Clewley · Apr 2015

I can see what you mean, it may be too much if they were soild at that thickness. Simple enough to fix when i bake it down. Cheers for the feedback Brian.

Thomas Clewley · May 2015

Hey all, don't worry this project is still going. It seems every time i sit down to work on this something comes up or my internet decided to stop working so i cant post on here.

I've been steadily working on this off line. I've tried to fix my work as i go from all the above feedback whats amazing

Rather than posting boring shots of wip while i unwrap or id bake i decided to wait till i have somthing pretty to show. So without a futher ado;

I wonted to make this a breakable mesh since in so many modern games your able to smash up/ deconstruct your vehicle i made sure to build hidden low poly part which you can uncover as its smashed up.

Rear Air bag suspension

Front Leaf suspension

Seat

Interior Interface

As always any critiques and advice are welcome, how else am i going to improve if people don't point out how stupid I've been.

Fatmoth · May 2015

Looks cool. I actually worked on up-armor systems on heavy vehicles in Iraq like this. I switched over from the homemade versions, to the prototype ceramic versions. If you are looking for some ideas check out "homemade iraq armor" on google. It will show some actually battle tested designs with the mad max feel. The 5 ton trucks were probably the best hillbilly set ups I saw haha.

Twisted metal/Mad Max style Perbilt 379 Armor Redesign

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