WIP: Warhammer-ish mech
Edit: Felt I had to change the title from pressurized robot since I'm not doing that anymore. Sorry for fooling anyone. :S New material at bottom.
Just at concepting stage, but I think this is close to how I want it.
Sketches
About my concept. This is robot specializes in closing in quickly and ripping the enemy apart by shooting hooks from the canisters/sylinders on his arms into the victim. (Rough explanation in my sketches) And by doing some sort of pressure release the sylinders on his arms move up to his shoulders and yanks the hooks.
The lower legs are retractable so that he can quickly retract them, release the pressure and kick of anything. In some situations he would hook himself up to a vehicle, place his legs on it and kick away. Ripping it open and jumping to safety.
So, that's basically my concept.
Hoping to have the modeling well underway by the end of week.
Just at concepting stage, but I think this is close to how I want it.
Sketches
About my concept. This is robot specializes in closing in quickly and ripping the enemy apart by shooting hooks from the canisters/sylinders on his arms into the victim. (Rough explanation in my sketches) And by doing some sort of pressure release the sylinders on his arms move up to his shoulders and yanks the hooks.
The lower legs are retractable so that he can quickly retract them, release the pressure and kick of anything. In some situations he would hook himself up to a vehicle, place his legs on it and kick away. Ripping it open and jumping to safety.
So, that's basically my concept.
Hoping to have the modeling well underway by the end of week.
Replies
best of luck!
Perhaps post it on conceptart.org and have other people look at it.
How does it work with modeling from someone else's concept? Ask for permission and credit the artist?
The amount of work and effort that goes into making a game ready model is a bit daunting. Regardless of how well you depict the original concept, the original concept artist should be flattered that the attempt was made.
I know I`d be stoked if someone decided to pick up on one of my concepts but then again, it never hurts to ask for permission. people can be stubborn asses sometimes, and its never a good idea to burn bridges.
...The point is, as long as their name is mentioned and not used for commercial projects...they will be less likely offended.
The stronger the concept piece you start with, the better off your model will turn out...
It never hurts, and is actually a really good idea to DRAW DRAW DRAW. maybe you wont get to the point where you can get a check every 2 weeks because of your drawing skills are fucking 1337 :P, BUT having talent in as many places as possible is never a bad thing. This is because usually your skills will start to cross over your various mediums and make you a better artist as a whole.
SO, I`d draw, and start a sketchbook thread over on conceptart.org- but as a modeler, its generally best to start with someone elses work
Approximately 3900 tris
Not feeling it right now. Did a lot of sketching, but ended up only doing minor adjustments to the concept and jumping into modeling. Which didn't leave me with a good result I think. The legs look like chicken legs and the arms doesn't look movable.
I rather want to start out with a good concept instead fumbling with my own. Does anyone have a simple robotic piece of concept art that I might try to model and texture?
http://www.keiththompsonart.com/gallery.html
If I can give one tip, think through your peice, think about how each peice acts together. Think about every joint and make it clear and obvious to the viewer how they work. Yes yes you may have joint somewhere for the knees and waist where I can't see them, or you may add them later, but right now it doesn't seem that way. If your silhouette doesn't show it obviously, then the whole model will suffer for it. That's just my opinion and I may be wrong but there it is nonetheless.
EDIT: Seriously, I would work off an established concept. You'll just suffer in two areas if you worry about both right now. It's never a bad thing to know how to draw, but until you know how to confidently create model sheets in their entirety, stick with established stuff.
Reworked it through staring hard and adding a tad imagination:
The legs doesn't look quite right yet. Been glaring at the concept, but it's kind of hard to tell how I should draw them. Any advice?
you legs are a 3 point system the mid leg/calve area based off the concept art above from the side should work on a hinge system soif the characters mid leg sticking out rotates so will the charactesr upper half and if the bottom foot rotates it can push itself foward
as far as the style looking at it closely It just looks like it has a indent and tank style threads backing. Now looking at your old piece I recommend a few simpler methods to break this down.
Box Box Cylinder method
by that I mean layout a basic template of all pieces that will be made into chunks (And judging by the concept theres alot of chunks to be made)
I would lay out basic box and cylinders to make the overall shape and then slowly build things piece by piece.
Other than that change the title to this thread to warmachines Ok im done ripping Go back break down your concept start slow. Have fun (Seriously key word! F-U-N!)
:P
1970 Faces (Edit: Geometry unpolished, and it's my third character ever. :S)
[ QUOTE ]
... Have fun (Seriously key word! F-U-N!)
[/ QUOTE ]
Fun!?
On the long run I hope to put this thing into Neverwinter Nights 2, and animate the various animations for it.
Some parts look fine, the the back of the torso looks pretty good, but for example in the back of the legs you have a metric shit-ton of wasted polys back there doing nothing. Same with the sides.
Also once again, your robot can only see what's directly in front of it. The waist doesn't have a mechinism for which to turn on. I said it before above, it doesn't make for a particualarly useful looking robot.
Now overall, I would say this robot is completely lacking the style in the concept, if you want to go into the high poly arena with this, add the polys where they are needed first, with the major details (called blocking in), then start adding things like the armor ridges, bolts and all that jazz.
If you are trying to go low poly with just a diffuse, you need to scrap alot of polys, or start over on those legs completely.
UV (Large)
... I don't have time right now(it's my final) to do any major changes to the model, other than fixing the joints. So, diffuse map assistance please. Paintovers maybe. :S Any input would be welcome.
Umbrella man: About the pads. I can only say that I really didn't think them through. My biggest fault about this whole model, not thinking stuff through. On the latest model I just tried my best to mimic the concept art, but at the same time deviate a bit from it. About the rotation of the torso. Slice it and do some "explaining" with texturing maybe?
[Rant]
I originally made the stuff singlemesh(all merged and stuff), big mistake there.
I see now that the arms are too long. And there's not a joint there making it seemingly possible to bend the arms.
The poly distribution isn't right for a low poly model. Silly misunderstanding on my part. I had watched a Gnomon dvd "Body modeling for Games." I got the idea that the polys should be evenly sized and also quad'ed ideally, but ending edge loops in triangles is okay still. So I tried making the squares the same sizes, adding polys where it wouldn't really be necessary.
I would really like to say it's poly killing time! But I need to just finish the modeling quickly and focus on the diffuse map.
So texturing. I realize I suck at it, and want to get better.
[/Rant]
Rock in some bolts/rust/discoloration to aid its readability. Possibly think about a purple glow highlighting the tan outline surrounding the purple visor and elsewhere on the model to make the pieces pop out a bit more.
The arm cylinder uvs seem really compressed considering they are taking up a decent bit of screen real estate.
As for the arm/bend issues you think you are going to have, check out poop's limb deformation mini-tut as it has some small tweaks that wont mess up your existing uvs or model and will have a pretty decent effect.
www.poopinmymouth.com/process/tips/limb_deformations.gif
Youtube: Test of joints, me checking out how some of the stuff rotates
Edit: Yeah, the topology is far from optimized. Please bear with me on that
I hope the joints read better now. Haven't done more work on the textures yet. Will do tomorrow. Redid the arms somewhat, chopped them up and threw in 3 cylinders which hopefully, once textured, will look like a joint. The torso also got a small makeover, enabling it to actually look around.
I need to stop modeling real soon.
Coward: Thanks for the advice.
To improve your modeling skills I would suggest you model some real things like cars, trucks, tanks, rooms. It might seem boring at first or mundane but you will learn a lot from doing it. I would go with low poly budgets like start out simple maybe 800 then try and do the same model with 350 for example and keep the textures small like 512 x 512 then redo at 256 x 256. post what you do and take the feedback, try whatever is suggested.
Add a texture like say metal as a layer over your current texture and set the blend mode to overlay for example and lower it's opacity to your liking. Add highlights and shadows in separate layers so it's easy to edit them in the future. You'll have to go back and forth between your 2d program and 3d program to se how the texture updates on the model and tweek as necessary.
Skipping the technical mishaps, I like what you are doing I hope you finish. I hope you finish this.
Alex