Futuristic Russian Helicopter (Hind inspired)

[Bee-Bee]

Hello polycounters,


Before I talk about the heli I just wanted to give a quick intro. I've been a longtime lurker of this site and have gained a lot of insight and inspiration from many members, especially over the last 12+ months as I've been overhauling my portfolio. My background in games started back in 2004 when I joined a PC mod called Desert Combat as a vehicle artist. This eventually lead to roles as an art supervisor for Kaos Studios where I worked for 6+ years until its closure last June.

Because my last supervising roles kept me fairly tied up, I was itching to take on a next gen spec vehicle from start to finish. The Russian Hind was one of my favorite helis as a kid so I decided to create a futuristic version that had its own unique look but still shared some resemblance to the Hind. I made deliberate attempts to give it an animalistic yet sleek and aggressive appearance. Hopefully this is conveyed.

There are a few more images on my site as well as higher res versions if you are interested: http://www.brianburrell.com/3dper_mi27r.html



http://www.brianburrell.com/pf_img/3d_pers/veh_mi27r/attach/VEH_Mi27R_hp_solo_blueAO_1k.jpg
http://www.brianburrell.com/pf_img/3d_pers/veh_mi27r/attach/VEH_Mi27R_MrayComp_pg1_Med.jpg
http://www.brianburrell.com/pf_img/3d_pers/veh_mi27r/attach/VEH_Mi27R_MrayComp_pg2_Med.jpg

Maya viewport 2.0 video capture:
34507513

Direct link to video: http://vimeo.com/34507513

Some more notes...

1) Software used = Maya, Mudbox (lots of detail sculpting w/ vdm), photoshop, xNormal(ao), ndo2/crazybump (minimal)


1) I didn't weld certain sections because I was planning to make a destruction version later on but ended up moving on to another project.


2) The texture specs in all of the images except the 2 mental ray renders above this post are: 2048x2048 set, 512x512 set and 256x256 for the glass. Diffuse, spec, gloss, and normalmaps used for the first two sets.


3) The poly count is around the 35k range with all moving parts and weapons included (target platform = next gen consoles)


4) In order to gain some slight visual boosts I used certain methods that were fairly time consuming and wouldn't exactly recommend them for normal game production

http://www.brianburrell.com/pf_img/3d_pers/veh_mi27r/attach/VEH_Mi27R_hipoly_trim_Med.jpg

http://www.brianburrell.com/pf_img/3d_pers/veh_mi27r/attach/VEH_Mi27R_mayaVP_ao2_Med.jpg
http://www.brianburrell.com/pf_img/3d_pers/veh_mi27r/attach/VEH_Mi27R_UDK_trim_Med.jpg

http://www.brianburrell.com/pf_img/3d_pers/veh_mi27r/attach/VEH_Mi27R_mayaVP_uvs_Med.jpg
http://www.brianburrell.com/pf_img/3d_pers/veh_mi27r/attach/VEH_Mi27R_texture_samples1.jpg



Thanks for checking out my work and feel free to post suggestions/crits if there are things that bug you. Since I haven't touched this in maybe 5+ months I already want to re-visit some areas but have been a bit too tied up with other projects.

[underfox]

Excelent work.

[sipher3325]

this is awesome

[Computron]

welllll, sheeeiiit....

[Computron]

Vimeo embedding is done like this:

http://i.imgur.com/5mN8T.png

34507513

Your portfolio is off the chain. :poly121: :thumbup:

[Bee-Bee]

Thanks guys!
Computron , double thanks to you! I actually thought there was a ratio issue with embedding vimeo videos here so I'm glad that's not the case.

[joeriv]

Amazing work.

And I guess you are probably really good at solving puzzles :p

[TehSplatt]

God damn haha

[Powermaennchen]

wow, what a great combination of cool idea, fantastic design and a lot of endurance! I love it!

[battlecow]

Beautiful, the execution is mind blowing. Love the cockpit design and there really is an organic feeling to the chopper !

[Paul68Rageous]

This is just SICK man, just SICK :O
I love this work, how long have u been working on this?

[teaandcigarettes]

Saved, bookmarked and called the cops.

Awesome work :)

[Rhoutermans]

just too awesome

[cupsster]

Holly shit! how did you do that UV layout? By hand? It makes me MAD...

[Xoliul]

Uh wow haha, I was thinking damn this is up there with Polygoo/Alan's stuff, only to see you worked with him on Frontlines and Homefront. Excellent work! Not often you see people with this level of quality in vehicles.

[Racer445]

hey i remember you. this is evan, i did that goliath in your portfolio for art bully as one of my first industry gigs yeeears ago. it's neat to see how it turned out after your edits.

the helicopter execution looks great. a truly autistic level of detail to the modeling even down to the interior, it looks like it was a ton of fun to model the high poly for the whole thing. the texture has some really awesome shapes as well--4096 is nuts. i'd love to see the full spec map to get a better sense of the thought process behind the materials.

you should have another job in no time.

[aobond]

glorious work, damn that sexy beast

[nathdevlin]

That's a mountain of work beautifully done. Awesome.

[alloa]

THAT, it's a stunning work!
You're a killer! xD

[LoTekK]

Holy shit. Holy shit!
Incredible stuff, man. It's pretty much fantastic from concept to execution <3
Seriously, wow.

[Walrus]

Superb! Love your take on the hind, the whole thing is amazing.

[Samfisher84]

thats one sweet lookin chopper!

[tacit math]

just. fuck. wow

[Hang10]

Amazing, my only problem with it is I can't fly it! :D

[Havoc89]

That is freaking beautiful. Amazing work!

[BenHenry]

So much boss. XD

[cptSwing]

mother of ...

[Bee-Bee]

Joeriv: haha I might be one of the few 3d artists who actually enjoys UVs (at least the final fitting to 0-1 part). It's def a giant puzzle!


Teh Splatt, Powermaennchen: Thx!


Battlecow: Too kind! I actually liked my original version of the cockpit framing more but there was one big problem: It wasn't functional. Oops!


Paul68: It was roughly two months of work total but a lot of that time could have been trimmed down if I didn't go the insane route of sculpting the majority of the detail in mudbox (meshes got very, very dense and my 24gb of RAM went bye-bye quickly)


TeaAndCigs: That made me laugh. Good one! By the way, I remember checking out your environments while I was working on mine and was blown away. Sick work.


Rhoutermans: TY!


Cupsster: Yep by hand but I have a lot of hotkeys and custom mel functions I've made over the years to make the process smoother and less painful than normal.

Xoliul: That's pretty funny you were thinking that and I'll take it as a nice compliment. :thumbup: Alan/polygoo has some mad texturing skills for sure and he was a big influence on me so I'm grateful I was able to work with him for FL and HF. His latest car for Ravaged is one of my favorite vehicles. Also, Alan and I worked with a vehicle concept artist named Nathan Campbell who was a positive influence on my vehicle concept abilities.

Racer- Evan: What up man? Good to see you on here. Your version of the Goliath was already pretty tight but I decided to re-texture the diffuse at the last minute due to how much the green version was blending into the SP maps. I should have had you do that from the getgo so that was my goof. Thanks for your kind words on the heli. The modeling was a blast up until the part where my meshes got a bit too dense in mudbox even though I had everything broken up efficiently. Good learning experience though. Just to be clear, the 4k maps are only used on the renders up top. I'll try and post the full spec and NM on here later this evening.

Alloa: Your env work on deathmonsters and crasher is very tight! I remember seeing it awhile back and dropping my jaw at the style and execution.

aobond, nathdevlin, LoTekK, Walrus, Samfisher84, tacit math, Hang10, Havoc89, BenH - Thanks so much guys! Wish I had something more clever to say but I haven't had enough caffeine yet


- hope I didn't miss anybody

[Drav]

Awesome work, really great stuff :D

[Ryno]

Loving it. Excellent design, great executions, nice detailing.

[dpadam450]

You have a guess in how long this took as far as actual work on it?

[Alphavader]

http://assets.diylol.com/hfs/b5f/a37/84f/icon/mother-of-god-meme.jpg

awesome dude.. i like the style and the texturework !
You made me quit my quake match and go back to modeling - right away..

[Ravenslayer]

that some superb texturing work man
awesome job overall

[Selaznog]

Wow, incredible work. Very inspiring. Gonna bookmark your website

[wretchedgoat]

dat texturing. this is fantastic. Would love to see you do a making of like you mentioned on your site.

[wrangler249]

OH LAWDY

[Xoliul]

I'm wondering Bee-Bee, how much of your texture work is painted and how much is from photos?

[luke]

wow fucking awesome man! can i be you when i grow up? :D

[Enexus]

Looking forward to seeing your tutorials and workflow section on your portfolio. really love this design, awesome work man.

[Bek]

Brilliant, an incomprehensible amount of work went into this! So good.

[Paul Pepera]

looks sweet!

[brandoom]

Pretty damn awesome. Great work!

How many hours did you sink into this?

[Thegodzero]

Well done, well done! That is some sexy UV packing!

[Jesse Moody]

ummmmm tasty :)

Nice folio as well...

[adam]

Awesome work. The texturing sheet is fantastic. Would love to see the view from within the cockpit...

You also worked on one of my favourite mods ever.

[3dcaspar]

This is absolutely fantastic!
By far the best looking Helicopter i've ever seen :D really love the style and highpoly stuff!

And yeah, you got an awesome portfolio...

[divi]

absolutely wicked.

[JordanW]

Hey this looks cool, I like the design.

The biggest issue that stands out to me is how mushy the hard surfaces look.

The closeup highpoly render of the cockpit shows this issue well, the beams that make up the window don't look like they are precise metal beams with proper seams between elements, they look as if they're made out of clay.

A lot of the body seams and bolts look a bit soft, like they're just sculpted in rather than separate elements that are holding an aircraft together.


I'm not sure why your specular map is blue, it should be greyscale for the most part, painted surfaces especially the type of material on military vehicles have a greyscale specular response. I believe this is contributing to the gamey look inside of UDK, where the highlight is hitting the surface is getting more saturated which is incorrect.

[shinobix]

Awesome job! Love it!!!

[Bee-Bee]

I'm planning on replying to everybody in a bit, especially JordanW with his excellent crit, but just wanted to attach these textures first for people who were asking initially. Also, for any emails I haven't answered I'll be responding shortly.

Disclaimer: color spec map is a bit exaggerated regarding its metallic attributes and saturation and I'll go into this more when I reply to Jordan. Just wanted to mention that so newer artists don't download it and consider it fully accurate ref for realism sake

Diffuse:
http://www.brianburrell.com/pf_img/3d_pers/veh_mi27r/attach/VEH_Mi27R_textures_diff_1400px.jpg



Color specular:


http://www.brianburrell.com/pf_img/3d_pers/veh_mi27r/attach/VEH_Mi27R_textures_spec_1400px.jpg

[Jonsnow]

I would like to break your UV puzzle and watch the video how you put them together again , it is incredible work!

[[HP]]

God damn, this is full of win!

[Joshflighter]

I keep coming back to this thread. This is probably my 5th time I came to see the epicness from this thread. Absolutely LOVE IT.

[IxenonI]

This is pretty epic stuff, thanks for sharing!

[Lonewolf]

beautiful work there!

how long did it take from start to finish?

[Brygelsmack]

Very nice. That UV is pretty crazy! Looks awesome.

[Alex Pointer]

Yes, this is definitely inspiring work. I am also interested in hearing how long this took to complete. I can tell you were patient with this and it shows. awesome, is basically all I have to say.

[Kmicic]

Mmmmmmmm delicious.
I think Mi24 is most beautiful helicopter.
You made him better.
Good job. :thumbup:

[ageless]

"Yes, this is definitely inspiring work. I am also interested in hearing how long this took to complete. I can tell you were patient with this and it shows. awesome, is basically all I have to say"

Totally Agree with Alex Pointer on this.

It must have taken tons of patience and self motivation to do this beast.Totally Wicked.

[solar]

Inspiring work! This looks incredible, shit hot execution.

[nkonstantino]

Stunningly beautiful!
You could probably pass this off as an actual Russian design and sell it to the US Government.

[lukepham101]

Awesome stuff! Love seeing such detailed breakdowns like this.

[Alberto Rdrgz]

yup, like a baus.

[.polygon]

YES!! polycount needs to make this a top page banner.
awesome work, keep posting on here!

[Mrskullface]

this is so savagely badass!

[Ehsan Gamer]

WOOOOW !

You are good at HARD WORK .

Congrats

[konstruct]

BANNER worthy i say!!!

[BelgianBoolean]

Konstruct is right. Just brilliant.

[cholden]

dang, those UVs and everything else. Banner!

[Marcus Dublin]

Class work all around man! I'm in awe at the level of polish demonstrated in this piece. Everything from the design to the execution is top notch. I can't wait to see more vehicles from you in the future.

[Bee-Bee]

BenHenry, cptSwing, Drav, Ryno, Alphavader, Ravenslayer, Selaznog, Wrangler, Bek, Paul Pepera, Godzero, 3dcaspar, divi, shinobix, - Thanks guys, I'm glad you like it! :poly121:

dpaAdam450,brandoom, - I think I stated this earlier but it took roughly 2 months from concept to completion but that doesn't include the time spent creating some texture templates that I worked off of (grime, dirt, chips,etc). I got bogged down in the sculpting once my meshes got too dense so if I had moved more towards a game production friendly route I could have shaved off 5-10 days maybe.

JesseM, Adam - thanks guys! And thanks for the emails! kit

luke - you can be me right now so I can take a vacation. Is that cool?

Wretchedgoat, Enexus, - I've gotten some more requests for "making of" so I'll try to find time for that in between job searching and freelance. Especially since this community has been invaluable for me and I probably owe it a lung or two at the very least.

Xoliul - I tried to track down some earlier versions of my textures to see if I could show you a comparison of photo vs painted but it seems like I merged a lot of those layers to save space. I'll keep digging though. Overall, I actually painted quite a lot in mudbox by hand (especially chipped paint and weathering) but definitely relied on photos for added realism (initially to establish a look then in the end to add final polish). I admit mudbox surprised me with how nice the brushes were after setting everything up. I will try to cover more of this and also show the various texture templates I relied on in the "making of" section.

JordanW - Thanks for your constructive crit. There are some things you brought up I was anticipating more artists on here would be bothered by but maybe they just haven't posted yet or were being too nice. Regardless, I dig your work and respect your pov. When you say "mushy", does that apply to the final baked lowPoly or to just the hiPoly? I personally feel that a lot of hard surface game work is a bit too perfect and clean, especially for military vehicles like tanks/helis because it doesn't reflect the organic nature, weld marks, human error, etc you find when observing these things up close in real life. Having said all of that, in hindsight I feel like I went too far in certain areas and the canopy frames/beams you mentioned were probably chipped too much in mudbox.

Your comment about the seams and bolts looking too soft is spot on. They were definitely all sculpted in and this had benefits but also drawbacks. On my first few tests I thought I could get away with this after baking down to the gameRes asset and sharpening up the normalmap a bit but the reality is, it's still not as sharp and believable as I'd hoped for. Also, I reached a point with my mbox meshes where I couldn't subdivide any further or the files became too dense. For future vehicles, I would want to use a better method here (maya and ndo2 for example).

Another good call on the color spec. I exaggerated the metallic attributes on purpose and it was more tailored for my maya viewport captures as well as the renders afterwards, especially since I wasn't using any env map/reflections to pull in blue from the sky. To make it more realistic I should have de-saturated most of it and yes, you're right about the real life vehicles being this way.
------------

I'll try to respond to the rest of the comments soon and I apologize for how slow I've been but things have been a little hectic lately. I also want to re-iterate that you don't have to feel pressured to not be critical if there are elements you don't like. While I am proud of this helicopter there are definitely things I want to improve upon and address for future vehicles (or even assets in general). Maybe I can focus more on this in a small post mortem write-up for my site.

[Yury]

WOW. Excuse me for a moment, I need to pick up my jaw from the floor before I can write something else....

Amazing work, Bee-Bee (http://www.polycount.com/forum/member.php?u=51856)! Very cool design and great model! I'm looking forward for "making of" especially about texturing! :)

Very inspiring.

[D-Boy]

Your UVs are really well done. I really want to know how you approach UVing models like this. Please touch on this in your "making of" section.

[AlecMoody]

I really like the look of the diffuse in that close crop of the texture sheet. So many pretty tonal interactions.

[foreverendering]

So sick. Love it :D

[Rory_M]

shapes are killer. great work.

[rockstar6]

that chopper is looking stunning, very nice work!

[rambooze]

Simply amazing. The best reference for all on how to create a military vehicle. Thank you for the inspiration.

[dpadam450]

Let us know when/where you land a new job.

[isaac64]

awesome work....

[chrisradsby]

Awesome work, I don't really have any crits or anything it's a beautiful piece of art.

[feathers]

http://gifr.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/guy-takes-off-ones-set-of-sunglasses-but-has-a-second-set-on-aswell.gif

[Bee-Bee]

Incoming long reply to catch up on all of the comments.

First off, I need to give major props to Marcus Dublin - He helped me numerous times with software and workflow questions. Marcus, you rock and I still owe you one (or 10)! :thumbup:

Jonsnow, HP, lxenonl, Brygelsmack, solar, LukePham101, MrSkullface, Ehsan, Rory, Rockstar6, Isaac64, chrisRadsby, feathers - Thanks, thanks, thanks for all the comments! :)

polygon, konstruct, cholden - it's very flattering to me that you'd suggest that

Joshflighter - you are going to be sick of it by the 6th visit so be careful

Lonewolf - Around 2 months. I talked about this a little more in a prior post. By the way, I remember your weapon threads and just wanted to give you props for some high quality hard surface work. I'd be surprised if Activision hasn't come after you yet.

AlexP, Ageless - It was a lot of work and took a lot of patience for sure but was a great experience. See above... and thanks!

Nkonstantino - I wish I could as long as they promise to give me a free ride or two (or don't sue me when my design causes every pilot to instantly crash)

Alberto R - Thanks dude! Dig your bio shock scene from awhile back

BelgianBoolean - Just saw your sweet shuttle model. I need to reply to that thread

Yury, Dboy- Thanks! I'll make a note of this when I get back to that section

AlecM - Thanks man. That's cool that you noticed that. Some of my subtle touches get lost due to the busy-ness of the overall texture (which I'm always trying to improve)

Foreverendering - I appreciate it! I just recently spotted your project Junebug character on CGhub. Very cool design and execution on that guy - ps go Gators!

rambooze - you're very welcome and hopefully you aren't limiting the amount of game vehicle art you're looking at. There's a lot of great content out there from other artists to study and learn from.

dpAdam450 - I'll be sure to do that. Currently I'm still looking for full time positions that are hard surface related including environments.

[tyddynroger]

wow! great work!

[praetor187]

This model is just... Too good, awesome work man :D

[Boyso]

Hi Bee-Bee, sorry to bring your thread back from the dead, but I just had a few questions for you when you have a minute!

-First, I'd like to know a bit more about those Mudbox VDM. I've never used them but did you make stamps out of panels that you just placed around?

-2nd : Really love your textures, the amount of details in those scratches are mind-blowing. Did you use a gloss map at all or was it all achieved by the colored spec?

-3rd : Are you still working on the making of, I'd love to see/hear more about it!

Thanks in advance!

[Ehsan Gamer]

How much time it took to make this AWESOME ?!!

and make learning video especially for texturing plz !

[Bogdanbl4]

Wow amazing work!

[re.wind]

That design is utter sex. i even said that out loud before typing it here.

chapeau, kudos, amazing work here. now go bath in the praise and glory. :)

[maverickhornet]

This is just insane! Wish I was this good!

[abitterfarewell]

WOW! really nice work! your Normals and AO came out great!
amazing job!

[Lonewolf]

Lonewolf - Around 2 months. I talked about this a little more in a prior post. By the way, I remember your weapon threads and just wanted to give you props for some high quality hard surface work. I'd be surprised if Activision hasn't come after you yet.

oh now i see that post u talked about :D

thanx man

[S-ed]

Yay.
Great Job! It's...just insane...
I doubt that Russians will build this vehicle, such design more specific for SyFy of Japan in mids 80-90 (look at Zentradi ships). Buuuut, I'm appreciated. =P

p.s.: if any help with titles will be needed I'll be glad to help (i have some useful experience >_< "Выдернуть шнур, выдавить стекло")

[D4V1DC]

Just found this master piece, I can sort of see what you mean when you talk about adding some animalistic resemblance to this design in my eyes I sort of see a shark body. Very awesome design and like the rest look forward to more work and guides/tutorials you choose to put time and effort into.

[onelung]

nicely done!

[kw71]

I'm in shock!!! Your job is amazing, Bee-Bee!!!

Did you actually have modeled the rivets on the surface, are they painted or is a mix of both techniques?

Is a beautifull design. Congratulations!

[vlek2903]

nice!

[nathanbarrett]

That texture map hurts my head. MAD props to you for this work. Stunning.

[Drex]

Very good stuff, Impressive is beyond a correct adjective for me to use, maybe I should try amazingly stunning haha, but again this is a brilliant model and texturing.

[Danne]

That looks awesome!

[Mr Whippy]

This is amazing work.

I'll admit I didn't like it at first from a conceptual point of view but it's grown on me a great deal.
It's probably because the Hind is such a classic shape that it still works and stands out with modernisation :D


My only request purely because I'm curious is that it'd be nice to see a render with much less weathering. Perhaps factory fresh with some cool blue/grey (think Flanker in this image http://www.ausairpower.net/VVS/Su-35S-KnAAPO-2P-1S.jpg ) camouflage.


An inspirational project, thank you for sharing :D

Dave

[littleclaude]

Any chance of a UV snap shot?

Great job, love it :)

[Sulaco]

Incredible. I can't get over how good this is. If I can ever become this good at modelling I will be a happy, happy man.

[anand21580]

great job......

[luna]

Amazing!!!

[luna]

I really like this! :D It is awesome!

[Xavier_]

I love the textures! Nice design and renders. Great piece overall.

[aldhifi]

more like mi-100

[Sir_Dillon]

What the ****! Just stumbled in... This Helo is beeeautyful!! Nice work

[GDucky]

This is crazy good. The texture work is outstanding.

[marianosteiner]

freaking awesome!!

[trimble]

Awesome work !

[IArdentChimeraI]

This... Is... Uh-freaking-mazing... Very nice work! Packed in the UVs crazy tight!

[Drone2222]

That is a super sexy turn around, nice job with the camera/highlighting the details.

[RaPtoR_v9600]

I realy love Hind helicopter but this concept is just great bud, thumbs up

[RaPtoR_v9600]

You should do "making of" if you have time, and if you can render some HD wallpaper scene i need new wallpaper :)

[Dome]

Very impressive. I just took my first steps yesterday and the work I see on this site is mind blowing. The textures are superb.

Daunting and inspiring.

[thethirdfloor]

This is gorgeous. Nice work!

[JM85]

Dat UV map. so tight.

Probably the best game model Ive ever seen. Spent a good 15 minutes studying it :)

[EricV]

stunning work!

[Swagosaur_McSwag]

I came

[John51]

Awesome :)

[Nicorepe]

So amazing dude!, keep up the good work!

[Orkarma]

Really good job on the texturing. Baked to perfection :>.

[AndreasRSG]

Looks very nice!

[MichalKus]

I just wanted to say that this piece of hardware is a beautiful piece of hardware. How did you come up with the design and how many sketches/itterations it took you before you came up with this cool design? Thanks! keep on the good work!!

[Steven Buono]

looks amazing...

[Steven Buono]

Looks Amazing

[nikhilpatilcg]

Great work

[Adams]

Very cool

[Shower God]

What program was used?