Batwing Vehicle creation

[snakes23]

This is my first attempt at creating a vehicle of any type. Im usually more of an organic modeller so hard surface modelling is quite new to me.

Basically im attempting to create a batwing, based on several references which have been combined to create one vehicle. im aiming to get it into the unreal engine, so the idea is to create both high and low poly versions in order to produce a normal map.

any comments or crits feel free to express your opinion, i need your feedback to make this thing better. any general tips on peoples desired workflows and techniques would also be appreciated.

http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/mm13/snakes2304/BASE.jpg

[Rurouni Strife]

That's a pretty ba model. Aesthetically pleasing, looks functional. What I would suggest is to shrink the nose a little and maybe adjust it's shape some. Right now it looks like an ant's chompers. Second would be adding a few foils/tail wing (the little vertical wing on the back) to the bottom of the object for variation.

And please don't texture it like the Batwing from Batman Forever!! LOL

[snakes23]

cheers, yeh i agree, iv removed the ants chompers now.

[snakes23]

some progress...

Added some elements to give it a better silhouette. Also considered weapon placements and the landing gear...

http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/mm13/snakes2304/progress.jpg

http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/mm13/snakes2304/progressp.jpg

http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/mm13/snakes2304/progressfront.jpg

[D4V1DC]

I was wondering why no one made this yet, great job by the way I am glad someone caught on :) looking good .

Can't wait to see more!

[Kaneth]

Nice silhouette, its coming along.

Good to see your using Max again instead of Maya :P

If you need any help getting it in unreal engine let me know

[felipefrango]

Looks awesome as it is, but it could use some optimization if you were ever to put it into a game, there are several edge loops that could be removed without altering the silhouette that would drastically reduce the poly count on this. I'm sorry if you're aware of this and was already planning on doing this, but anyway, it's my two cents. :D

[Raider]

That's badass, i agree with the optimisation but you're probably using this as the highpoly mesh? The design reminds me heaps of his baterang which is great.

[snakes23]

hey guys thanks for the comments/crits, much appreciated. Ur right it could be optimised a lot, my issue is that at the moment its all constructed as two pieces. one is the central part (cockpit area). The rest, including wings, air intake, and thrusters are all one mesh, so at the moment the edge loops are supporting the geometry. I cant take anything out without it affecting the shape.

As im a noob at hard surface modelling i dont really know how to go about fixing it. my main thought is to detach different areas of the mesh and make them seperate objects. Is this the best way to approach the optimisation?

[felipefrango]

If this is going into a game engine you don't have to keep the loops going through the whole mesh, you can definitely chop them off on parts they're not helping the silhouette, don't worry about having triangles on your mesh either. I'd do a paint over to show you edges you could do without but I'm busy at work at the moment, but anyway, just focus on the overall shape first, once you have it nailed you can start worrying about chopping things off.

[A.Ceylan]

I'm no expert in hard surface modelling neither, but I would not model an anorganic object out of one piece. That's overkill. If you can seperate something - just do it.

[felipefrango]

^Yeah, I second this recommendation. It's easier to work with and can save you some precious tris.

[snakes23]

im gonna be getting it into the unreal engine, well attempting to anyway. from this model iv gotta do the high poly version which i wanna take into zbrush for final detailing, so thats why iv bin tryin to avoid triangles.

[A.Ceylan]

Ohh, ZBrush? Small hint then. First of, when you're finished with the lowpoly, make another version where the edges are evenly distributed. So, just whatch out to have almost all faces in the same size.

Don't forget about the support edges neither.

And last but not least, if you have borderedges ... hook 'em up with support edges aswell or close the mesh. 'Coz when you sub-divide, ZBrush likes to tighten the object where the borderedges are.

OT, coz I just read your name. Aren't you familiar with ZBrush? 'Cause your nick sounds a lil familiar to me? If yes, all the above written you've probably known already : ) Sorry!

[felipefrango]

Oh, yeah, if you're going to get that into ZBrush I'd say you're on the right track, those loops are definitely going to help. You might even wanna create a few additional loops on areas where polys are too big. You can do this easily with the Swift Loop tool, on the Graphite Modeling Tools > Edit panel. Just point where you want a new loop and click.

[snoops3d]

good edge flow is important for zbrush also another consideration is breaking up the model into more manageable bits, if your model will only go to 2 or 3 million polys in Zbrush then that might not be enough across the 2 large pieces your talking about. You might find that you need to break the model in 4 - 5 chunks, each chunk being a sub-tool, and each subtool now being able to support 2 or 3 million polys rather than the whole model being just 2 or 3 million polys. Hope that makes sense. The base model looks good !!

[snakes23]

hey guys, iv followed ur advice and chopped the mesh up into several pieces. Iv optimised the mesh a lot to create the low poly version. Its at around 5000 tris at the moment and still maintains the same overall shape. il post some pics of that 2mora. Really gona be trying to progress with this pretty quickly over the next couple of weeks.

-A.Ceylan: im reasonably familiar with zbrush but by nowhere near your level. Iv gt a couple of sculpts on cgsociety and zbrush central of things i did recently.
http://snakes23.cgsociety.org/gallery/846456/ U probably have me confused with someone else though.

[felipefrango]

Well, there's either something wrong with the link, with the CG Society website or with my browser, cause I can't make it work for the life of me. I'll check it out later on.

[snoops3d]

I cant get the link to work either

[snakes23]

No idea y its not working. tbh theres nothing majorly impressive on there but if u are interested in taking a look just go to portfolios on cgsociety and do a search for snakes23.

Il give the link another shot
http://snakes23.cgsociety.org/gallery/

[snakes23]

heres the low poly updates, ive been fiddling with this for way too long. iv cut off over 2000 tris when compared to the version u saw previously.

http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/mm13/snakes2304/lowpolytop.jpg

http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/mm13/snakes2304/lowpoly.jpg

[felipefrango]

Nice! If this is going to be your final low poly version you could remove a lot more edges and still retain the sillouette.

[snakes23]

I decided to go back again and trim the tri count. Managed to get a couple of hundred off without affecting the silhouette too drastically.

http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/mm13/snakes2304/LowPolyBatwing.png

http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/mm13/snakes2304/LowPolyBatwingFront.png

[felipefrango]

Looks good! I took the liberty of marking a couple of loops that don't seem to be doing much for the silhouette and could safely be removed though, you don't even have to worry about the topology as you'll be left with quads throughout the whole thing as far as I can see.

http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/8590/12819661.jpg

Also, the inner part of the wheels seem to be overly detailed, and it's not something that's really noticeable so if you think the tri count is already small enough you could save a few on the wheels and then round the silhouette up a bit more where it needs and keep roughly the same tri count.

Edit: Don't mind that red dot, it's a MS Paint accident. :P

[snakes23]

felipefrango - thanks for taking the time to do that, much apreciated. Heres a close up of the wheel mesh, is it 2 detailed? ive just made ur changes to the wings by taking out the loop. As it stands now the mesh is 4476 tris / 2261 polys. As its the low poly mesh theres quite a few tris, but ive already made a denser mesh with a smoother quad based topology which im gona try and detail in zbrush.

http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/mm13/snakes2304/wheel.jpg

[felipefrango]

Oh, the wheel mesh isn't as detailed as I thought it was, I couldn't really tell from afar. It is somewhat excessive in the middle section, but you could always try something like this:

http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/4503/96067967.jpg

It gets rid of tris you'd never really notice while maintaining the wheel profile and roundness.

Also, don't worry about having tris in your mesh, they're only a problem when subdividing for sculpting. :D

[snakes23]

Sculpted the details in zbrush. found it difficult as i have no experience sculpting hard surfaces. There are some issues with the poly count not being high enough in some areas but my computer cant efficiently handle subdividing the meshes anymore.


http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/mm13/snakes2304/topviewbatwingdetail.jpg

http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/mm13/snakes2304/bottomviewbatwingdetail.jpg

http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/mm13/snakes2304/angleview.jpg

[Kaneth]

You had any luck finishing this Dan?

Presentation tomorrow!

[Timothy_graybill]

I really like the look you are going for with these new pics. keep it up

[snakes23]

Apologies for the lack of progress posts. As the deadline was looming i was concentrating on getting this thing as finished as possible.

Normal map was generated using xnormal. Texture size was one 2048x2048. Here are a max render and a screenshot of the vehicle in udk. It does function in game much like the cicada, well it flies and fires. I have a video that i'll get round to uploading at some point.

http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/mm13/snakes2304/top.jpg

http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/mm13/snakes2304/Inengine.jpg

[BlazeF]

I think the model itself looks fantastic :)

It doesn't really scream batman though. I dunno, there doesn't really seem to be any symbolism connecting Batman with this I guess??? Dunno, maybe it's just me.

Great work though :)

[snakes23]

Hey BlazeF, thanks for your feedback, much appreciated.

In terms of design I was aiming for a more realistic approach, like they did with the tumbler from batman begins, but i still wanted it to be recogniable as the Batwing. The silhouette is reminiscent of the bat logo. Also if u look closely the front of the jet features the bat logo just above the guns.

[snakes23]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_E0K9IJx98

finally got around to it

[Andreas]

*bleepin'* AWESOME! Me wanty :)

Great job. You should give Rocksteady a shout ;)

[snakes23]

Quick Batman sculpt, thought i may aswell stick it in here as its to do with Batman.

http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/mm13/snakes2304/Bats.jpg

[c0ldhands]

"Cool batwing and all! But I wanna let you know that subdivision modeling is the best way to model vehicles of all time". Joke aside, I think it also needs some more texture work even though its supposed to be all black. Good to see a fan of the old Batman designs and the the peice of heap that was the thumbler.