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Space Marine Dreadnought

Hi guys, sorry but it's going to be another Dreadnought :D, i'm a student in the UK and decided to do some hard surface stuff for a change instead of Environment, this is for a Uni module. Ideally i'd like to get a second Mech created and then pose the two mid-fight, right now i'm modelling this one with rigging in mind to make posing him possible in the end result.

Here's a WIP shot of the Highpoly feet, it's my first attempt at a major hard surface asset and i've come out of lurker mode to get the shit kicked out of me with advice and critique :)

I already have a small problem i wondered if anyone could offer a solution to, and that's on the main piece of curved armour at the front, i'm getting some pinching where the bit of it that is pulled up at the top curves down into the main body of the plate.

Hopefully this wireframe can show a bit more clearly what i mean. I'll be updating this regularly and look forward to making this :). Please let me know if the way i'm presenting the WIP shots etc is retarded or not and i'll try and improve them so people can interpret them better.

At the bottom you'll find the reference images i've gathered, i believe not all of these are the same Mark or variant of the Dreadnought but some pictures just gave great angles that were hard to find. The primary look i want to achieve is the image in the very centre.

TAnhcyi.jpg

OK42ljj.jpg

7fz9e8I.jpg

Anyway, talleyho guys, hopefully i'll get another update out soon :)

Replies

  • Peter.3dartist
    Looking good so far but i noticed on your cylinders they deform due to the turbo smoothing.

    OK42ljj_zps739f5479.jpg

    might want to try this and that way it shouldn't cause problems when normal mapping or texturing

    Hope this helps
  • konstruct
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    konstruct polycounter lvl 18
    The answer to you question is you just need more subdivisions to begin with in the curved piece in order to support the raised edge on the top.
  • lotuseater
    The pinching is ocurring because your geometry is denser there -- which increases the tesselation in that area. A good way around it is trying to have a more uniform wireframe, either by removing stuff, or working in more edgeloops. It's fiddly, but you can do it!
  • FrostWolf
    Peter.3dartist - Thanks! I took into account what you said and cleaned up those circular faces like you suggested, much nicer topology now thankyou :)

    Konstruct & Lotuseaster - Redid the armour pad with a much higher initial side count to the cylinder and worked out much better, no pinching in the turbosmoothed version now thanks guys.

    Here's an update for tonight, been working on it a bit more on and off during the day amongst other obligations, below is a picture of the front and back of the legs with my initial (unturbosmoothed) model for the pelvis thingy, i've painted in faint green area's which i think are too flat and boring and which i'll readdress at some point in the future, i think overall i should carry on getting the entire model created to a halfway state and then do a second pass over the high poly adding in more detail etc.

    Really not happy with the dangling cables that connect from the legs to the centre pelvis unit either, i created them just with a spline and then ffding them to move them around but this let to a lot of warping and visible kinks in the model, so i'll look into other ways of doing this, path deformation a long a spline i guess i'll try next.

    e2XVHIe.jpg

    And here is just a picture of the rough blockout i've made for proportions, should have probably posted this first off hehe.

    RWPhoQo.jpg

    That's it for tonight, cya o/ and thanks for your help already guys.
  • liamdes
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    liamdes polycounter lvl 5
    this looks fun, i'm excited to see how this turns out.
  • BradMyers82
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    BradMyers82 interpolator
    Looking great dude!

    I blocked this out a long time ago and never really went too far with it. IDK, maybe this will help in some way...

    BlockOutDreadnought.jpg
  • FrostWolf
    Liamdes & Kaikaisushi - Thanks guys!

    BradMyers82 - Thanks for linking your blockout dude, it actually helped me by making me re-evaluate some of the size relationships in my own model, helped me look back at my reference and catch things i'd missed or just glazed over, mainly the centre "sarcophagus" wasn't sunken down low enough in-between the shoulders on mine.

    Here's another quick update,...

    1. I want to just delete these are completely redo them (which i've already done about 3 times), i've been wasting too much time on these simple looking pieces but i have a generous time restriction so i might as well use it as a learning excersise for different ways to go about this one piece.

    I've been trying to make almost everything in one solid mesh which as it doesn't really matter for the high poly is a habit i need to kick pretty fast ._.

    It needs to be effectively hollow which i haven't done, so that the centre block is where the arms connect to.

    2. Going to change the claws on the powerfist to stumpier looking ones closer to the reference i'm using.

    3. These parts aren't symmetrical either side of the model, so i need to create unique pieces for them to house the gatling gun and general sci bits and bobs on that side.

    Anyway here's the pic, as well always feedback is mucho sought after :D, ciao for now peeps

    KlW4m2F.jpg
  • FrostWolf
    Another update guys, almost finished modelling, experimented with presentation a bit to make these WIPs a bit nicer to look at :). Could do with some help on the cylinder exhaust part on the back if anyone has any suggestions on how to model that with the holes in it, my attempt is pretty damn sloppy and it might be passable for normal map generation but i'd rather learn how to do a correct and clean way. Pic enclosed, cheers o/

    VHA1oiZ.jpg

    vvsoW6W.jpg
  • oobersli
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    oobersli polycounter lvl 17
    make the holes floaters?
  • BradMyers82
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    BradMyers82 interpolator
    There are quite a few tricks you could use to do something like that. One option is to use turbo smooth, and tick "smoothing groups". this will create a hard edge there (if you set separate smoothing groups, then add another turbosmooth ontop without smoothing groups ticked and it will smooth nicely.
    Alternatively you could turbosmooth it then run a boolean, that sometimes works well, but can crash max and make it unstable and stuff.
    A third option would be bring it into zbrush and use dynamesh or clipping brushes to boolean that out.
    You could model it too by tracing a spline on the surface using snaps, but that's the hardest way really.
    Looking good so far dude.

    edit/ personally I wouldn't use floaters there, but you could pull it off if you push the cage far enough out when baking. If you want to show off your hp for portfolio presentation purposes its gonna look ugly.
  • artquest
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    artquest polycounter lvl 13
    Your current method isn't too far off, just make your main cylinder 24 segments instead of 12. Then cut the holes out exactly the way you have it now, just dont terminate any edges on your highpoly, keep it all quads and it should smooth perfectly.
  • konstruct
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    konstruct polycounter lvl 18
    what artquest said ^ Like your shin guard. usually the answer is MOAR TESSELLATION!

    On floaters:
    floaters are a huge time saver, and a god send in many ways. I just think moving forward, dynamic tessellation is going to be more of a thing, so invariably height maps are going to be more necessary. Floaters appear raised on height maps (as they actually are) So they are kind of a no no whenever you plan to do any kind of parallax occlusion, or silhouette mapping.

    Imo, I think it would be good to practice a workflow free of them.
  • ftorek
    hey man - quick draft how to make these holes - i've bashed that out in literally 10mins - so it may need a bit of refining (square'ish holes :) - but i think it's a fairly handy way of doing this :)

    cheers
    29vjm1l.jpg
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