What's a Mech, but a miserable little pile of bevels.

Damian Nachman · Oct 2014

Been working recently on a cool mech, based on a concept by the one and only Fightpunch (Darren Bartley).

High Poly so far:

Concept(Excuse me for the overlay... lost the original):

Any feedback/Crits will be rewarded with pork rinds.

DWalker · Oct 2014

Yours is a bit taller than the concept - pretty much caused by that extra screw.

There seems to be some odd pinching around the inset screws. (The screws are flush in the concept...)

Neox · Oct 2014

less is more, why did you noise up the design so much?

Julinoleum · Oct 2014

I'd remove a few details as well, it's kind of blurring the overall shape. And I'd insert the bolts with a subtool insert rather than an alpha. Or at least, I'd make sure the alpha doesnt push the surrounding surface inside. It's making your surface soft plastic like rather than metal.

Anchang-Style · Oct 2014

Also some of the block are bigger or different in dimension which changes the look quite a lot. hiseye and this Trapez shape above it are bigger also this mohawk thing is straight but looks angled in the concept...and looks better angled. Yeah and too much detail don't help especially gigantic screw.

Damian Nachman · Oct 2014

Whoaaa... Thank for the great feedback guys!

DWalker
I Think you're right.... I Made the "disk" completely round, but in the concept it appears abit curved. Will adjust.

Neox
Guess I did went a little bit overboard with the detail. Didn't leave alot of breathing room, which makes it all appear abit too noisy.
Will make a new variation with less detail.

Julinoleum
Mmmm.... It's actually SubDiv modlling in Modo, so no sculpting yet.
Cleaning up the pinching should only take a few minutes though, so I should probaby do that. I Thought the pinching would give the model the effect of "bolt pressure",if you get what I mean. I'll just clean it up though.)

Anchang-Style
Just gave it another look, and the "trapez" thingy does look too big.
Thanks for the tip.

Time to get to work!

Damian Nachman · Oct 2014

Quick Update:
Removed some excess detail, and scaled some parts abit. Is this clean enough?

FelixL · Oct 2014

As others have said, the screws should be resting on top of the metal plates, and not look like they've been punched in, bending the material underneath. They are screws after all, not rivets. The screws on the head have a round groove around them in your model. This way, they would not hold anything together. In the concept, there is just a small elliptical inset in the metal sheet underneath.

Additionally, I think the big round element in the middle (when looked at from the side) should look like in the concept. The concept has nice small detail there, selling the scale, while yours is too blobular, making it look like a toy.
I also think the diagonal stripe detail should be in the texture, not the model.

The angled surface right over the "eye" also works better in the original concept because it's cleanly divided into thirds, while yours turned into two squares at the sides.

Damian Nachman · Oct 2014

FelixL wrote: »

As others have said, the screws should be resting on top of the metal plates, and not look like they've been punched in, bending the material underneath. They are screws after all, not rivets. The screws on the head have a round groove around them in your model. This way, they would not hold anything together. In the concept, there is just a small elliptical inset in the metal sheet underneath.

Additionally, I think the big round element in the middle (when looked at from the side) should look like in the concept. The concept has nice small detail there, selling the scale, while yours is too blobular, making it look like a toy.
I also think the diagonal stripe detail should be in the texture, not the model.

The angled surface right over the "eye" also works better in the original concept because it's cleanly divided into thirds, while yours turned into two squares at the sides.

Thanks! I'll turn the riverts into screws, and scale 'em way down.
That being said, if I'll make them rested ontop of the model, instead of indented, won't they end up looking weird in the normal bake?(When viewed from the side).
I always thought that indentations bake better than bulging elements.

FelixL · Oct 2014

They will look fine if the resolution is high enough and if they are round/have sloped edges. There's no reasons why indentations would bake better than bulges.

beefaroni · Oct 2014

Hey dude. I think this video would be great to watch before proceeding with revisions. It's only 9 min long and covers some great detail concepts that I think will help out when adding/removing detail.

[ame="

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n94ggmsVDg"]3 tips to create sci-fi designs - YouTube[/ame]

Damian Nachman · Oct 2014

Felix:
Don't buldges break the silhouette?

Beefaroni:
Thanks for the suggestion mate!
I already watched most of Marc's videos, though. a huge fan of his work.

Applied Felix's suggestions:

FelixL · Oct 2014

I think it's much better now. You should apply different materials as in the concept to see how the shapes work.
Also, the back of the head looks bulkier in the concept. This might be due to the artist not drawing in perspective correctly, and could be alleviated by using a camera with a lower FOV. However, don't be afraid to make the back of the head wider or play with the shapes (probably a trapezoid shape from bove, with the "face" being the narrower part) if you see that the concept doesn't translate well into 3D.

Damian Nachman · Oct 2014

Bakes, and early texture work:

Taken from Substance Designer's viewport, so the quality is shitty.
Still a few smoothing errors to fix, and a lot of texture work to go.

Neox · Oct 2014

i think you should rework that collar, it looks like a cheap model. not like cloth at all

Damian Nachman · Oct 2014

Fixed the last smoothing errors, refined the textures, and reworked the collar.
Gave it some Digital Cammo to add a little bit of visual interest.

Wadda ya think?

Popol · Oct 2014

The hard surface parts look really great but the collar doesn't show the same quality. Sculpting some big folds to give it some weight and shape would help a lot.

Deathstick · Oct 2014

I agree on the collar part if its supposed to be cloth rather than some sort of armor collar, needs a bit more shape and love to give it the visual interest it needs to match the level of the rest of the piece.

Also, Id make the material you're using for the digital camo closer to matte. Currently it looks like everything has the same level of gloss/roughness/specular/metallic etc. depending on what workflow you're using, so the addition and adjustment of those maps could help with the material definition some more.

lacer8 · Nov 2014

Hi there Mesh Potato -
Looks cool. How did you go about creating the digital camo? Is it a bitmap that you imported into SD, or is it proceedurally created. If the later, feel like sharing any nodes that you used to achieve it. I'm having a difficult time getting a digital camo pattern to look that good.
Thanks.

lacer8 · Nov 2014

Well, it took a little bit for my post to be approved and in that time, I was able to get a similar result by blending Brick Generators and using a gradient map.
Thanks anywhoo!

What's a Mech, but a miserable little pile of bevels.

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