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.

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

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

some progress...

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

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!

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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 !!

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.

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.

I cant get the link to work either

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/

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.

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

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.

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.



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

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.