Advanced Hard Surface Modeling Assignment – Starting the Model

After analyzing and trying to understand the concept art, I started to create the model. What really struck me at the first glance of the concept was that the top of the mech is very similar to a M1 Abrams tank. So I relied a lot on images from those and similar vehicles from my moodboard and even more images from the internet. 

With such a similarity to something that already exists, I did not have many problems figuring out the shape. But one thing that caused me some confusion was the slightly slanted front piece near the beginning of the cannon and its distance from two turret towers towards the middle of the top. I solved this simply by trail and error where I positioned it where I thought it should be and then continued on with the model. If I noticed that it looked a bit out of place, I simply tweak it til I was satisfied. 

After finishing the top section, I started on the bottom half of the “body”. This was a lot harder to do since it was similar to no other thing and the concept art could really be interpreted in many different ways. Drawing the topology on top of the original concept helped me get an understanding at first but as I started with the body I saw that my original idea of how it could be constructed didn’t always translate well once you actually started modeling. I think that this is just the case for me to train my eye with that practice and I will soon get the hang of it! I finally reached a point where I was happy with the body through iterations of the model. I might go back and tweak it if I find a better way to construct it. 

The legs was probably the hardest thing on the whole model. The concept art did not reveal to much of what was hiding beneath the cylinders and the armor plating. I started to model what I knew, Like the armor plating and the outer parts of the legs and then put them together to try to see what could fit and logically be inside robotic legs (without putting too much detail into it since the players will barely see it). I wanted to mech to have quite “beefy” legs, so I settled on basically welding the other parts towards each other. This gave it a more bulky feel and could probably be seen as some extra thick piece of metal to protect the underside of the legs. The concept also showed some pitons from the base of the legs/body going to the thicker side of the legs which is a simple detail but really adds a bit more believability. 

With the silhouette of the mech done, I started to clean it up a bit and lower it’s resolution a bit since I was nearing 15 000 tris and I want to add a bit more detail to certain areas to make it feel more “living”, even though it’s a robot.

 So I’ll add more detail to it and start UV-mapping it for next time!