Robot Love...2

Hey all, welcome back!

From the time I have had spare from working (which isn't a lot) I have put a few extra things in to my robot/drone that I want to share. The last post I put up went over my concepts and some of the fleshing out of the main body. I also talked a bit about the importance of silhouette and the players need for quick recognition with enemy types. I will show you what I have done so far and talk you a bit through what I have done and thought about as I progressed. I apologize for the lack of stage by stage images, I just got cracking with it when I could and took images towards the completion of each stage.

Now I had the main body shape more or less figured I wanted to start putting in some of the main functional points of the drone. Modelling something like this you may find that if you don't account for functional parts you may accidentally start modelling things in areas areas of movement.

After playing about with the sketched gun concept in 3D I settled on a more organic approach using a scorpion stinger and also some references from a Anime called Zoids to create a gun with pop up guns. This was in a effort to reduce on the over all length of the gun as I intended the gun to be picked up by the tail. It would need to slip out of its mounted position pretty easily so that design decision would help that. Here are a few images of the modeled gun.

I also had to look at the gun from all angles so I could make sure I would know that the players recognition with it would definitely be an aggressive weapon and it would be time to take cover.

The next major moving part will be the legs. Legs for mechanical characters can be created in many ways as they don't have to conform to the ideals of organic structures. They can extend and spin in 360 degrees if the designer so intends. In my drone I needed the legs to fold up neatly to accommodate a flying model of a sort of manta ray like shape but also retain enough mobility to create believable walking movement. I pulled some more references to aid me deisgn how the legs would work from spiders, Final Fantasy 8's spider drone (http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb57887/finalfantasy/images/c/c3/FF8_X-ATM092.png) , Gundam (https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE095vYEJzwJH7tv-ZpruEZOTuUTgBvjewQvNCw01W8nQVM_8BXbaMot2-ch4BJFuwVfjE-7ec2yaWBjJL8b0EAUp10zv-dgvJ-pSDi4ZLtSwo_bD3Fht-zU2EPphDymgCtfnfOnareO95/s1600/5.jpg) and from Zoids as a solid starting point.When got into modelling the legs I did so in their extreme positions so make sure that at all extents sat nicely with each other and didn't cut.


Once happy with the shape and design structure I had created I did a quick Hierarchy Rig on the legs and played with them to see if the design was lending as much movement as I wanted.


I then attached the leg plating onto the mechanics followed by attaching the whole legs onto the model itself. Its pretty important to keep things simple until you have the main moving parts in. Adding extras to bolster the characteristics before this will only ever lead to problems further in to the modelling process.


This is all I have at this point but keep checking back for more at later dates and I may have posted more. Thanks all and feel free to comment or leave constructive feedback. I am also free if people have queries or proposals for tutorials they would like as well. Cheers =D.

Robot Love

Hey,

For those that have been following I haven't really posted up much work lately to show you people what im actually doing with my life. That is about to change at least today.

I have been very busy working at UR, or rather Flix Interactive (http://www.flixinteractive.com/) after the company was closed down and reformed under a new name. I have however been very active working away, designing, building and testing all of our up and coming IP's as well as helping with the concept development of all our current contract work. With the company also having moved location its been a great new change for all those involved in our team and a exciting one too.

As I mentioned earlier in my post I was going to give you guys a update as to what I am doing with my own work now and here it pretty much is. It is a concept I begun to build as a side project to what im doing at Flix. Doing my jeep side project I realized the importance of really push your boundaries with each project to try and learn as much as you can about technicality of building and refining in different styles. Most of my work has been very rustic so I think its about time to shake things up and start doing some nice sci fi to start bolstering my portfolio and show how flexible I can be with my work. I like to share with the community that follow my blog what im doing and how im going about it as I struggled with a lot of things when I began in 3D and its good to see other people's work flow.

This is a design I drew up after working with UR and began doing my own designs in my spare time. 'The Spire' had a robot incorporated that really inspired this design. I wanted to put my own twist on things to give  the robot a real organic feel as well as keep the silhouette in something a person could relate to. I think its good practice for a 3d artist to be able to convey their art work in lots of ways especially in drawing. Drawing is a great tool for cracking out ideas in a preliminary stage and figuring out in your own mind how to create things in 3D that will have functionality. Many new 3d artist fall into the trap where they lack the skills to draw or intentionally skip this essential step. Its good practice to get into a life drawing class or doodle at most opportunities you have. It's all good practice in the end.

Having done some drawings and selected a design style I took this straight into Max to start fleshing out the basic design. I normally go through lots of trial and error at this stage to get the right direction for my work. The greatest thing about computers at this stage is definitely the undo Ctrl+Z =D. I normally make tons of decisions that I like to change and change again so if your doing work keep in mind that blocking out doesn't need to be perfect at first.

After a bit more blocking out and decision making I look at the over all shape in 3d to see how the silhouette is shaping up. In designing for games its important to remember about the silhouette as this is what the player will relate to when a enemy is approaching. It helps the player determine the threat and also their strategy. As a designer in any respect this will help in developing your designs too. I can see at this point the shape is slender and long but I will end up having to put more defined features such as spikes fins to increase its flying silhouette.

This is as much as I have so far so I will post up more soon as I have more to share with you. I hope you liked the post and feel free to leave feed back, suggestions or ideas in the comments segment under this post.

Thanks