Week Update...if not a little late, MWO Marauder.

Hi Everyone,

I have to say sorry again as I have had another busy week making another art test for another games company. It's been a crazy couple of weeks doing work trying to get things done to a standard that I am happy with. I still can't share what I have been doing yet as I am still waiting for feedback on how I have done for my first one but like I said I promise to get that up asap.

In other non related news to work, the new Marauder came out for Mechwarrior online and is the first of the Classics to be released. This came out on the 1st of December (I am a little late with getting this out I know) and I have been having lots of fun with it since finishing my Art Tests and using breaks in-between work to try it out.

Each variant has a good mix to shake it up with a different build set up of energy , ballistics and in some cases missiles too. The mech has turned out to be quite tanky and with the very narrow arm arraignment has a small spread of fire. The stock builds aren't bad either which surprised me as normally you have to strip most of it out and start again (even if this is what ended up happening). I've had some real fun adding triple AC5's on to this and putting down suppression fire whilst energy splurging what I have in my arms to add to the damage.

I thought to keep it short and sweet this week I would share a few of my builds with you so you can see how I have set up my Marauder variants.

Here is my MAD-5D Build or what I like to call the Viking Marauder Medium to close range mech for putting the hurt down.

Now my MAD-BH2 build which is just an energy vomit build but a good money maker.

My MAD-5M which was a experiment with UAC5's

and Finally My Triple AC5 MAD-3R/MAD-3R(S) build.



Besides this mechs tendency to be a bit slow when compared to other heavy mechs its high ballistic mounts and the amount of ballistics this mech can carry make it great for rattling enemy's with suppression and a constant stream of damage.

That is all for now but I will keep you updated on how I am progressing with my portfolio and applications for jobs later this week.

Week Update

Hi Everyone,

I know its been a week since I have posted up hear last and I have a valid excuse for that as I will explain. I had an art test through for quite a exciting company. I don't want to say which company that is just yet until I have permission but I promise that as soon as I have feedback I will have it up here as quick as possible so you can see what I have been doing.

Sorry for the unexpected silence but I will keep you updated as to what happens there.

Hope you all had a good week and I will see you back here late week for a catch up of what I have been doing in the job search/portfolio.

Tiger Tank Mud Flaps and Final Drive Transmission Seating.

Hey Everyone,

I thought I would be lost for time with trying to do work and search for jobs, but I'm finding that writing on here is great for getting things off my chest after a hard days work. This time I will be writing about what I did today.

Today I wanted to finish off the front mud flaps, glacis plate and attached side plate armour. It was a lot to do but was definitely helped by me mostly finishing the mud guards from the past blog post.

The final transmission posed quite a hard challenge. First was getting decent reference of such a complex segment that is mostly covered by the final drive wheel in most photographs. I managed to get measurements from www.tiger1.info for the recesses, thickness's and radii.

However it was hard to see where the welds and plates fitted together. I ended up getting a bit bogged down with trying to figure it out. I decided that it would be best to try and model the side panel as well as the transmission recess separately but it turned out to be a bit of a nightmare putting them back together. I forgot how bad the boolean tools were for Max so I don't think I will be making that mistake again any time soon. I ended up combining the 2 shapes manually but it wasn't a very easy affair which made for some messy geometry. Not my best piece of hard surface work in typology cleanness but I for the desired results in the end.

That is all for today, I'l try get an update soon so you can see how everything its progressing.

Back to the Tiger. Hull Progression

Hi all and welcome back,

After a brief time away from my Tiger tank I have started to work on it again. Now I have a lot more free time I can probably get this finished fairly quickly, especially as this will be one of my main portfolio pieces as well to show my hard surface modelling skills. I have been busy updating my portfolio with all my latest work and contacting agents to see what jobs are going. With things being so close to Christmas its a bit of a rubbish time to be made redundant as its normally harder to find a job but I definitely need to put the effort in with the searching if I'm to find anything.

So I'll give you guys a quick update on what I've been doing over the last few days. After finishing off my Rifle and getting that into my portfolio I  returned to my Tank. As it stood I had just got onto the hull and was finding how the plating fitted together. The front drive wheel is proving a little tricky to get any substantial reference imagery to show me how it fitted together so whilst I was busy searching for some good imagery I thought I would make a start on some of the front plate details like the front machine gun bulge and the drivers port window.

I had the task of getting my project back into 3ds Max from Lightwave. Moving programs again, back to Max, has really boosted my understanding of the program. I look for alternatives for tools I was using before in Lightwave within Max and am finding really cool ways of doing the same thing. It's been a bit of a struggle to get my speed back up after working in Lightwave for so long but I am gradually improving and getting better, so that is a reassuring plus.

I made a start on the mud flaps but there are pretty basic at the moment and aren't in a state to be shown yet but this is more or less what it looks like so far. There are a few things I need to look at with scaling like the front plate being a tad high but on the whole its going nicely.

I took the time as well to try out Keyshot to get some nice renders of my work in progress. I was surprised how easy and quick it was to get really nice looking renders with minimal effort. After struggling so much with Lightwave to get something professional looking I think I will be using this from now on to showcase my work. 

You will probably notice I have taken off those nasty welds as well. I have tried a few things now within a subdivision modeller to get them looking nice but I think I will resort to a package like Z brush to help me with that now at the end of the modelling project. I will probably have a few test runs getting out something that I might show in the coming week or so. I think a good textured brush using the lazy mouse will give me some nice results.

Thats all for this weeks update, hopefully I will have some better news on the job front to share soon. Till next week, have a nice weekend and take care.

Sci Fi Rifle Finished

Hi Everyone,

I thought I would give you an update on how I have been getting on with my portfolio work. I am happy to say I finished off my Rifle today so I'll be sharing that with you. I posted up where I had got with it but felt that it needed a sight adding to it to brake up the top rail of the gun. Since posting up my last post I modelled a high poly reflex sight, baked it and textured it. I have a few renders to share as well as the models I have done.

Here is the exploded high poly model I did for the reflex sight as well as the modelled low poly bellow.

Here was my bake I got out of X Normal and Substance Painter.

After a bit of tinkering in Substance Painter and some playing about with Marmoset 2, here are the fruits of my work.

This was just a quick update on how this has gone. I hope you like the results. Hope to see you here again soon, especially now I will be finishing my Tiger Tank now. 

Assault Rifle

Hi all,

Now I have a lot more time on my hands I thought I would try to finish off my half finished projects so I have some things that aren't over 2 years old to go in my portfolio. Here is my first finished piece, the assault rifle I started ages ago but didn't really finish.

Sci Fi Ballistic Assault Rifle by dna87 on Sketchfab

As I had all the bakes done I went straight into substance painter to get it done. Its been a fun project and feels good to get something finished.

I hope you enjoy it. 

Weekly Update, Redundancy and Portfolio Shenanigans

Hi everyone,

Welcome back to my blog. Firstly I will get to the bad news in saying I was made redundant on Thurday which sucks a bit. Looking back at all the training weeks I had just messing about with CG sphere's was probably a prelude leading up to that but things like this happen and I guess you just have to move on.

This week I have been busy relearning 3ds Max. After spending almost 2 years in Lightwave I thought to increase my job potential I've had to get back on Autodesk software and really hit it hard. Its surprising. how much you forget when you don't use something for such a long amount of time. First things first I've had to spruce up my CV and redesign my Logo so I guess I will start with sharing that.

I tried to get a classier less collated look to my logo than my last one bring it more in line with the more popular flat design that's taken precedence in popular modern design culture. I wanted a mellow but simplistic creative feel with a spark of flare to come through in it. I choose a dark medium gray for the mellow with a flash of green for the creative spark. I would like to hear what you think either by message or by comments below.

Re learning 3ds Max has been a bit of a challenge to say the least. Max and Lightwave both work very differently. I set myself a few modelling challlenges in between times of me applying for work just to get back into the shift of hard surface modelling in Max.

I realise these aren't anything spectacular but were definitely a necessity to getting back into the modelling practises of relearning Max. I want to start moving my Tiger tank over to Max once I am Happy with my skill level again in Max. I haven't done any more on it since finding out about my the dreaded redundancy but I still plan to finish it as a portfolio piece.

A pretty short update this week but I'll try and keep you updated on my endeavours to keep my spirits high when searching for a new job. Hopefully it won't take too long.

Till next time, take care and have a great weekend!