Just a warning: I haven’t modeled really anything since the mid to late 90’s. Decided to give it a try and make a multiplayer hovertank game.
It’s not textured yet. I wanted to get opinions on the style, and if it is convincing enough. I will start texturing if people generally think it represents the subject matter well.
Rear view and front view below.
Description of pictures:
First picture:
1- engine thrusters on the rear.
2- Radio/comms antenna on the back.
Second picture:
1- Rocket launcher with triple pack of rockets.
2- Front view of the radio/comms antenna.
3- Turret with main gun.
4- Two gatling-type guns aligned on the sides of the main gun.
5- The blue would be a texture cockpit view from the outside.
6- On the far right of the picture, where a tank’s treads and wheels would go, there is a sort of antenna barely visible. I plan to have some kind of electricity effect go between the front and rear ones to simulate the hovering power field.
As a side note, in case it’s mentioned, the turret and main gun don’t turn on this tank; the whole tank turns to use the main gun. I wanted to keep the controls simple and more FPS style.
just a suggestion how about a box like turret and cannon mounting to keep it more uniform…?
also ditch the torus slash antenna at the back perhaps go for a blockie styled radar…
Alright, I dropped the antenna off and remodeled to a box style turret. I kinda agree, it seems to flow better and feels more uniform.
I haven’t modeled anything for the radar/antenna implement yet. I am going to think about how to go about doing a radar dish style communications array, and whether I want anything on it.
Also, since the shape changed to a box style, I moved the rocket launcher to make the tank’s profile lower.
Here’s the pics.
Also added a light to the scene to give it a couple of shadows and fix some of the graphics anomalies you get when there is no other light in the scene when rendered.
looking better heres another suggestion…lose one of the gatlings and then make the remaining one bigger/might work might not…add another cylinder slightly bigger at the tip of the turret…and lets see how its looking buddy
I think i have a good eye for 3d models but you can be the judge of that click on my site and navigate to the portfolio section…no examples of hover tanks but with a bit of luck you will agree I have a good eye for artistic ascetics www.mobirecycle.co.uk
I actually started with one gatling gun on the side and threw the other one up just as more of a filler.
I think putting a radar/communications element there instead of a gatling gun would be good. Sort of a back and forth forward-scanning radar rather than a 360 one.
Will work on it and post changes when I get them. Currently cooking supper as well. Pregnant wife shall arrive soon, and I do not want to get attacked.
Also, if anyone hasn’t figured it out already, I’m certainly not an artist. All of my background is in programming. Just now getting into the artistic side of games (and really wanting to make a full game myself to see if it is possible).
I’ve been using Cinema 4D. It looked alot simpler and much more affordable than the other packages when I started shopping, and it has been really easy for me to learn with.
I use to use a program called Spazz3D when VRML was (trying) to become the new web standard, and subsequently failed. It then turned into something called Vivaty Studio, which is free, so I played with that for a while before picking up Cinema 4D.
Yes, you were right about that. I checked the scene information, and it was at just under 40k polygons. So, I went through and reduced the polycount per item, and I had to totally get rid of the rockets in the rocket launcher. Replaced those with just three pyramid heads.
I also decided to change the way the cockpit glass was. Instead of cockpit glass, it became a small viewport below the barrel. Glass on a tank, what was I thinking?!
Right now, it’s sitting at 9k polygons. It’s a bit high still for gaming, but that’s a whole lot better than almost 40k.
Anyhow, picture is below.
Still not textured at this point, as I am terrible at texturing anything. I may make a specular material and just color the whole thing in a shiny steel when inside unity with an underlying, barely-visible texture. Still open to any suggestions on that, though.
Alright, here it is inside Unity. Rendered with a specular shader material. It’s a bit… meh at this point, but it looks alot better than it was when I textured it.
Something I would suggest to a fellow modeler that sorta fits in hand with drawing. I can tell a little from your image that you’re thinking about the concept of the tank a little too much. Or more simply your ‘freehanding’ it in 3D.
Let me elaborate a bit…
It is not a bad thing to look at other tank designs in games, or even pictures of real tanks. One thing that you’ll pick up on as you improve your technique is to look at a subject in parts rather than a whole. Ask yourself what are some defining characteristics that make us identify that your mesh is a tank.
http://www.the-blueprints.com/blueprints/tanks/
TB is a great resource for shots of all sorts of vehicles, and the orthographic images allow you to reference them for any 3D package. Take a look at some of their tanks and pull off shapes and pieces from them you find visually interesting. And yea watch the polycount. Command Conquer tank models are usually no more than 50-60 polys and they can easily convey a shape is a tank. Of course if your NOT doing an RTS, then by all means go higher.
Actually, I did take a look at several blueprints from that website. I didn’t use them to model from directly, but I did look at them for conceptualizing.
And, yes, it’s not being used for a RTS. The ideal goal is to make a 16-32 person first-person tank shooter game. I am going to code for 16 and see how the performance is, then try to increase to a 32 maximum.
At 16 persons, without any terrain geometry, the maximum polys for all the tanks in game should be around 32000, and that’s with everyone inside the maximum resolution drawing range (which should be a rare occurrence).
At 32 persons, it goes up to around 64000 polys if everyone were close together, without terrain geometry.
I liked the designs of the real-world tanks, but those are all designed with a turret that turns. I am not planning on having a turret that turns on its own axis; the entire tank turns to target and fire at enemies. This was done to ease the coding, to reduce the modeling complexities, and to make the game’s controls easier and more straight-forward. Many tank games I’ve played with a separate turret that turns often had controls that were very complicated and hard to manage.
Thank you for the advice, though. That is very good advice for anyone starting out modeling. I knew some of the things, but even those things are good to have documented here for legacy/searching purposes.
If anyone has any tips on how to texture this thing, let me know.
The problems I currently am experiencing are stretching on the different sized faces. Is there a way to texture something face by face, independent of the entire polygon segment?
Also, any tips on normal mapping? I have generated the texture and normal outside of Unity, but when I add the normal map to the texture material, there doesn’t seem to be any real difference. It doesn’t appear to be very bumpy/3D.
Also, note that when I added the normal map, I haven’t moved the lights around or the model. Is the normal map only for moving around close-by lights? The current project scene only has one area light.
And, perhaps an odd place to put this, I may need to open a new topic, but I am experiencing a crash in Unity when I rotate the object around. I submitted a crash report, but was going to mention it here in case anyone else knew the cause of this kind of thing.
