Building a 3D Mech model: The initial stages.

 

I have the need of a fully rigged Mech model, for a couple of reasons, so I’ve started working on one.  Figured I would document the process as I go.  It’s somewhat of a background task, so don’t expect a whole lot of speed.  This isn’t a tutorial either, look here for that, just a documentation of my process.  Hopefully some of you find it worthwhile, while I am sure some of you will find it cringe worthy!

 

Here, are the humble beginnings:

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One of the challenges all modelers face is where to start?  I had trouble deciding.  Generally if I stat with a limb, I struggle a bit with proportions going forward, so this time I decided to start with the torso and upper legs.  Of course details are going to be added as I carry on in the process.  Currently we are sitting at 390 faces.  Ultimately I want to be in around the 5,000 mark.  There are several easy points of optimization here.  The eagle eyed viewer may also spot my first mistake too.

 

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I always try to work in quads only, but sometimes corners just turn into triangles like this.  Look what happens if we apply a couple sub-divisions around this corner:

 

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It’s not the end of the world, but not as clean as I would have liked.  In this case though, it still leaves me with proper edge loops in both directions, so I am not to phased about it.

 

 

So, where you might ask, is the concept art?  This is a good point and generally I would sketch in a front and side view, like I did in the Blender tutorial.  That said, for reasons I can’t bring myself to understand, whenever I do this with pen and paper, I just end up ripping off existing designs.  So in this case, I’m just going to wing it, although when it comes to the cockpit area, I may have to reconsider.

Art


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