Alien Tank

[kSeth]

Hello all, long-time lurker here hoping to help out. Here is a quick diagram I did for myself to get modelling asap. Haven't modelled in a few years so I'm a little rusty  Some shiny conceptual illustrations will follow.

[H-Hour]

Welcome! I like the concept. And if we don't use it for a tank we can use it for the late-game flier.

Can you also animate and texture?

[Crystan]

Yeah, lookin good!

[kSeth]

I can animate and texture, just a little shaky on normal mapping. Maybe someone can give me a hand when I get to that point.

[kSeth]

Had a difficult time modelling off of the old sheets so I redesigned the concept. Oh and the old one had an odd facial expression thing happening. Still touching up the orthographics before I begin modelling again.

[Crystan]

Awesome! Really nice work! Also your artwork reminds me a bit at the Homeworld-Games Style.

[Nutter]

Indeed. Looks rather Kadeshi too.

[H-Hour]

Looks great. You know what you're doing so I'll leave you to it.

[kSeth]

Update of the model. Sorry about the delay, modelling skills are a tad rusty.

I don't know what scale is possible ingame for creatures but I imagined this as the appropriate scale for a tank, or smaller to fit a UMV type concept.

[H-Hour]

Nice, I'm a huge fan of the design. Really nice. Don't worry about scale, we can deal with that at the end. It will need to fit into a 2x2 tile for the game.

One question: is this intended to be a hi-poly model that you use to bake a normalmap? Or is this the final model? If it's the final model, I might suggest not modelling the cracks on the top and instead creating them through the skin/normalmap. In-game, the difference will be minimal and I imagine it will save quite a few polys. Not a requirement, just a suggestion.

What's the triangle count now?

[kSeth]

Thanks!

Ack, it's at 4580 tris. I can it down to to about 3k. Is that comfortable area for this kind of model?

[H-Hour]

4,500 is around the upper limit. Since this is a 2x2 unit I think it's acceptable. The closest comparison we have is that the power armour for our new soldier models is around 2,500. If you can make cuts that won't affect the quality too much, they'd be much appreciated. But don't strip the model of its glory just to cut it down.

[kSeth]

Gotcha! I'll trim out the detailing on the top and some detailing below the shell.

Gotta read up on how you guys do your texturing now =)

[TrashMan]

That tank could be easily done in 2000 polys.

Let the bump map do the surface detailing.