HMC #17 : Star Wars Steampunk - Boba Fett

#1

Most Recent Update:

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So it begins, late start like most but we’ll see how it goes. I’m going to be modeling a steampunk Boba Fett based off of the concept art by Björn Hurri.

 [img]http://www.chaoshawaii.com/cgtalk/bobafett.jpg[/img]

 
 The concept work by Björn is all amazing and it was very hard to not only pick just one to model but also to find something of his that wasn't already in use. At a glance though, this one looked great and I didn't notice anyone else with it yet so I'm going for it. I'll post progress on my modeling ASAP.
#2

Good luck man. That concept art is wicked. Can’t wait to see what you come up with.

#3

Alright, time for some updates. I’ve been off to a slow start since I’ve been finishing up another project which, ironically, is also steampunk themed. Anyway, here’s what I’ve got to post so far.

I’ve started work on getting his mass down so I can pull from it to make his clothing. I know the legs are way off but in the original art, his legs seem crazily thin and I’m not sure if I’ll go with his design on that part or a more realistic style. Also looking at it now I think I need to narrow his shoulder more. This is one scrawny Boba Fett! I don’t have the best eye for proportion so please feel free to point out all the areas I’m way off.

I finished a flattened version of his shin guard plate. I’ve also started a flattened version of the leather strap (not shown) that holds this to his shin. Once I get the form down and I model more of his clothes, I’ll use a bend deformer to wrap it around his shin.

I’ve also just begun work on his helmet and his pistol. I’m saving the jet pack for last since it’ll be the most fun. More to come soon!

#4

Great work so far man, I’d like to see Boba be on the skinny side, seems like it’d give him more character/personality instead of a generic human form. If you do decide to go in the thinner direction, definitely thin up the shoulder, arms and legs.

Other than that, keep it up man, can’t wait to see more.

#5

I think I will make him thinner. I’ll post the new body soon, I’m almost done with the gun though and gawd do I love it! Will post updates very soon!

#6

Small update, finally got some shots of the gun.

Looking at the image now, I just realized I completely forgot to add the little hook part at the back of the gun. I’ll get right on that. I had to stray from the concept on this in a few areas since I found a few images I really wanted to incorporate. There’s actually a mix of old western revolver parts, rifle parts and even parts from a nerf gun. I had to put in a few less exhaust holes on the back of the gun. A round hole on a round object = hell for me. Anyone have a good system for it? You can see the poly flow for it in the image, the holes just warp a lot when smoothed. On his shin guard they warped also but I found that if I smooth it before using the bend deformer on it, it works just fine but this… bleh.

I will probably add a few minor details to it, maybe some screws or something as well as the detail on the back of the gun but for now I’ll jump on to the next thing and keep moving it forward. I’ll post my progression on the body and clothes next I think.

More to come soon! :slight_smile:

#7

First i would suggest even more flamboyant detail, but you just do what you feel you can handle. I also noted the eye-sight cap at the beginning is rotated 90° wrong according to the concept. I think in the way the concept works it’s better suited to protect it from the light.

About the wholes in the back part, i got just the solution for you! But in about an hour i gotta get to work and have little time to do it and show it. But i hope i can do it tomorrow! If not i can sure do it by friday.
I think you use maya so there are 2 options. The only thing i gotta warn you about, i’m not really a fan of modeling hard surface things and smoothing them. Sometimes this works very well, but if you look at my zeppelin walker you’ll see not 1 thing is smoothed. For more organic stuff i could agree with ya to do it this way, but for the gun i would not advice it.
The advantage is you can work with n-gons and forget a lot about pure quads due to smoothing issues.
I know that modeling in high detail can get you lot’s of polygon, but in the end they could be less than a smoothed version. I know the approximation editor for mental ray can make this a sweet thing cause it happens at render time, but smoothing can fu"k up your uv layout seriously so that’s why i don’t use that.

One more thing, i just saw your base mesh for buba again, and you need to do some research on human anatomy. Check the position of the knees and elbows and you’ll see they are way out of place. Measure your own arm from shoulder to elbow and elbow to wrist. You’ll see directly what i mean.

cheers and PM me if you think i forgot you before the weekend starts. (ps. i live in european time :beer: )

#8

Thanks Nothingness

I hadn’t noticed how off I was on the body mesh, it was just a quick laying out of the shape but I’ve got a better reference image to go off of now so I should have it laid out a lot better. As for the decorations on the gun, I’m worried my poly count may get too high. I’m sort of working in detail passes so for now I want to get everything on par with each other and up to a certain level of detail, then I’ll go over it again with more detail. I fixed the sight on the gun’s scope. I had rotated it on purpose originally thinking it was more of an eye piece rather than a hood to block light. I’m not sure which it functions better as but I’ll stick to the concept on this one so it’s back upright. Thanks for the comments and I look forward to your solution on the holes in the exhaust!

-D

#9

Ok,

i made the example and the screenshots, uploaded them and later tonight i’ll make a detailed post with the links and little explanation.
cheers

#10

Thanks for the help again Nothingness.

Small update, fixed part of the body proportions. Please give feedback on this one, I can’t decide how far I want to push the proportions. His legs are very thin so I mathed that with his arms to a point, shortened his pelvis and relocated his knee.


[left]Let me know what you all think, the more feedback, the better!
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#11

good corrections,

i see you are still not sure about what to do about the legs, but you just have to decide wether you make is more comic style or realistic. I would suggest comic. So this gives you much more freedom to be expresive in shape.

Comic would fit the sketch really good.

cheers and i’ll post the little tutorial soon i got some more time.

#12

Okay,

here i am with a bit of time to start writing my step by step tutorial.

Do note, think of it as just a way to do this. There are different ways and it’s your own creativity that can get you places you wanna be. About detail, the amount of detail i used is in my opinion not high. It’s medium and you can use as much as you feel is necessary. In a second part i’ll show a little piece with the same thing only just a bit more detail.

part 1
you can start with a flat piece and make sure the squars are proportional

part 2
i made a selection of the ones i want to use as a hole
in this stage you can already delete them accept the middle one. You’ll see in a moment.

part 3
i made a cylinder with a roundness of 8 faces. When you use more subdiv you just change this. It’ll come clear in a sec.
Do make sure the lower part is perfectly aligned to the flat surface. You’ll be snapping points to the cylinder to get it as good as possible.

part 4
select them

part 5
extrude them, then use scale to move them inwards.

part 6
scale these 4 points.

part 7
extrude again and snap these points to the cylinder if the roundness doesn’t match. I already deleted it here.

part 8
you could move the cylinder to another place for a hole and do the above steps again, but i got a better idea.

part 9
if you already deleted the other faces, good! if not, you can do this now.

part 10
i duplicated the whole mesh and deleted all other faces accept these ones.

part 11
duplicate the sole hole and align to the rest.

part 12
select all and make it 1 piece by unifieing. And delete the ones sticking out at the side. These get combined later on.

part 13
take the mesh and apply a non-linear bend deformer.

part 14
just give the bend deformer a little curvature so you see where it curves.

part 15
like this

part 16
now rotate the bend deformer so it bends the right direction

part 17
give the bend curvature of the number pi. I know maya rounds it numbert to 3 digits after the point, but inserting a number with many digits does give you more perfection. So type in 3.141529 or whatever comes after this. Then you make the surface a perfect cylinder.

part 18
this you’ll see but don’t type in this number. It’s not accurate enough.

part 19
Delete history on the surface and do a merge vertices. Check the distance setting.

part 20
select all the inner edges of the holes with the edge loop tool for ease.

part 21
extrude the edges inward to get the rounded look when it’s shaded. One thing you’ll see with the bonus tools is that it’s actually better to do this when the object is still flat. After this it’s always possible to round it.

part 22
this is what it looks like now in smoothed condition.

bonus 1
to get a little better result than the top example, scale these 4 points outward so the deviding looks more equally divided. gives a better shaded and smoothed result.

bonus 2
if you convert 9 faces to a whole you get just a better result. Either you use this for bigger wholes, or you have more division to start with. Your choice.

bonus 3
Delete the 9 inner faces and snap the points to the edges of the cylinder to get the same roundness. Also scale the outward points to have a better distribution of points.

bonus 4
use the inser edge loop tool to add an edge and then extrude the inner edge to below.

bonus 5
this is how it looks smoothed

bonus 6
this is not smoothed

hope you learn something from it. Just don’t forget you have to change it according to what result you need.
cheers

#13

Thanks Nothingness, that’s actually the method I’m using for the shingaurd. I hadn’t thought to make a cylinder in the same way. I’ll post my progress later tonight but I went about it like you did it actually causes warping around the holes when you bend it. I did get it to work just like the shin gaurd simply by smoothing it before I use the bend deformer on it. Maybe I did something different to cause it to warp, but I’ll post the images later so you can see it.

-D

#14

Update on the gun, fixed the tube in the back with the exhaust holes, added another level of detail and tweaked a few parts I didn’t like. The wireframe render shows the smoothed parts in red and the unsmoothed parts in yellow.

[left]More to come soon!
[/left]

#15

Beautiful!

And, may I add, a fine way to visually keep your poly counts in check on a large project with the colored wires. :slight_smile:

Looking forward to more!

#16

Small update, did a little work on his jacket with the wrinkles along the sleeves up to his armpit. Still needs a lot of work but it’s coming along. I’m worried the end of the sleeve on the top of his arm is a little too busy so I may smooth some of that out. Feedback on this part would be most helpful!

#17

The gun is awesome and the topology for the wrinkles are very well done. Keep it up.

#18

It never feels like I’ve gotten very far even though I put a lot of work into it. I’m my own worst critic I guess. Anyway, here are some new updates.

[left]His clothes are coming together. There’s a bit of weirdness I just noticed on his thigh that I need to fix and I will later latice the leg back to it’s scarily thin size like the reference, I just kind of modeled my way off of the reference as I went along.

[center]

[left]Closeup of the jacket, I need to add a couple more wrinkles once I mirror it across but for now I’m happy with it though if anyone finds areas I need to fix, I would love to know!

[center]

[left]Detailing on the glove model. Came out alright I think, I am still deciding whether or not I am going to do some zbrush work on this project or not. I know the hand isn’t perfect, I started spending too much time on them and had to pull myself away to keep moving.

[center]

[left]Finished up the start to his face mask/helmet. I’ll be using a couple bend deformers on this to get the curves on it. Once that’s done, I’ll add the eye lenses and the rest of the gear.
That’s it for now, more to come soon!
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#19

It’s lookin’ really nice man, I can’t wait to see more.

#20

It really is! Love the style of the concept, and I think you are on the right track with the modeling style-wise. This is going to be awesome, can’t wait to see how it turns out.