HMC #17 : Star Wars Steampunk - Snow Trooper

#1

Had a great time with this challenge, photobucket is currently out of bandwidth for me, so here are the final renders off image shack

Howdy all, and a shout out to all the other portlandians.
I like the concept of this challenge, so i’m giving it a go. I found my way to http://www.sillof.com/C-Steampunk-ESB.htm and loved the snow trooper so i’m going with that.

   (repostin' images below)
   [img]http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y22/TheJawsofDeath/3DCG/snowtrooper2.jpg[/img] [img]http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y22/TheJawsofDeath/3DCG/snowtrooper.jpg[/img]
   
        I'm not the best at "winging" a model from images like these so i asked a buddy of mine if he could draw up a front and side view based off of the trooper, but with less detail. which i plan on adding in later. (I can post the drawing if needed.)
        Admittedly, I got a bit ahead of myself and started modeling before posting up here.:blush: I made sure to document my work as I've gone though.
   
   starting with a (very)rough proportional build.
   [img]http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y22/TheJawsofDeath/3DCG/snowrough1.jpg[/img]
   Then beginning on the helmet
   [img]http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y22/TheJawsofDeath/3DCG/snowhelmet1.jpg[/img]
   after a bit more work, i got the helmet more-or-less done and began on the mask/veil part
   [img]http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y22/TheJawsofDeath/3DCG/mask1.jpg[/img]
   got the mask part mostly done and threw on some rough goggles and began parts of the chest.
   [img]http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y22/TheJawsofDeath/3DCG/snow25.jpg[/img]
   
   
   That's all I've got so far. 
        It sounds almost, silly, but i want to give myself more work than i need to. I'm not a grizzled veteran of modeling my any means, so i want more situations where i may come across a new way of doing something. I can already tell there are some areas where i need to make changes, so fire away with C&C. :D
#2

Nice work Colin! The only thing I might look into are the bevels around the nose piece. They seems a little bit soft.

#3

Howdy all, again,

  Time to add a bit of an update. It's been slow going, but not much i can do about that except keep modeling. Anyways, I've been sticking to doing the armor parts, after the upper chest piece I moved onto the shoulders and lower bracer.
     [img]http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y22/TheJawsofDeath/3DCG/shoulder1.jpg[/img]
     sorry about the wire frame, I'm getting some weird problems with some parts, but not with others, tried conforming normals, hardening' edges, rebuilding faces, but it looks fine smoothed so I'm not complaining...yet.
     
     For the shoulders and bracer, I've made them out flat, threw on a bend deformer, tweaked, went back to flat, tweaked some more, re-bent, repeat, finally bake the bend, then tweak some more.
     [img]http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y22/TheJawsofDeath/3DCG/shoulderprog1.jpg[/img]
    [img]http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y22/TheJawsofDeath/3DCG/shoulderprog3.jpg[/img]
needs some tweaking...


skipped the last step or two since it’s mostly just duplication.

After working on the shoulders i moved down the torso, saving the gloves for later. The middle piece is more roughed out, and the bottom is a flat plane, for just about all the pieces, sans shoulders. I make a poly plane matching one of the side ortho’s then pull verts out to get a rough shape, add some more edge loops to get better definition, then add thickness followed by tweaking, lower torso and leg pieces are at the beginning of the above process.

   I'm hoping to have all the armor done by the end of the week(not detailed though). Then start working on the actual person underneath. As always, C&C is much appreciated.
#4

Hey man, I really like how everything is coming together. If you need some help understanding the forms in the original armor, here’s alink to some of my brothers work. It also has a diagram for all the functions of certain pieces like the chest plate. May be of some help.

#5

Hi all,

I've got just about all of the armor done, about time i start to actually put a person into the suit, or do details, not sure which to do first.

Quick render of what’s done so far, still needs some tweaking but I wanted to get it all out now(also played with lighting a little.)

Anyways, i’m at a bit of a snag, for some reason i’m having some trouble on the boots. What i’ve done so far just looks, wrong. I’ll probably scrap what i’ve got and try to do something with nurbs then convert to polys.

here are a few renders of my disaster of a boot so far.

Any boot advice would be much appreciated.

Dropkicksev: Thanks for the link, the picture of the actual goggles will most definitely help when i get to 'em.

#6

Very nice work Colin! All of the armor seem really consistent.

As for the boots, I would use your references, curves, and the loft tool. Pretty basic, but it may turn out some better results. What you can also do is just keep modeling and tweak later. I say this since the boots are looking pretty good, and it may help to just finish them.

Your welcome! Glad the references helped!:beer:

#7

Howdy, just a small update this time, i’m happy with the armor pieces, and going into the organic parts. I’ve got very little organic experience so i’m not totally thrilled about this part, all i’ve got so far is the eye and nose area, not much is shown, and i’m not too sure how much is going to need to be shown or covered once i revamp the goggles.

I’ve been playing around with wrinkles, but not to much progress. :confused: I’ll probably mess with it a bunch and ultimatly not need much to show and/or tone it down and zbrush it.

#8

Another minor update, I’ve been having a hell of a time forcing myself to keep going on this, but it must be done!

changed the design of the goggles, I’ll probably size them down a little to fit the face better.

I’m forcing myself to work on the organic parts, if I can put out a rough mesh, I may try using zbrush for the hell of it. More to come soon, hopefully.

#9

i’m making some headway on pants, i’m feelin’ pretty good about 'em, but not all the way.

i still need to tweak near the waist, and put the straps that hold the armor on, but for now i just want a basic poofy winter pant look.

#10

Can’t wait to see how this turns out! I think it’s going to be great!

#11

Hey there - nice forms coming together here. A few things I’m seeing:

The legs look bowlegged in images. You’ll want to straighten them for rigging purposes at the least (knees forward) and also just aesthetics - the bowlegged look makes him look very scared.

Also, did you change the mask part of the helmet? The original post you made with the helmet design looks different from the more current renders (I looked through the write-up and didn’t see you mention a redesign). Personally, I like the original model for the mask.

New goggles look nice :slight_smile:

#12

Thanks for the encouragement Trey and Aaron, much appreciated. :smiley:

 I popped the legs into place, and i'm glad you mentioned it Aaron, the torso looks a bit thin for the legs after the reposition.
 [img]http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y22/TheJawsofDeath/3DCG/newlegs.jpg[/img]
 In regards to the mask, i think i made the change on a whim and forgot about it. i wasn't too fond of the old design, but I'm not too fond of the new one either hahah. I may go back, or keep with what I've got and stick some wirework in the space that's there, i've been playing around with how to do the wirework, i've got a small example below.
 [img]http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y22/TheJawsofDeath/3DCG/wireworksample.jpg[/img]
 
 I don't know if i should go with the corded look, or fill it in.
 It's a bevel plus as is, so it's not too hard to go either way.
 Any opinions on the facemask/wirework would be great. 
 
 
 I'm hoping to have something in the form of boots, or gloves soon so i don't have a stumpy guy.
#13

Great work so far. I hardly noticed the difference between the two masks. I’m not really partial to one or the other. The pads over the thighs look like they’ve been rotated to far to the side. I know it shows it this way from your reference, but I still think you may want to move them a little closer to covering the top of the quads. Although this may look different once you get the skirt-like thing on, so you may want to hold off until you get at least a placeholder for that piece.

#14

Another small update.
I’ve been putting off the backpack for a while, it’s definitely not the greatest part, but i didn’t spend too much time making it super nice.

Thanks for the crit Tyler, I’ve been thinking of repositioning the upper leg pieces, but that’s not too high on my priority list at the moment.

Just the gloves and boots left then it’s on to details.
Back to work. :bounce:

#15

Hey man, the backpack looks nice…but I feel like it’s missing something…just not sure what. Also, it may just be me, but it seems like it’s a bit too big. I would just scale it down a bit.

#16

Hey all, got a quick late night(early morning?) update, tweaked the backpack-found out some of the faces in corners got deleted after Booleaning it, so i had to spend about an hour patching tiny, tiny, tiny holes in corners to fill all the gaps. I got distracted a bit so I’ve only got the boots mostly done, the design is just something i came up with on the spot, i think it came out interestingly, but i don’t like it that much. The main problem seems to be that the round part on top looks slapped on instead of smoothly flowing into the rest of the mesh. Only other thing for the night is the rather obvious adding of some color. I’m not a master texturer or anything so i’ll probably just leave it as is, it’s a modeling contest after all, not texturing :wink:




there are a few spots that need fixing-removing the mirroring in the suit, and the area where the suit clips through the bottom chest piece near the groin.

#17

Hey all, bit of a slower day, only got details and a bit of fixing in the hands to do.

here are the gloves, yes the fingers look broken and the fingertips don’t look like gloves at all, so i got some work to do fixing those, but that may be a quick last minute thing.

and here’s the whole body and the fixed boots, still a bit of tweaking to be done near the front of the boots.

#18

Looking good, I think the boots are a bit too gooey. Maybe adding a few more edge loops would harden thoughs up a bit.

#19

Thanks for the crit Tucker, i showed the boots some more love, it’s a weird shape to try and harden up without making it look like there’s lots of misplaced edge loops.

#20

Morning all, got a quick little preview. I’ve been working on the detail work, i’ve got the head more or less done, i did some more work on the boots and gloves.

I went the Dingbats route, courtesy of Dropkicksev’s Scout Trooper, it’s definitely a time saver.