Military Robotic Mech Modelling 3

This entry continues to show the ongoing modelling work that I have done. Since its been a little while since I last posted, I'll be splitting up the latest into a few easier to read bite size chunks.

Most work has been paid to achieving the correct look for the turret. Since its a large piece, I want to make sure it looks good and works well with the other components. Fleshing out the topology and placement of the high poly model has been particularly paramount. A lot of hard edge manipulation through using vertex snap with axis constraints and removing of some unneeded edges has been a particular focus for this piece. You can see a general progression flow of the turret below.

Tank Turret Progression. 

Additionally I noticed that the turret was a little too wide, so that had to be scaled in to make it feel less 'fat' as such. Trying to get the curve at the front of the turret, and the metal panel extrusion right were also pressing matters, but I feel that I've got them to a point that I'm happy with.

Other general pieces that have been worked on include:

The underside plate that connects the the turret to the torso part. This was originally attached to the turret, however I found that topology issues were frequent, so decided to separate it, thus making the topology easier to deal with with both parts.

Tank underside plate. 

The door panels for the ammo storage. These were pretty easy to model, and made use of part of my modular kit with the circular bolts.

Armoured door panels.

The shoulder piece on the left, which again required a little time working out what pieces could be removed from the main piece and re-attached on as separate parts. The armour plating was used again to cover up empty areas of detail on the turret, and the vent panel at the back gained additional topology through use of connecting adding vertices to edges and connecting them.

Left: Shoulder piece. Middle: Armour plating. Right: Vent panel.

The sloping panels at the back received little change, just a few topology additions for texture purposes. The shoulder panel gained some of the modular kit pieces with the circular bolts again.

Sloped pieces and shoulder part.

The Grenade Launcher received a major tune up. This was due to the fact I hadn't consider the circular shape of the front of the turret, thus making it hard to fit the flat surface of the original smoke launcher onto it. Thanks to a little internet reference I was able to create a new workable model, that instead attaches onto the side of the turret.

Smoke Grenade Launcher new version. 

The tank hatch, which at first I struggled to create, as I didn't quite understand the shape flow of the reference image I was using. I went through a few ideas, but couldn't quite get it to work. In the end, I made use of the viewport piece's base (which was also changed as I realised I had modeled the top part of it wrong), and changed it to suit the hatches needs, as you will see in the last image, along with the machine gun port and the connecting point for the tank's main gun.

Tank Hatch reference.

Tank hatch first iterations. 

Top left: final tank hatch. Bottom Left: Tank gun piece. Bottom Right: Machine gun port. Top Right: Viewport piece.

I also started to model the security cameras that would go on the underside of the turret, giving the robot additional robotic eyes in which to survey the battlefield with. However, I wasn't sure how to model it correctly, so its still currently in the basic stages.

Security Camera in the basic stage. 

At this point the majority of the tank turret was modeled. In fact, to see how it looked all put together, I mirrored the pieces, attached them all together, and also placed my test head on the turret, I was quite pleased with the initial test render, and also well the head has worked together with the tank turret.

Tank turret with Head. 

The next entry will cover work done on the robot mech's arm parts.