At first I had to think what would I base my brief upon then
it hit me I started to do a mech as a personal project some time ago and I left
it at the legs and it would be great to continue it. I think I started off well
designing my conceptual art pieces designing the mech arms, legs and body. I
got my inspiration of an game on the PlayStation 3 called ‘StarHawk’ in which
you can obtain a vehicle called a ‘Grizzly’ as part of downloadable content.
This was a vehicle which runs at a fast pace and uses a weapon called a Gauss
Cannon the shoots a beam that can take down air and ground vehicles it also has
a EMP blast to disable structures and vehicles and a stomp attack.
I started to design my conceptual art of the Grizzly and for
the right arm I wanted it to be a high powered weapon and the left arm to be a
secondary weapon.
I drew some design ideas for the right arm. Thinking of
ideas form a high powered weapon as a mini gun or a machine gun but I wanted it
to be a bit fictional or advance rather and think of and develop a weapon
similar to the gauss cannon the use beams. This is where I took a little
inspiration of the game series ‘Metal Gear Solid’ where there is a weapon in
the series called a ‘rail gun’ these also do exist in real life but not at the
power and proportion of how they are depicted in games.
The rail gun for the right arm became my final design.
For the left arm again I want something similar to how it is
used in the ‘Starhawk’ for it left arm artist referenced of high powered
industry drills. They are used in game as an EPB blast attack you will strike
the ground with your left arm. I started to look at different designs for my
mechs left arm and for some reason I choose a tesla coil design. I think I
choose the design because it stuck to the idea of the EPM blast with
electricity.
Designing the body again I wanted to take my reference from
the ‘StarHawk’ game and do a body the starts of small from the hips and
gradually become bigger and bulkier.
I also looked at designs for the inner part of my mech the
‘cockpit’ seeing how I could design monitors and joystick for the pilot’s
movement.
I came up with the idea myself of having a hover bike on the
back of the mech as an escape eject pod. My theory is that in game when your
mech receives a lot of damage you can have the time to quickly escape. I did
conceptual art of the hover bike being folded on the mechs back and become a
‘whole’ once you eject onto the bike.
Also the mechs feet took inspiration from the game series
‘Metal Gear Solid’ I looks at another mech in the game series MGS called the
Metal Gear Rex which has let’s call them ‘pegs’ on its feet and uses them as
breaks to stop. I liked the idea and applied them to my mech design.
I began working on my model while refining parts I already
did earlier like the legs the mesh for the legs was really screwed up because
it was the first true attempt at modelling something fairly complicated. First
I refined and finished the legs and copied one of the legs over as they are
both identical. Then I started to work on and model the lower half of the mechs
body starting from the hips all the way to the shoulders. Modelling the cockpit
for the mechs body was a really hard job and found out that I had a lot of
really odd faces. I then started on the upper arms making left arm different from
the other arm by adding three valve tubes.
Now onto working the right ‘rail gun’ arm. I stuck with the
design of it having scope and a barrel three spouts and three rails. I think
the model came out really well.
Construction of the left arm I used the helix mesh to make
the tesla coil twist along with three tubes connected with the arm.
I then begin looking a uv mapping tutorials and how to
manually unwrap an models uv texture. From the tutorials I was looking at there
were unwrapping very basic models like a cubes mesh that has been manipulated slightly.
This then lead me to the very quick but also very bad decision of automatically
unwrapping which is ok for very basic model faces but is an absolutely mess on
very ‘advance’ models. I eventually just stuck with it saving the uv snapshot
at 8192x8192 resolution (higher than standard hd) actually classed as 8K Ultra
High definition resolution.
I worked on texture maps one by one eventual got to a point
where I found and fast process to complete whatever texture I wanted on my uv
map. Let’s say if I wanted to texture a certain part of my mech a certain
colour I would highlight the certain part in Maya uv editor and save the uv map
and magic wand the black space in Photoshop delete it and you will be left with
only the outline of the mesh map then I would get the texture colour I want to
apply to that part layer it over the map select pixels of the uv map background
and select the texture and delete the texture left in the background leaving me
with the part I wanted covered in the texture. Then past it into my full uv
map.
Yes you probably didn’t really get any of that I just said
but it’s just Photoshop knowledge that make thing less time consuming. In total
I have 17 uvs and there all named appropriately I will list them.
·
Back leg amour uv
·
Bike bottom half uv
·
Bike top half uv
·
Body uv
·
Gear uv
·
Left tesla coil arm uv
·
Left upper arm uv
·
Leg hip amour uv
·
Leg knee amour
·
Leg lower amour uv
·
Leg struts uv
·
Leg tubes uv
·
Leg valve uv
·
Lower leg uv
·
Right gun arm uv
·
Right upper arm uv
·
Upper leg uv
After this I took many high resolution renders of my model
which I was very pleased with this lead to the end of my project. I produce
some fantastic renders that I’m sure would look brilliant mounted.
It’s unfortunate a lot of things I internally wanted to do
did not get included as time continued because it got a bit strenuous. I was
aware of this though and was determined to get it to at least get it finished
to a professional standard. I am pleased with the final outcome and learn a lot
about conceptual art work, modelling and uv’ing. It was a long but pleasant
learning process
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