Space Marine WIP2

This is an update on the 3d space marine. I have not had a lot of time to work on it, only a few hours really so I have been fudging some details in order to get it done before Monday. I have family over for the rest of the week so its going to be very hard to get onto the computer for any amount of reasonable time.

Space Marine Animation WIP

I am in Animation 2 class and I accepted a challenge in my class from my teacher which was meant to out do every other student that he has ever had. Only 10 students have every accomplished all of the benchmark goals in his class in the decade + he has been teaching. I plan on being number 11. However I plan on going quite beyond by creating a MULTI character animation sequence with gunfire, movement, a grenade toss, and a resulting explosion.

I am thinking about modeling an enemy tank as well, just to give my Space Marines something to blow up.

If I have the time I will have Tactical Space Marines, a heavy weapons team, and a Sergeant (no helmet) with a jump pack.

Art a plenty

Recently I have been engaged in a lot of art projects, mostly of the animating nature. I have begun to step back from relatively high polygon modeling to low polygon modeling with the idea of creating animation. There are limits to this blog page so for now I will just direct you to my youtube.com page if your interested in seeing some of my 3d animations:
http://www.youtube.com/user/jonatotoro?feature=mhee

But to give a sampling of some of the things I have been up to lately.... backpacks, speeders, and facilities OH MY!

I'm just having fun for the most part at this point. I just finished my Animation 1 Class with flying colors and I spent so much time teaching others that I kinda burnt myself out trying to get my stuff done, art done for SWCombine, art done for my gaming group, and art for two other art classes.... one Art history. Let me just say... I love art history, I hate how you cannot possibly get a 100% on art papers... the teachers refuse as there is always "room for improvement" even if they don't see it.

This is a backpack custom I made for a friend of mine. I used better lighting than I did with the originals and I added a bit more integration with the outside netting. I personally detest the outside netting but the original is based off a model I wanted SWCombine to accept for their website. I have since given up on doing art projects for SWCombine site in favor of person to person models as I feel my work is more appreciated. I do love that SWC's harsh critique system ripped apart my stuff in the beginning but I think it got out of hand and has lead to an unreasonably high level of quality demand for a free site that still uses stolen art.

This is a vehicle I made for SWC with the goal of making a custom for a friend. I found out that SWC already had a viable 3d model so this is getting put into the archives for painting for said friend. This model was made to support one of my gaming group friends though and while still a surprise, I hope its a welcome one. If not, it only took me 90 minutes to make.

This is a low polygon facility pair of two 1x1 weapon facilities in SWCombine. It was designed with the idea of creating an interesting environment for a possible city animation should I ever get back into doing SWC art. My goal in making this was to make every facility in SWC in low poly mode and then make a series of cities and have an animated walk through describing the facilities and what they do along with other things in a Youtube animation designed to show off to potential players. I canceled the project not because it was unreasonable but because I lost interest. I completed both towers in about 3 hours.

Speed Modeling Contest

This image was done in a speed modeling contest. I did it within 50 minutes and thought for sure it would be a shoe in win but I was proven wrong. I learned a few lessons in the speed modeling contest which was nice. The bike model was done out of memory and in the process of doing it I rediscovered a few functions I had all but forgotten. A lesson in humility was definitely to be had as I was handily defeated by someone with superior experience.

However that said I look forward to the next speed modeling contest :)

SN-7 Battle Tank

This battle tank I copied from an image almost exactly. I took some artist discretion with this piece though as there were conflicting images that were close but not exactly the same. I never got to finishing this sci-fi hovering battle tank because it was already done by another artist for the site I was making it for.

I have to say that it was a great experience for me as it took 11 tries for me to get right. 11 tries full of frustration but eventually I got smart and graphed out my target image and reverse engineered it into my 3d model.

MTV-7: Starwars Ground Vehicle

First, welcome to my new blog and my first posting.

I have been working for months on creating various models, usually of the Star Wars genre as they are typically viewed at a Star Wars site I am a part of. This model was done in about 3 hours and took me much longer than planned due to a bad crash in 3DS Max, of which I did not save regularly as I usually do. So in my hurrying, I paid the price in time.

The model for the most part was made rather quickly with some fine detail work being little more than tesslating various polygon faces and extruding and counter extruding. The original model I made this after called for a shorter vehicle module but it seemed unbalanced to me more so than it already was... so I added a trunk on the back of the vehicle. I went for a more Akira anime motorcycle look with the vehicle arms somewhat extended.

The tires were made amazingly quick, shortest part of the entire model. I simply made one single tread and then copied it 48 times. Selected one of them and attached them to the rest so they were one unit and then used the bend modifier to wrap it around. At this point I just made sure the tread work aligned properly, slid in a cylinder which I pushed and pulled a few times to give a radial effect, and then squeezed the edges of the treads together a little on the outside edge so as to seal perfectly. Looks and sounds a little complex but really it took me a very short amount of time.

In the end this model was considered too radial of a deviation to be considered for the Star Wars site, but I really did enjoy it and look forward to more model work down the line.