Battlezone Modeling

[Ultraken]

If the texture coordinates are the same, I could put them into the game as replacement large assets...

[General BlackDragon]

If we take the stock textures, scale them up by a factor of 2, or 4? and go over them in detail, it'd be awsome.

[Nielk1]

I can try. I have had luck with placing sharpened textures over the ones blurred by scaling. I can look at that and then improving some other thing, maybe even remaking the textures from scratch using shape layers and such.

[TheWall]

Moving on with trying to create Vacuum Mould cavities (for better exterior, part detail(s)) of the Hull (for now). Top, Bottom, Right and Left Side Panels (Front/Main), Right and Left Side (Rear @ Main Engines), Rear (Engine Pod)



Turret, Cannons and Engines still to go. All of them have some serious vertial surface issues.

[bb1]

I want mine to have a cream filling.

Better yet, all ballistics gel or that gummy-hand stick to the wall thing. Be funny to throw it at the wall and it stick. Or to just use as a stress relief thing. Squeeze the grizzly over and over! Feel Better.

[Nielk1]

OO, can you make chocolate tanks?

[General BlackDragon]

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

ChocoGrizzly

[Dx]

If you make it from aluminum foil and make a high voltage charge above it on a wire, you can make it hover.

[Avatar]

Darn Wall, I can't believe I forgot the texture...    color me brain dead during this busy holiday season.       I'll bundle those off to you asap along with the Razor.

Now, about vacumn forming...  um...  I've always worked with CONVEX models. 

The styrene goes in the oven, on a frame, to be heated.  It's then pulled down around the master model which is sitting on a mesh.  This stretches it down over the model, and the only place you need to worry about extra 'vents' are where the master goes concave... 

The styrene is fairly hot but cools very quickly, so the master model doesn't really have to be indestructable...  but foam is probably out of the question.   And of course there's no undercutting, or the master becomes entombed in the styrene.  For the Grizz I've always thought it would be just an easy horizontal plane through the widest point of the body, giving you a top and bottom.

The idea of a plate as shown looks to me more like something for a stamping press...  or a chocolate mold.     Grizzly ice cubes, anyone??  Or Ice Pops?   Coooool....   

-Av-

[TheWall]

Av,

Agreed on the Concave.... "but"...

All kinds of issues with the Grizzly.... The Cannon(s) (the undersides) is one of the biggest issues, the countless sharp corners (which also get rounded on a concave pull), the "partline" if you were to halve the Griz is not planar OR it will become captive, The relatively tall, vertical walls near the main thrusters with the 90 degree corner in the middle of them which would make it near impossible to keep from creasing and getting very thin.

The convex/cavity allows for absolute control of the exterior surface(s), "sharp" corners, details that can be put into the mould that transfer to the outer surface. I was involved in the Radio Control Car industry for nearly 18 years, and the R/C Car Bodies (at least the good ones) were pulled into a cavity to be able to control the detail. Things like fine wire cemented into the cavity to create windshield lines, door panel lines, sharper detail for grills, emblems, etc..

Concave/cavity vacu-forming brings its own set of problems, the problem of adequate venting and it not leaving the vent hole impressions.

NOW, all that being said, while I know the process and have seen it done, I've never actually done vacu-forming... so................... 

[TheWall]

WOW, interesting mapping...

[General BlackDragon]

Yup...

[Ultraken]

It's efficient.   

(Pretty much every game model texture I've seen looks like that.)

[Avatar]

@ forming:
I can see that for 'professional' projects, but all I've done have been my own simple things so it's all I've known.  I still regard this as a very simple model, but as things progress I think it's growing more complex...  for instance, if you go with a concave 'mould' you could actually etch the various markings very lightly on the surface to serve as a guide to painting.  I think even the fumbliest of us could do a paint by numbers Grizzly texture some amount of justice.

@ texture:
I've always wondered if an artist makes the texture first and a modeller models using it, or they make a model and then an artist paints the texture...

I think what you'd really rather see is something like Lithunwrap output, where it looks like the various faces have been flattened out.

There's also an issue with the star on the 'hood' of the Grizz being cut off...  I have a recreation for both ways...

-Av-

[Nielk1]

Normally models come first from what I can tell. When I use existing textures I inevitably end up rending to texture with a different UV than I started and then doing more changes in PhotoShop.