[WIP] M4A2 Sherman - Model

[Mraah]

Ok ... I was messing around with creating a new texture before calling it a night ...

I retextured only the parts from post #36 and I saved it as a Direct X file.

Now ... since I hadn't grouped it properly it pretty much grouped the other parts by itself when exported.

The end result is shown below ... looks pretty cool for an experiment gone crazy!! (except for the blank wheels and sprockets!).

Thanks for looking.

[Mraah]

A final shot before I go ... getting closer.

[rickier65]

Hey - nice going. Of course - now that Stridors got his animation tutorial up - you'll have to dig into that! You're NEVER going to get to acctually play!

Rick

[RyanCrierie]

Looks pretty damn cool. You've got the hang of transparent textured roadwheels; I don't I just cheated on my M6 by making them all full cylinders.

[z1812]

Hi Mraah,

It looks very, very good. Quite Impressive!!

Regards John

[Mraah]

ORIGINAL: RyanCrierie

Looks pretty damn cool. You've got the hang of transparent textured roadwheels; I don't I just cheated on my M6 by making them all full cylinders.

I cheated too ... for now. I borrowed the DDS from the M3A1 ... body1024.dds. It's a really good example of how it works using a flat plane with it textured on top. I had the cylinders like you did but it gobbled up 2400 polygons for 16 wheels (12 road wheels, 2 idler wheels, 2 sprockets). The cylinders are killing me for polygons so after this is complete I need to go back and chop off the poly hogs and replace with smoke and mirrors.

It's almost done ... just some tweaking of minor stuff but the bulk of the model is done., then it's on to the final material texture dds ... another hoop to jump through.

Rob

[Stridor]

Rob, once you get used to how it all works you will find you can start pumping out the vehicles pretty quickly. Like a week of afternoons will get you a new textured and animated vehicle. You are climbing the steep part of the learning curve right now but it will soon flatten out [:D]

[Mraah]

ORIGINAL: Stridor
Rob, once you get used to how it all works you will find you can start pumping out the vehicles pretty quickly. Like a week of afternoons will get you a new textured and animated vehicle. You are climbing the steep part of the learning curve right now but it will soon flatten out [:D]

I hope so ... I feel like I chose the longest ladder to climb!!

I've been playing with textures ... I hate it when MS3D shows the DDS's as semi transparent ... in the SS below I'm designing new drive sprocket and wheel images. I created a new treads dds (shown as a bmp for display) which adds the edge teeth and new inside tread texture (see side bar image). The colors need tweaking as always ... rear idler wheel not yet changed.

Thanks for looking!

EDIT NOTE - And yeah ... I've got too many bolts in the drive sprocket, they need to be half as many and twice the size! argh.

[Mraah]

Ok ... after chopping it up, I have dropped the polygon count to 2053 ... still needs adjusting but getting there.

Thanks for looking!

[Mraah]

Yet another update ... playing with the LOD textures ... mostly experiments ...

The SS below is the blueprint, turned into a normal map, inverted, colorized, added noise, filtered, blah blah blah, I can't remember some of the effects.

Thanks for looking!

[Erik Rutins]

Looking good!

[Mraah]

Some more work done today ... minor stuff before I need sleep for my midshift. I hope over the next few days I can spend 100% of my time to finish this up.

I spent alot of time working on my own wheels and sprockets and could never get them to look good ... there are several versions of the them and to not waste anymore time I decided to borrow the PcK texture of the M3A1 and colorize it.

Some work done on the alpha for the treads ...now they look like individual treads and worn down a bit more ... the sprocket is resized to "fit" into the links.

Lots more tweaking and adjusting ... bogie texture just a slap-on, road wheels need resizing and axle needed, mantle/trunion needs replacing ... not to mention the rear end needs to be finished ... blah blah blah. Good thing I don't design this stuff for real, the war would be over by the time I finished!

Thanks again for looking.

[Mraah]

Almost done ... at least I have all the materials together... Muzzle break built with smoke and mirrors (like the PzIvF2)

Things to do ...

1. redo inner wheels to fit
2. rebuild the bogie to fit texture and build a tread guide on top of bogie.
3. cleanup upper hull
4. add a rear-end
5. add a new hull ball gun and barrel
6. realign everything

Most of the hard work is done ... so I think. Considering how long it takes, I'm going to release an LOD model (shown below) with 512x512. Current texture is 1024x1024 so I'll have to see how bad the 512 looks!

Thanks for looking !

[GShock]

You and any other who's working on the 3d models, ever thought to make a tank look real with dust, bumps, rust, mud, grease, smoke marks etc?

I expect from such an astonishing work (that all of you make look so simple!!!!) care for these details. [:)]

Congrats!

[Mraah]

Moving right along ... playing with hatch model and graphic ... getting better as I go ... can't say when it'll be done.

Any wear look to texture is purely by accident.

Calling it a night (morning) ... what time is it?

Thanks for looking!

[Mraah]

Unfortunately I haven't had the time I wanted to get this done last week ...

I am this > < close to finishing it ...

Only thing left is some small alignment tweaks, a few texture faces to apply ... and finally the animation. Depending on how many hoops that block me when I export the darn thing will determine when I'll be finished because if there are no more hoops ... it's done.

Below are two textures I'm going to release ... plain old olive drab / worn down metalic look ... 1st Guards Mechanized Corps. I may upload more variants on the textures depending if anyone cares to have something else and doesn't want to bother with painting, which in itself can be a real PITA and might be thoroughly confusing when you look at the material dds. Hopefully the model will be useful as a temporary lend-lease while we wait for the Matrix team to fabricate a better one.

To my amazement, what you're looking at is only 1,899 polygons ... I had to do a double take on that myself several times!

Thanks for looking and your comments ... always appreciated. Rob.
(P.S.) next update shots will be from within PcK.

[von Staudt]

Beautiful work! I can't wait to play with it![:D]

[rickier65]

Very nice Rob - I haven't even thought about trying to mess with this stuff - - looks way over my head - God job!

Rick

(Still waiting to see how your multi-building worked out!)

[Bil H]

Looking good.. personally I would add some polys to the turret, cupola and barrel.. the wheels and hull look so good it's almost a shame to skimp on these areas.
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Still, it will be a welcome addition to the game.
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Bil

[Mraah]

ORIGINAL: Bil H
Looking good.. personally I would add some polys to the turret, cupola and barrel.. the wheels and hull look so good it's almost a shame to skimp on these areas.
Still, it will be a welcome addition to the game.
Bil

Bil,

I'd love to add more polys to the turret area but my hi-poly turret will eventually replace the entire turret. At the moment, I'm trying to get the LOD model done considering most players won't be playing that close to the model (previous screen shot). In the SS below it shows my high-poly turret (1500+ polys). The smaller m4 models below are the low-poly turret set to a scale that most players will probably see the model when playing.

I'm still shaving off polys I don't need (hidden stuff) and also adding more smoke and mirrors. If I can, I'll turn on the hi-poly cupola and loaders hatch and see if I can include them into the LOD model.

Most of my time now is being spent juggling the polys, textures, and alignments to get it acceptable for basic viewing. My textures are still very very rough and not trimmed so good ... but again, it's very time consuming to make it all perfect and I'm not much of an artist so it's all smoke and mirrors. I found that the LOD model is harder to build because of the trade-off between it looking good and keeping it below 2000 polys. It's much easier to build a 6000+ model with the polys doing all the detail.

Thanks for your comments! I'm not very good at this and everyone's comments and ideas are helping get through this.

Rob