Epita's Tank Model

[StuartB]

Since Epita is banned :( , she asked me to post this for her.
What do ya think? The texture is almost done, but your critisism and compliaments would be grateful. It's loosely based on the M1A1 abraham's, but smaller and lighter.

[mattclary]

Epita's a girl? Why'd she get banned?

[StuartB]

I thought the thread was about a tank? Lol, Yeah Epita's a girl, and she got banned for i dont know why.

[Rory_L]

Hello Epita (via Stuart),

Sorry you got banned. Some birthday pressie, eh! :(

I like the shape of the tank. It reminds me of manga styling; maybe because of the `ears` at the back. Are they snorkels?

This is for a game isn`t it? Poly count looks good and low, but the textures have to carry all the burden of representing the fine detail and damage/wear and tear that you`d normally be able to model, if it were a hi-poly tank. You should try to accentuate the shape of the model. At the moment that large fractal pattern is hiding some of the mesh detail that you have put in. On the barrel, that bulge (is it called a baffle?) is difficult to read because of this.

The hull should have a wealth of small details drawn on. Recent news footage shows those Abrams covered in bits and bobs. At the very least you`ll need to put insignia and numbers on it!

And draw the wheel texture please!

Here`s something: even in modern games, where they have realtime lighting, you still get painted on lighting and shadow on the models to give them that extra zing.

All the best,

R

[StuartB]

Epita says:

"Hey, Thanks Rory, yeah you are right, i have watched so much Anime that all the things i do are really heavly influanced by it. However the things at the back are meant to be radio masts, like the M1A1. Other bits and bobs will be added later, once the game engine is done, so i know what im working with. Sucked really. Anyway, the reason a lot of things arent as detailed as I would like, is because my laptop crashes when I load an image into LW, (8mb graphics card?)And what mesh detail, that is made of just over 1300 plolys, thats very low!"

[Rory_L]

Hello Epita,

What mesh detail? Well, yes, there ain`t much, but there`s the bump on the barrel I mentioned and also a bulge at the back, between the two, small black things.

I`m lazy! As soon as I`d posted the message I had another look at the model and realised the `snorkels` were antennae. By the way, they shouldn`t be more than four polys in cross section; you could get away with three, probably.

A trick for reducing polys in wheels is to model them with only about eight sides, but have flat, quad polys on their fronts, just a bit larger than the diameter of the wheels. On this you paint your round wheel texture and clip off the corners with alpha channels. Works a treat! :)

Cheers,

R

[StuartB]

Okay, here's the update *pants*.

[lunarcamel]

This reminds me of the PointBlank game on the Irix OS.

Simple and fun.