Random WIP 2006-2011

[Forboding Angel]

It is s3o'd and object origins are all set. 28 pieces.

If any glutton for punishment here wants to volunteer to animate it so lurker doesn't have to please speak up and save a kitten.

O forgot to mention. There is a very large underslung gun that you can't see. I was sitting there counting the pieces visually and only hit 27 then realized what I was missing

[[Krogoth86]]

Well this looks very strange and I don't really know how the joints shall work. In addition to that why do the "feet" get bulky first and then end in this tiny spike? Wouldn't it make more sense to just stump with those bulky endings instead of having all the weight on those spikes...

Apart from that the main body is boring (especially as it pretty much are 3 boxes with different stretching. With your latest decisions you also might want to make it just two parts - one for the main body & legs and then the head attached to it.

[rattle]

Turds on toothpicks

I'd model smaller and export by a factor of 8.

[Forboding Angel]

For stability. Spikes slide into the terrain and are stopped at the ball.

These aren;t different models. It's all the same model. I was showing how I went originally to the final picture which is the final model.

In cause you missed the memo, it's an ant. Why would I add more detail in the body? It would be pointless poly waste for something that's going to be seen from 100 feet above it.

Besides spring is going to render it as smooth anyway, so i don't see the point.

@ rattle, upspring > Uniform scale. Which btw imported into upspring at that size in wings made it 2x2 in upspring.

Critique if you want, but fyi I'm not listening. My post was saying "hey I started out with this, and ended up with this. Nifty eh?"

[rattle]

Sorry, armed turds on stilts then

@ rattle, upspring > Uniform scale. Which btw imported into upspring at that size in wings made it 2x2 in upspring.

Upspring's grid is in elmos (2x2 elmos = 16x16 units)

[KDR_11k]

In cause you missed the memo, it's an ant. Why would I add more detail in the body? It would be pointless poly waste for something that's going to be seen from 100 feet above it.

As opposed to the legs which will be seen from 5m away, right?

[Pressure Line]

It feels like you're missing some important geometric elements there, pressureline, specifically with the turret shape.

I havent really done anything with the turret yet.

Unfortunatly this looks like a lazy attempt.

How incredibly useful, thank you. Now contribute properly to the discussion or GTFO.

[Forboding Angel]

In cause you missed the memo, it's an ant. Why would I add more detail in the body? It would be pointless poly waste for something that's going to be seen from 100 feet above it.

As opposed to the legs which will be seen from 5m away, right?

Need to be rendered as round. Suffice it to say that the body was the least important part of the model to me. Everything bodywise is being done on the texturing side.

When did I ever say that this was an example of how you should do something? O that's right, I didn't...

All the body needs to be seen as is round. As far as that goes, that is all I cared about. Notice that the legs have mostly a minimum amount of detail instead of random buldges and overcomplicated joints. I would have spent 3x as many polys if I wanted to make the feet ultra complex, and for soemthing that is going to be partway into the ground, I didn't see the point.

Speaking of points, a lot of times construction equipment uses the method of spikes+block as a means of stabilization. I thought that that is cool.

Notice that there are no antennae? Reason being is I really didn't want square antennae and To me it felt kindof wasteful, as not all ants have obvious antennae. And yes, the pincers are spirited after a real ant. I can't remember the species, but they essentially have pitchforks and they use them to protect their head as well as slice and dice their opponents (no, not literally...).

Another type of ant has pincers that snap together at a speed of 145 miles per hour (2300 times faster than the blink of an eye). They can use them to crush, startle (if that's the correct term for an insect) their opponents, or they will use them on a rock or the ground and the result is that they get catapulted out of harms way.

I kinda took a conglomerated set of the things I liked most about ant features and put it into one.

tl;dr
So yes, to answer your question, the legs were of far greater importance to me, as imo the bodies (head thorax abdomen) of ants are largely uninteresting to me.

[Forboding Angel]

Sorry, armed turds on stilts then

@ rattle, upspring > Uniform scale. Which btw imported into upspring at that size in wings made it 2x2 in upspring.

Upspring's grid is in elmos (2x2 elmos = 16x16 units)

Nice

Personally I think that the pencil legs give it some sort of a menacing factor, nevermind the giant pincers (which will be used btw).

I see what you mean about the export. So that when you import it it's not OMGSMALL. Meh, it's really no big deal to assemble and then just use uniform scaling on it tho imo.

[rattle]

Might as well turn into a party ant

[smoth]

I that a PEAR ON CHEESE!

THIS THREAD IS NOW ABOUT PEARS ON CHEESE!

[Fanger]

Why a giant ant..? whats it for?

[[Krogoth86]]

@Forb:
The main body still is most what you'll see of the ant and it's plain boring. Even without any fancy poly adding you at least could have brought in a bit more detail to what you have and what is typical for an ant:
http://www.stammheim4ever.de/optik/MC-Escher/Ant.gif
So make the tail getting some additional height in contrast to the other body parts - everything flattened is plain boring...

Also the head shouldn't be a rounded box but more of a "D" rotate 90° clockwise...

Notice that there are no antennae? Reason being is I really didn't want square antennae and To me it felt kindof wasteful, as not all ants have obvious antennae.

Well with your argumenation you'd just need four triangles for the antennae. Just make two flat "quads" you paint the antennae on pretty much like a sprite and use transparency outside of your painted antennae. As you said detailing the body isn't worth it you won't really see that trick ingame at all but it'll add much to the model (you even could animate them with about zero effort)...

[AF]

Can we please not show creepy crawlies directly and link to the image instead? Forbs models are fine but actual pictures of the real thing are another thing entirely.

[[Krogoth86]]

Image turned into a link for all the insectophobes or however you call that... ^^

[smoth]

AF, check out my cloaca!

[Warlord Zsinj]

Strikes me as vaguely similar in walking mechanism to the Homing Spider Droid.

I'm not too offended by the design; but more so by the image spam

And, just incase it gets lost in the mess:

Nice model GMN, it's got a great sense of character. Kinda bioshock-ey.

Are those things on it's shoulders/back meant to be some sort of turreted gun? They look kinda strange, but with a bit of editting could be turned into some WH40k/steampunk-esque vents which would add to this units character (f.ex, tilt them backwards)

[Wolf-In-Exile]

That's one of the designs in the Clone Wars which I think is total crap. Then again, there are a crapload of other Expanded Universe ones which are really bad/bland/boring too.

[Warlord Zsinj]

I don't mind that one so much, it's got a weird 60's sci-fi feel about it. There were worse designs in the prequels, such as these:

http://img274.imageshack.us/img274/2196 ... oid2mo.png

http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/starw ... _negtd.jpg

[smoth]

those have a sort of cute character. The problem with the models forb is that they lack a particular styling as little was done with the base geomitry. While somethings like tank barrels and wheels stay as primitives something like these "ants" requires a bit more commitment.

preface read this before you get upset forb.
Before you feel the need to be defensive bear in mind this is the first time I have really made an effort to comment on the models for evo. The style is evo and thus lacks any ability to attempt form or function as evo is based off of primitives. I understand that you have people who do like the stuff but unfortunately most others do not. It is fine that you like the style but a majority of people will not and when you post the models people do not consider the stylized approach you are taking. I have not commented because I do not like the stylized approach and feel it is unattractive.

So when I saw the ants I said yep, looks like evo and didn't bother to comment. However, I figure I should about now. Here is the problem, rts games are about abstraction, how much varies from project to project. Evo should change it's name btw, it is to easy to confuse with war evo.

ANYWAY, nanoblobs was met with a large amount of rejection because it took a largely bizzare interpretation to the units. However, what you have done with evo is akin to genbloods earlier maps where he used obvious primitives to make his features, stating that it was to his aesthetic sense. However, to those of us with modeling experience we quickly realized it was just primitives slapped together. You were there when several of us were laughing at it. The way you are modeling evo is the same. While it does realize how smoothing works etc it still is a bunch of primitives.

It is your design decision and if you are hard set on it feel free to ignore past this sentence as I am not trying to force anything on you.

In the evo style it is pretty obvious that it is speed modeling and that is fine as you are trying to get prototype/alien concepts out. However, even alien ships and vehicles would have reasonable joints and the ants are going to be my victim here. I will start with the legs. ok, even if we had mesh deformation with proper bones, these models would be bad as organics and they are not. OK, there are a few things. The places the geomitry meets the body make little sense, a + joint versus a ball joint with cup is a bad design decision. Look at the knee joints, toothpicks in olives. model hinges onto the knee joints would help rather then the stabbed through appearance. The feet need to have some sort of flat portion. While insects can have pointed feet they have little bits of foot. on a large creature such as this they would need larger feet. To an ant a grain of sand is the size of a basketball to a giant ant mech a sand would be a deathtrap. give it some thickness on the feet and I don't mean just scale the bottom orb to look like a pear. The body is by and large a few mildly scaled primitives. You need to shape them more a critique that a few people have made. the body of an ant is long and kinda sausage like. ants very much are like wasps without wings.

Again, all of that is if you want to further your modeling. otherwise feel free to stick to your evo style but I can tell you people are by an large going to reject it. This is coming from the guy making the animu game.