Spring RTS Engine

Streamlined Tank WIP
842 Polys

No spoiler?

huge barrel will remove tiny turret during combustion

remove obnoxious exhaust system

improve metal texture

show ingame shot

good to go!

Looks molten or made of clay.

Looks unfinished

rattle wrote:Looks unfinished

That would make sense since he posted in the random wip thread

Meh, it's not bad for an early effort at all. Needs to be preshaded more effectively, mainly.

Hoi wrote:

rattle wrote:Looks unfinished

That would make sense since he posted in the random wip thread :wink:

Actually that was directed at the critics

Speaking of criticism, fullbright shots! :P

ok, exhaust removed, barrel shortened, turret enlarged



ambient occlusion added to texture
suggestions on how to make the metal look better?

maek less reflective imo



what im currently working on :/ (dont mind the fact that the uvmap is only ~1/3 done)

trying to get a metal look similar to


that's an interesting texture map pressure line... making a toy block war mod?

maek more reflective then! [spring can do this for you, green channel on texture 2!]

standard wings uvmap texture, its good because you can easily see distortions.

Reflectivity is fine, that's not what is breaking the texture.

I think you need to add more specific imperfections, rather then generic metal noise (which is good). Things like, scratches, weathering around joints, and so on.

Also, if you're using photoshop, apply a pillow emboss to your rivets, with a size of '0', they'll look a lot better.

Otherwise, I think that having large areas of homogenous metal is really breaking the believability of this. I think you need to draw in more panelling, as well as more greebling - especially if you're going for the steampunk sort of feel with those exhausts.

Finally, the camo strikes of lazy texturing - something you can stick down and don't have to think about too much. The reality is that it looks out of place. Less then 10% of the surface area of that model is camo'd - it'd stick out like a sore thumb in a forest - so what's the camo doing there? I think you need to give a bit more thought and detail to those areas.

Also, don't forget to add a bit of colour to your metal - metal is very rarely pure grey. Not a single colour, but some variations of browns, blues and reds (very lightly). A method I use is to go grab a metal texture from cgtextures and place it underneath my painted model, then set my painted texture layer to 'luminosity' so that it takes on the colour values of the surface underneath.

-Vent joints with the chassis need to be detailed and have some shadowing painted. Vents should be dirtier.

Warlord Zsinj wrote:Reflectivity is fine, that's not what is breaking the texture.

I think you need to add more specific imperfections, rather then generic metal noise (which is good). Things like, scratches, weathering around joints, and so on.

Also, if you're using photoshop, apply a pillow emboss to your rivets, with a size of '0', they'll look a lot better.

Otherwise, I think that having large areas of homogenous metal is really breaking the believability of this. I think you need to draw in more panelling, as well as more greebling - especially if you're going for the steampunk sort of feel with those exhausts.

Finally, the camo strikes of lazy texturing - something you can stick down and don't have to think about too much. The reality is that it looks out of place. Less then 10% of the surface area of that model is camo'd - it'd stick out like a sore thumb in a forest - so what's the camo doing there? I think you need to give a bit more thought and detail to those areas.

Also, don't forget to add a bit of colour to your metal - metal is very rarely pure grey. Not a single colour, but some variations of browns, blues and reds (very lightly). A method I use is to go grab a metal texture from cgtextures and place it underneath my painted model, then set my painted texture layer to 'luminosity' so that it takes on the colour values of the surface underneath.

-Vent joints with the chassis need to be detailed and have some shadowing painted. Vents should be dirtier.

thanks! that's very useful info!

not sure what to do about the camo... i guess just pure colour paint. it doesn't need camo, i just wanted something for team colour

okay, thanks for those tips, i think it's come a long way!
still a bit to go

needs more interesting, you've got a nice base layer atm, but need to work on details.

Honestly? I say stick a fork in it, it's done. Spring is an RTS. It'll look good even at "zoomed in for glamour shot" ranges, the only range it would fail would be hyper-up-close-showing-off-my-model view.

It doesn't look like any other model I've seen, so that means you've got about 40 other things to do before you can see it in a real mod. Call it good and move on.

I definitely think it needs more panels, that shape just doesn't look believable, like you modeled a tank and ran a smooth modifier over it. Metal being "molded" like that looks just plain wrong. Probably needs straighter edges too (or if not straight at least more regular curves).

thesleepless wrote:not sure what to do about the camo... i guess just pure colour paint. it doesn't need camo, i just wanted something for team colour

colour under teamcolour... NO!

use very dark grey. like 64 64 64. with some variation, and a 50-75% on the alpha. when i choose ├é┬ as my teamcolour, i want it to be ├é┬Â, not ├é┬Â

Pressure Line wrote:

thesleepless wrote:not sure what to do about the camo... i guess just pure colour paint. it doesn't need camo, i just wanted something for team colour

colour under teamcolour... NO!

use very dark grey. like 64 64 64. with some variation, and a 50-75% on the alpha. when i choose ├é┬ as my teamcolour, i want it to be ├é┬Â, not ├é┬Â

that teamcolour isn't on the main texture map, it's separate overlay so i can see how it'll look.