Spring RTS Engine

I don't think it's the shoulders: the shoulders are an important part of the ak's overall look. It's mostly the center of gravity that's doing it along with the position of the legs... hold on, I'll try and illustrate it for you...


This is the old ak model. The red line is it's center gravity, the yellow dots are where the joints are. As you can see, they're spread evenly-ish on either side of the line. It's also worth noting that the upper leg is at a different angle to yours.


This is your model from the same angle. Once again, the red line is the center of gravity and the yellow dots are the joints, and this time they are not evenly spread, making it look like it should tip forwards and that the legs are too far back. The blue dot simply highlights a line that I felt you might want to move down a bit (to follow the shape of the old ak's head a bit better). The upper leg is also at a completely different angle.

I can understand that it's hard to model the ak... I tried (twice), it can be difficult working out how to attach the legs to the body (which doesn't happen in the original model, the legs are floating in space)

GMN has illustrated quite well what I was vaguely getting at earlier.

Also, from the front perspective, I think the legs need to be positioned further from the centre, so that there is some sort of 'hip' extension. You can see the importance of a widened pelvic area in Star Wars chicken walker designs.

Other then that, I think it's looking great. I maintain that it doesn't look like an AK level unit. If I was to pick a role for it, I'd say either the Arm Warrior, or one of the level 2 bots. The main reason I would say this is because of it's stocky proportions. It looks quite stalwart rather then quick. This is aided by it's shoulderpads, which make it look heavier and more armoured. I'd imagine in an AK design they would forgo shoulder pads (not suggesting you remove them here, as they're quite integral) and just leave things exposed in order to reduce weight and production cost/time.

A further minor nitpick would be the feet - they look a little like 'shoes', and don't really look proportional to the body. I think you could come up with a cooler mech-type foot (have a look at some slick battletech designs) that uses the same polies.

Again, the main reason I'm being overly nitpicky with this is because I know it'll get textured, and I know the texture will be shit hot, so pretty much every self-respecting alphabet soup mod under the sun will include it, so I'd like to see it get right (unlike some of the other models in certain other threads that will likely never see the light of day).

All this talk has made me have another crack at modelling the AK

Guessmyname wrote:All this talk has made me have another crack at modelling the AK

now that is ak..

smoth give your model new legs and its perfect warrior (;

@GMN:
I find it strange that you study the original AK in such a detail but then have some strong "mistakes" yourself. In your case it's about the shoulder / cannons being located far too high which is something you immediately can see as it looks a bit "wrong". You have the impression of the AK doing the shrug of the shoulders and well I don't know how to say it - it looks like a Krogoth stomped on him and he got smaller from that...

Yeah, I know... >_>

It's actually the head being too low down that the arms and shoulders being too high though. I can fix it easily anyways

EDIT: Better?

I like smoth's variant as well, has a more military look to it, while GMN's is closer to the original.

Guessmyname wrote:EDIT: Better?

Hmmm - well...

It still has his guns pretty much lying on the upperlegs - well i.e. it looks a bit like that because the whole upper body imo is too compressed on terms of height. The "head" still needs to get up a bit and well with that the upperleg somehow is wrong too. It should be located at about the same height as the guns but it now is located beneath them leading to that look of the guns "lying" on the upperleg somehow in the sideview...

So with all that said moving the upperleg up and the guns down a bit might solve the problem of the head being too low but well - you'd have to try...

Aha! *snaps fingers* I know what's wrong with the legs! They're too far apart.

How about now? (fiddled with legs, lowered arms, moved shoulders back, made torso taller

actually gmn, the legs are at those angles because I will be turning them back horizontal when I go to texture it. The angle isn't wrong as much as the fact that the model is waiting to be textured.

Zsinj, the minimalist aproach was reflected by the hourglass figure, exposed laser and small head. Also the head does have an angle I cut the top off when I was making that quick capture before bed.

GMN'S model has a very high poly count, I could raise mine further but on a unit that you will see 100s of I did not want to go to high. IF you want GMN's model that is fine, use it. OH WAIT he doesn't texture. so someone else needs to do that.

The model will not work for the outlaw. The outlaw is heavy with a laser and heavy cannon. it is larger and taller. As a note, the longer cannons made it look lighter. you people assume that these are gun barrels when they are just a housing to light amplification. so the weight really would be much lighter and that little cylinder in the back where the light is initially emitted is probably the heaviest part of the "gun."

If I add polies to the leg I will make it heavier looking, that is part of the look of the ak is the tiny bird legs. NO I am not adding a central axis. all that weight on a cylinder never made sense to me. The legs are close to the groin because I figure you guys can just use your imagination or something.

smoth wrote:actually gmn, the legs are at those angles because I will be turning them back horizontal when I go to texture it. The angle isn't wrong as much as the fact that the model is waiting to be textured.

*facepalm* Oops...

EDIT: Mine's 828 tris, by the way. It's not *that* high.

almost as much as a zaku. most of my polies were spent in the arms of the AK. I can go in and poly the whole thing up but Honestly I do not think that adding more junk onto it is good. I could make the legs more detailed but AGAIN I felt that staying minimalist was closer to the origonal. My drastic departure from the original morty caused nerd rage so I was trying to stay close to the original AK. Again, I could add more polies but I think it would be wasteful.

if you guys have to have more needless detail, I can add it. I do not feel that it would be very faithful. Some of you are saying it should be small at the same time saying add more crap onto it.

Smoth I think the advantage of GMNs model isn't just more detail in general (like the feet and legs which are rather simplistic for your approach) but also the fact that it looks way better in plain front, top-down or side view where you just have extremely plain surfaces for everything but the arms and especially the view from the right looks extremely flat especially for the legs...

@GMN:
Imo this already looks way better but still the arms & shoulders need to go down in my opinion...

Looks pretty good, and definitely looks like an AK.

I have to agree about the shoulders, they need to be deeper and angled like the orig to give it that beefy aggressive look.

Don't forget the side latch looking blocks on the side of its head, those are one of the distinguishing features of the original.

Who ever does the UV, do the normals as well... you guys are forgetting about them.

GMN, I also like your remodel, though it's hard to compare yours and smoth's as yours is faithful to the original, while Smoth was trying to do something entirely new.

If I was to crit your current one, I'd say it is also somewhat suffering from the big shoulder pads as Smoth's.

Also, I suspect you could cut the poly count down on this in a number of areas without sacrificing the look much.

The AK SHOULD be a spindly looking chicken-walker that is hunched forward, in my opinion.

leave my AK out of the thread.

my apologies smoth

Don't troll sheekel, I liked the model, I just didn't think it suited the AK's role.