Do you guys know any good free hard surface modelling tutorials? Like detailed roborts,weapons; anything that can teach me more modeling techniques. Blender or non-blender both would do. I can do intermediate level moddling but i usually fail where there are too many small details on surface like a cars engine,very detailed guns,etc. You know what i mean. 
A pdf would do wonders, web-version will also be great. I cant follow vid tuts greater than 20 mins coz my net is crappy.
P.s Im googling, but as we all know good things in life are hard to find
Thanks a zillion!!!
I would love to know the answer to this. specifically if you can find good Blender ones.If the are not many written hard surface tutorials what kind of tutorial would you like to see?
I know you said you can’t follow long videos, but I’ve had this bookmarked for a while after someone here in the forums recommended it: http://vimeo.com/10941211
Non-blender.
techniques for hardsurface modeling and topology are the same. so tutorials from 3dsax and maya would be also a big help for blender.
IMO
I second Grant Warwick’s tutorial whole-heartedly (the vimeo link Fax posted)
If your internet connection don’t allow you to stream it you can download it from vimeo here. You could let it download for the rest of the day and watch it tomorrow.
It really is the best hard-surface tutorial I know of.
There really isn’t that much on the subject for Blender, best thing you can do is get a Blendercookie subscription ($25 for 3 months.) and download Jonathan Willamson’s brilliant M4 modeling series, their Shiping Container tutorial (which is free) is also really good Link
I want to start from here:
and somewhat reach an equilibrium when im here:
http://jinopix.cafe24.com/JINOPIX/news_updated/tip_R18C_3Dartisan_JAN%202007.jpg
(the first image i.e the robort)
I dont want step to step very detailed tutorials, somewhat brief tutorials like many car modelling tuts available & interested in technique behind stuff . I can port it to blender myself. k googling for some 'making of’s ’ etc now. ^.^ ill share whatever i get.
btw if anybodys interested here are some inspiring roborts along with 1 making of also:
http://www.3dm3.com/mag/cgchosen/no06_robots/
@oki thanks for the link but i dont want to do something that basic.
@fax 615 mb hmm… not that bad i surely cant watch it but maybe request some friend to download it.are u sure it covers what im looking for? ;p sorry for stupid ques.just asking coz i dont want to miss the chance (you know request someone and then get very less out of it)
guys forgot to add my net is 14 kbps (average) and absolutely inconsistent so if i try to buffer up a long vid tuts the connection fails after 1-1.5 hours and it would never buffer up completely. 
Its also capped at 1 gb for 21 days so pretty bad i cant even leave it for download and sleep in peace. 
i am looking forward to buy some stufff next yr. coz i dont even have a single penny, niether bank account now. ;(
If you look at the tutorial in my sig you will find pretty much all the theory you need to know for hard surface modeling using SDS surfaces. It is an 8 part tutorial that ends up with a step by step on creating this hammer:
http://www.esaa-aquitaine.com/lightwiki/public_html/images/e/ed/HammerC51.gif
I use these techniques whenever I do this kind of work.
These two objects (constructed for a recent job) were both made with nothing more than the techniques in my tutorial:
If downloading images on a page is a problem for you I can give you copy of the tutorial in zip format.
Cool. Good luck with it and let me know if you have any questions regarding conversion to Blender.
Richard,
Have you considered giving out or selling the .blend file for the jet engine?
Ok so any ideas with detailed robort moddeling & mechanic transformations? How do i put all small pieces together? How do i know what to put where? 
(i was actually looking for ‘making of transformers’ but didnt find it. XDDDD
You mean this is not hard surface enough?
Here is a link to the zip file:
http://www.richardculver.com/resources/Fundamentals_of_Subpatch_Modeling.zip
It was done for a client. I basically recreated an existing model by converting it to a SDS-friendly mesh using a variety of techniques, for instance, copying the profile of a part, adding the points need to hold the shape as an SDS mesh and spinning it. Or in some cases deleting all but one part and adding the needed edge loops then spinning it in an array. And in some cases using a combination of techniques such as for the casing to make it a mesh that would hold that shape with thickness and so on. So in short, I don’t own the model and the blend file is huge. It would make a great study for SDS. But there is nothing complex about it. It is just all simple polyflow like you find in my tutorial. From there is is just a matter or having good reference material in the way of plans. And in this case it went very quickly because I could simply copy parts of the model to work with as starting points.
thanxx a zillion for the link 
downloading now.
lol i wish i could buy this:
maybe someday i would have enough money to buy that and vehicle training series by blender cookie.
lol is there any free tut vid or text or anything that covers something as detailed as the vehicle in this vid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaMxdlRhqoY&feature=related
First I suggest learning the basics of polyflow. Get focused on that first and you’ll soon start to imagine where to put the lines around any shape. Really all you need to know is around a half dozen key points. Once you get those, you’ll be off and running. Detail is just more of the same stuff, smaller and repeated.
yeah absolutely true. Ill keep practising. ^.^
i tried to download the zip but my net interrupts it half way and since its not resumable flashget download manager restarts download at 40-50%. Lol it seems i got to wait till monday to goto my dads office and get that. :s
anyways thanks for help.
Do you know where to find good reference material for jet engines? Such as plans or drawings?
Usually I just try as many google keywords as I can for that it is I am looking for. I also hit up The Blueprints.
I found this randomly:
http://www.john-tom.com/html/Jet.html
And clicking on photos in google gave some things like this:
http://kasl.typepad.com/.a/6a00e55217743788330105358017ac970c-800wi
It can be a challenge but for specific things I usually get something directly from the client. But I usually search around for additional photos or plans if I can find them.