A side project I started during the pandemic and worked on it on/off for the last year or so.
Most of the model is rather accurate, but there are a few things for which i could not find any good references so they were for now left as placeholders.
I’m hoping to create some nice cross section and cut-away renders.
Amazing [insane] level of detail! Must be quite therapeutic working on a project like that. For those missing references I suggest that you rummage through Army/Navy stores until you find a decommissioned Ronson to sit in the driveway. 
Great work so far - looking forward to updates, man!
Daf
nice work
require lot’s of patience to get proper reference dwg
can you specify which model + year
and some mechanical specs like HP RPM weight if possible
keep up the good work
happy cl
Outstanding work. Really looking forward to watching this one.
Thank you.
It’s a M4A3 sherman tank, produced by the US during the second world war. It was first introduced in 1944. It has some improvements over previous variants such as better engine, wider tracks and a more powerful 76mm gun placed in a bigger turret.
Engine is a Ford GAA, 18L Gasoline, producing around 500hp @ 2600rpm
Finding references is hard as there were many different variants which also had slight changes during production and slight variations between different manufacturers. Crews would also modify the tanks in the field so in a way each tank was unique.
I mostly use various technical manuals found online as a base and then cross reference with multiple photographs when possible. While this works great for outside parts, interior photographs and videos are rather scarce.
Currently I have dozens of technical documents for various vehicles and vehicle components and hundreds of photos saved(with even more photographs and videos bookmarked)
I’ve been improving the suspension a bit, mainly adding proper holding edges for subdivision where necessary, as I only used sharp shading for some parts.
There are places where topology is kind of bad, but it’s mostly on flat surfaces so I don’t care.
The tracks received the same treatment as well.
since there are multiple of these objects I grouped them all into collections and used Instancing to make everything easier and to reduce the performance hit. Also a lot of objects within the collections themselves are also instanced.
need some improvement on bolts or screws
need threads and head could be better
here are some examples
have fun
happy cl
Not Creating treads was a conscious decision, as the model has dozens of different bolt shapes and sizes, and thousands of bolts in total, and adding threads would push the polycount to levels which my PC could not handle well. I will try to add them with bump/normal maps though.
you could use group instancing which does not add verts
just a proxy
have not use it in 2.9 but should still be possible
if you find a way to make it with UV bump that would be interesting
have not tried it but possible
let us know
happy bl
Looking great. When doing a project like this, it’s easy to go down the rabbit hole of too much detail. Instancing and simplified small items is a good path.
