Yesterday I was searching for some inspiration on Google and came across a picture of a spider drone. I thought it would be an interesting to build something like so I did. I made pretty good progress. Here is what I got so far:
I’m Still working on some of the materials (the background is a place holder at the moment.) I’m open to any critiques, I want to make this as good as possible.
Thanks,
-Eagleflyer
I’m shit at rigging, but I can tell you that those legs are going to be hard to animate with bones. Good job though on the model. Inspiration is the hardest part for me. That and motivation.
As for rigging, just setup up the bones as would expect them to appear. With endpoints at the centre of rotation, once armature is set, parent it with automatic weights!
Model look pretty cool! Probably give it like a brushed metal type look and add little detail, like bolts and wires! And if you want the eyes to glow, that’d have to be done in compositor!
With a model like this, what could really make it shine (no pun intended) would be a line of lights placed in various crevices, to give a more flashy-techy-gadgety feel. Also, how about going for an anodized-metal look for some leg parts? That’d give you colour without going glazed-glossy or grayscale-metal.
Haha it probably could be the iphone 10.
There are acually a few details like nuts, bolts, screws, etc. but they were really hard to see. Hopefully It will be easier to see them on this version.
Camo yes or no? Of course I’m not done setting up the materials to match the camo if I were to use it.
Have you not found the smooth button in the “T menu”? I know that when you press that it makes all ur stuff go wonky, but if you add a “split edge” modifier, all will be right again and you’ll have smooth this and thats. Oh you’ll probably still need some subsurf on a few of those things. Way to keep at it though. Good job.
The camo feels a bit odd. It’s too smooth for a matte surface, but there’s no reflections that plastic/metal would have. Also, one thing to consider - camo’s used to hide stuff… But if you want to show the spider off, then you want the opposite, it has to stand out (so either a very contrasting background/ground, or a non-camo body). Also, looking at the size of screws and dials - maybe increasing the blotch size on that camo would work for scale sense?
Hey dude what I would do is look at robots done on 3D artist, get some inspiration and think of what you want it to finally look like. It’s all well and good experimenting, but its like wandering into the dark, which is hard to do if you’re not fluent in 3D. Agree with material,for what you want it to look like, id give a sterile grey and white colour and like plastic and add some hydraulics!
There’s a cool camo like generated texture that looks like squares. I forget what its called but if you make it the colors of the ground around the spider it would look cool. I mean how much need is there for jungle camo on Mars? I only see how to do it in Blender Render. It’s a noise texture called Cell Noise. You can switch over to blender render and apply the texture and save it as a uv map image then pull it back into cycles. I’ve never done this, but I’m sure its possible.
Really though a metal look would be better. More shiney, some fine noise or something that effects the mix between the diffuse and glossy shader. I’m not sure. I’d have to be doing it. I’m watching a movie as I type this. lol
The Camo is called urban, consisting of whites and greys. That would look pretty cool.
You could also sculpt in some scratches and scrapes. Or apply dirt marks via texture paint, and change the brush texture to one with an alpha channel background. Nothing is ever perfect in reality, so even that machine would have some slight eyesores. But its looking good at the mo’.
Wow thats a lot more responses than I thought I would get! But what should I expect from traveling all day? Thanks for all the advice guys I really appreciate it. I am looking into all of these comments and going to try and improve it.
Thanks,
-Eagleflyer
(Updated picture should be up somewhat soon)
Gave it a smoother surface and changed the camo to a black and white version (also making it bigger) I think it works better with the rest of the spider too.
-Eagleflyer
Oh I see you set everything to smooth. Look out. We got one that listens here. \o/ Now all you need is detail, detail, detail. Look at a random electronic device around you and see the detail. Need screws, maybe rubber slips gromet thingies to keep dirt from getting in the joints, scratches, stuff like that. When doing this kind of stuff it is very tempting to do what you could never do in reality, and that is make something perfect. Nothing in reality is perfect. Plastic has parts that hang off that should have been cut and smoothed before leaving the factory. Metals have dings and scratches, glass has IOR imperfections and water spots from the hard water that hits it when the sprinklers go off in the morning. Oh one other thing that will really bring out your renders is HDRI environment maps. They’re real easy to find and use and add a cubic ton of realism to a render.
Ok thanks for the advice I’m going to get to that right as soon as I get some free time. Also there is an HDRI set up, But I think I need to find a different one. Any suggestions?