I am finanllly doing some blending again, motivated by my recent purchase of Tony Mullen's Mastering Blend book. I decided to work on another 40K project, its a great resource for 3D modeling since Games Workshop made all the physical pewter models in 3D to begin with and it has some really fantastic art design and background story. Anyway, working on an Ultramarine 1st Company Terminator. C&C Welcome, even more welcome would be other 40K artists who want to collaborate.
Well, with the release of the 2.5 alpha I am motivated to do some blending again. I thought I would dust off this old project and work on it some more. I really haven’t gotten good enough with my materials to make the look the way I want, so I am going to put that off and just build the model first. Here is my latest render:
Here is a little more progress, but I am coming up on a problem that I submit to the forum for possible solutions. I am trying to work on putting on “3D decals” like the U on the chest and the Imperial Eagle on the forehead, but my method is fundamentally flawed. Here is how I am doing it:
Build “2D” version of decal object where it is confined to a plane
Use the shrink wrap modifier to warp the mesh to the object I am placing it on
Apply the shrink wrap modifier to make changes real
Enter edit mode and extrude vertexes to make shape 3D
Of course, this is something of a messy method, and it doesn’t work out well for more complicated shapes being mapped to tighter curves, like the shoulders. Does anyone else have a better method for this kind of work? I have also tried using the curve modifier to pull the meshes into shape, but I have not had success making that a “perfect” fit like the shrink-wrap does.
Well, a little more work done today. I am still really hoping someone will point me in the direction of a solution for the problem I mentioned in my last post. Pretty please forum?
Looks great. About your problem, if you download the lastest blender 2.50 (not the Alpha0) then you can use the solidify modifier, which might just be what your looking for.
Thanks Excalibur, yeah I have both to latest and alpha 0 versions of blender 2.5. The latest has the working solidify modifier but for some reason retopo doesn’t want to work, and vice versa on 2.50. At any rate, I might just have to bite the bullet and model the stuff the old fashioned way since the shapes I need are really to complicated/ irregular in 3D to simplify algorithmically.
I spent a little time after work today and re-made the power fist since I thought it looked a little crappy. Not sure I am sold on this one either, but at least its an improvement. Anyone have a good tutorial on rigging a hand?
Well, a little more progress today made possible by a good tip on how to use the snap to face (as opposed to retopo) in 2.5:
However, I am still having some troubles. It seems I can only snap one vertex at a time to a surface, which means that its quite tedious and cumbersome to map a more complex 2D object to a surface. It also means that I am doing everything “by hand” because I cannot take advantage of procedures like building a surface by extruding many vertexes simultaneously or scaling objects while constrained to a face. Does anyone have any tips, or better yet know of any good tutorials, on “wrapping” objects to a 2D but volumetric surface using the snapping method in which deformations are minimized and/or correctable? Maybe I should build in 2D, apply shrinkwrap, and make corrections with snapping?
Spent a little more time on this filling in some detail work. I am still not pleased with the shoulder detail, I need a better method for modeling like this.
i actually preferred the old power fist you had on him, the new one seems a bit weedy, maybe its cus the fingers are very small? other than that, love it :eyebrowlift2:
