VTOL Jetbike WIP; Looking for feedback on the model.

Artwork Works in Progress
1

Hello everyone!

Before I dive into what I know is going to be a lengthy post, I figure I should give a short synopsis for the TL:DR Crowd.

What do you think about this model?

Jetbike_ModelingDone_Front_ForUpload.jpg1500×844 244 KB

  1. I am looking for feedback and constructive criticism on my VTOL Jetbike model from people familiar with CG art.
  2. While feedback on the simple temporary shaders I have put on the model, and the very quick compositor pass I put on this is appreciated, really, I am wanting feedback on the model, since the materials and compositing is just to make this slightly more interesting than a simple clay render.
  3. In particular, I want to know if 172k polygons (without the subsurf turned on) is too high poly for this model.

Ok, now that the short version is done, here is a more detailed exposition about my project…

After coming to these forums before and realizing that I was terribly noobish and basically didn’t have the most rudimentary skill sets to fully utilize this forum, I spent about 6 months in the virtual woodshed to hone my skills to a base level of respectability and to try and not be a drain upon this fine community. To celebrate 6 months of focused work and reemerge from the woodshed, I decided to work on a complete, high poly model of a VTOL Jetbike born completely from my own imagination.

The criteria that I put forth to myself to make this a good model were as follows:

  1. The model must be complete, capable of being rendered from almost any angle with a pleasing shape and a moderate to high level of detail.
  2. The model will be made without use of modeling sheets of any kind. Looking at a picture of something for some inspiration is acceptable, but I will not load anything into blender itself. This is to hone my artistic eye.
  3. At the end, this will be modeled, textured, and rigged as efficiently as I can.

So far, I have shown some early stages of this to a few of my friends, but the most experience they have with CG is watching movies and playing video games. Their responses have been something to the effect of “Well, it looks nice, but why is it just grey? Can’t you add a hot chick riding it, and maybe some crazy city skyline behind it?” If it were only as easy as “Add -> Mesh -> Sexy Jetbike Pilot”…

What I am looking for is some feedback on the model itself from people who understand that you have got to have the geometry built before you can and some textures and then build an interesting scene around it so it’s something other than an intellectual and artistic exercise.

To try and preemptively answer some questions about how this was built, I used both box and poly by poly modeling techniques with some bezier curves thrown in for hoses. The inspiration is something along the lines of a “flying Ducati” built for performance with an agressive silhouette, something like a bird of prey. It is 172K polygons with the subsurf modifiers turned off, and every object that isn’t a bezier curve has subsurf modifier at level 2, and the bezier curves have a resolution set to 2.

Any questions will be answered, any comments and/or constructive criticisms will be appreciated.

Thank you in advance for your time, and happy blending!

Jon

Attachments

Jetbike_ModelingDone_Rear_ForUpload.jpg1500×844 248 KB

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Firstly, the model is really cool

Secondly and more importantly, I don’t think 172k polys is too high, but it really depends on the usage, if it is for a cinematic purpose more is generally better on the other hand if it is for a game then it is waaaaaaaaay too high.

Thirdly (wait… what?) The only issue I see with the mesh is that parts look a bit rough, have a look at the jet engine, some parts look really low poly, same for some of the other curved surfaces, they look low poly.

oh and fourthly (okay, that’s enough of that, this is starting to sound really weird) the glass looks really… odd (I want to say bad, but it isn’t quite the word I am looking for, it doesn’t look good, but it isn’t bad per se, it really depends on what end result you’re after)

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First off, thanks for the feed back, and I am really glad you think it’s cool. I wanted to make a jetbike that I wanted to ride.

Secondly, this is not going to be for a game, really what I am wanting to do is a nice high resolution render for like a portfolio or a desktop image. In the end I want to use a nice HDR equirectangular projection for some sweet reflections, put a little scenery around it, and put soem kind of rider on it.

Thirdly, I agree on the low poly look of the engine pods. Compared to the central engine bit behind the seat, they have about half the polys. If you had some suggestions on what I should do to up the resolution on the lower poly areas, I would be happy to hear them. What I was thinking was either scraping the engine pods and starting from scratch on them, or doing a cut away to the smooth cowling to show some of the “Don’t put your fingers in here” bits of the turbine.

Fourthly, the glass does look strange to me, too. Part of it may be I just threw the default glass BSDF on it, and part of it may be the reflection of the voronoi texture I set on the world to have it reflect something while I was looking for a HDR image that I could see this baby in. In the final shader and texture set up, I want to put some HUD elements in or on the glass and use a more complex and pleasing node set up than just add shader -> Glass so my non CG artist friends would stop asking “why aren’t their colors on this?”