Been working on this too. I alternate between several ongoing projects. I listed one before, the USS Holland which I’m trying to make a small movie of. It’s here… USS Holland Docked I do this, rotating projects, I mean, because I’ve noticed for a long time that if I get stumped on what to do I’m stalled out completely. Or if I get long on a project I start slowing down. By rotating projects I keep going all the time. So when I hit the same stumbling blocks I just move on to another project and when I’m ready to get back to it I put it on the to do list. So this is my Jagdpanther (WIP) I textured in Substance Painter. Previously on my Artstation page you could see it with mostly a simple gray paint.
One of the first things I created in Blender was a rigged tank model for animating, but I never got around to doing more than a simple low poly mesh for it, since my skills weren’t very good with Blender at the time. But like you, I jump around from project to project so I don’t get bored or stumped for things to add, so I’m going to eventually do some more work on it. I collect images like yours for inspiration and ideas.
I think adding some weld seams would help. The welds on those tanks were pretty prominent.
Maybe a rust shader on the tracks too (the tank seems kind of beat up, the tracks would also show wear and rust). My Tiger II WIP (Feb 28th post) shows how I make my track shader if you’re interested.
Thanks Anthony & Mark on giving me some feedback. I had a paragraph I edited out where the tracks have me stumped like should I apply the array mod I’m using to loop around the path or leave it all as it is but then I’m worrying about the texture repeating on each track. The other issue is if I apply the mod the track parts because there’s about 200 tracks in all might make the parts so small the texture amounts to a blur. The tank isn’t meant to be a game asset so I’m worrying over nothing but I’d like to think that I got control of how many textures I’ll end up with even for a high poly model. Like this one I had hoped to end up with one texture and its map textures. Instead I have five textures and 25 map textures. Does it matter for something that only ends up being just a picture?
The track texture I use creates unique patterns on each object by using random numbers to create different patterns on each object. All of the tracks can have the exact same (large-scale) UV map, so you don’t have to worry about shrinking all the UVs and losing texture detail. I recommend creating a dedicated texture for just the tracks and separate shader for rest of the tank using a UDIM texture set.
If you copy the tracks using ALT/D instead of CTRL/D, you can save quite a lot of memory since each track will share most of its data with the other tracks. Your renders will be faster and the file will be smaller.
Here’s what my track UV layout looks like. Its the same UV map for all the tracks and there is plenty of size to make good quality detail.
Thanks Mark for the tip. I went through the Tiger setup (wow, just wow) and I duplicated the track texture setup (took forever!) and this is what the track looks like at present without any tweaking on my part.
I didn’t realize I was already following your works (the U-boat and the wooden ship) and I’d like to email you concerning the wooden ship as I’m working on one myself the USS Syren. Appreciate the tip on doing the tracks using Alt_D but if this was a game asset would that still work? A few times when I try to import a model with mirrors still intact Substance Painter gives me artifacts though not always. - Rich
To keep things consistent with the tanks “already” weathered appearance which included dirt build-up in places I opted to do the same for the track and the wheelsets.
@Mark06GT: I’m much obliged for your suggestions and I will definitely keep the rusty texture for future projects. Thanks for sharing that info in your Tiger 2 cutaway thread. Very impressive!
I don’t know anything about game engine restrictions. I’m sure there are others here who have already answered that question or who could easily guide you. You could do a small test to see if the game engine was okay with instanced objects. Worst case scenario, you convert them back to “single user objects” in Blender (OBJECT → RELATIONS → MAKE SINGLE USER) and re-import them into the game engine.
I’ll PM you my email address so we can discuss your Syren project.
