Drill (1)

[Viech]

Have a look at the Drill concept made by alex_bo:

The Drill is the resource mining structure of the human team and collects some invisible resource floating around everywhere. Neutrinos, purple matter, space vibrations, something like that.

The model should be rotationally symmetric and doesn't need to have an animation (but it can have one if you figure something out). Style wise, it should be similiar to the reactor. However, it needs some different features to clarify that it doesn't distribute power but collect a resource:

• The glowing core will use a different color and effect.

• A potential animation of the Drill should not include stuff rotating around its core.

• The drill will also be much smaller as the reactor, less than half the height/width/length (so less than one eighth volume wise).

[sinusoid]

OK, I'm taking care of the model+texture+animation.

[kharnov]

You'll want to stay around 6-8k tris, and the textures should be in 2048 lossless.

[Viech]

sinusoid, can you show the status of the model?

[sinusoid]

Viech: yes, sorry for the delay. There was quite a bit of family-related turmoil here, and things were slow for the past two weeks or so. Getting back on track now, though on mobile internet.

So, this is a block-in, mostly faithful to the concept (using a single core instead of the three hinted on in the sketch, but proportions are dead on)

001.blockin.jpg (24.45 KiB) Viewed 700 times

then I gave it a sculpt pass, to block in details and work on the silhouette - and I'd like some input on it, since I decided to go 'inside-out' with the details compared to the generator. The structure will be much smaller, so I thought that a more intricate shape would be better for it. I'm also designing it for a vertical, non-rotational movement, as per guidelines.

002.sculptpass.jpg (56.53 KiB) Viewed 700 times

I started to test+retopo from the sculpt, to see how the workflow goes, gobbling up some tricks I picked up in the mean time to simplify topology:

003.retopo.jpg (21.62 KiB) Viewed 700 times

It's a second pass due to a power outage at the new place :/

[Viech]

I haven't seen sculpting in hard surface modeling before, will the result look smooth?

[sinusoid]

Viech: just as in the last screenshot. None of the sculpt will be left in the final model, I'm using the sculpt as a spatial reference point only.
The final effect won't be much different than the one Chris did for the reactor (though I hope I can match in quality!)

(you can sculpt hardsurface, but that's rather tedious and less straightforward than doing it from the mesh, at least with the tools available at present).

[Viech]

I see, looking forward to the result then.

[Viech]

Any update? If not I'll have to reassign soon.

[Viech]

I thas been more than three weeks since the last update, I'll close this attempt.