I’ve started a kinda big (to me) project where I’m building a pretty known Mech-walker-robot thingy. The reference images are not that good and they vary in details, so I have to make some decisions myself. I’m fine with that because its somewhere between making a replica and building your own from scratch. Seam like a natural next step now that I’ve made a couple 100% copies of real life items, it’s time to bring in a bit of imagination and my own design.
It’s really complicated compared to what i have done before, so I expect that I will need a lot of help from you guys. I also love fiddling with details and I’m pretty close to being a perfectionist, so it will probably also take quite some time to get done.
Edit: Newest update to get the thread preview picture updated a bit:
Anyway, here is the first progress:
Edited out for now
The base of the foot is done, and I’m working my way up the lower leg part now.
I dont want to reveal what it is exactly that I’m building, I want to see how long it takes before someone can guess what it is So in the effort of hiding the very roughly blocked out body, I played a bit with the cloth modifier for the first time ever. The intention was to make a red silk cloth hanging over it like when you reveal a statue, bit I messed up the material so it now looks like a big piece of red plastic
I’m very excited about this project and cant wait till I get some more time to progress.
I guess the color gave it away?
But yes it’s the power loader from the Aliens movies, and thanks I love details but it’s also gonna make the project take very long.
I’m off to a 24 hour shift now, so i wont be able to do anything on it this weekend
Ah, Wega, your are the mech walker maker I was fascinated by this exoskeleton engine in the movie alien. I think an extended version or at least something in the same line was the mech fight suit in avatar.
You’ve made a good start and a nice modelling here, so nothing to mention at the moment. Keep it up
Added some more details to the body and made some good progress on the upper arm as well. had to try a couple of times before i got the arm right.
This thing is gonna kill my computer though, 200K and i havent even added detail loops and sub-surf’ed the arm, yet alone added the arm on the other side…
Nice progress - but you are right, it is hard to find reference images although I searched for them. So I can’t tell how close you are to the one in the movie.
Concerning that
This thing is gonna kill my computer though, 200K and i havent even added detail loops and sub-surf’ed the arm, yet alone added the arm on the other side…
You are talking about 200000 vertices? That’s not that much Do you experience viewport lagging or prolongued render times?
Minoribus: Yeah movie screen shoots are really low quality, but i’m just taking what I like the most from the different versions that I have found.
I’m now at 500k vertices, after i added the second upper arm and sub-surf’ed it. I was starting to bet a bit lag, but then I disabled doubled sided, and now it runs ok again. I’m just afraid that I will run into viewport troubles before I’m done, as i think I’ll be around 1.5-2 million vertices. Render times are fine for now, but again there is no materials applied…
And you added some nice detail with the embossed serial number! Did you enable VBOs under User Preferences / System together with disabling double sided? That should give some extra speed.
I dont plan to rig it no. I’m still practicing my modeling skills, and think rigging is a bit too advanced for me yet. But I have been thinking about the hinges, because they have to look like they can move for the thing to me believable. I was hoping that texturing them could help, but if it cant I might rework them later on.
Thanks for sticking with my thread minoribus
Finally a little update!
My computer broke down Tuesday, after a 3 days where I diddnt even turn the thing on. Got it up and running again late last night, and finally I got to model a bit today.
There is gonna be a pause in progress again over the next week, as I have my son this weekend and I’m off to Berlin Monday morning
Anyway, I just completed the lower parts of the arms, and next up is the forks for the arms.
Vertex count is now at 850k, and the viewport is still running fine…
So in the effort of hiding the very roughly blocked out body, I played a bit with the cloth modifier for the first time ever. The intention was to make a red silk cloth hanging over it like when you reveal a statue, bit I messed up the material so it now looks like a big piece of red plastic 
Do you experience viewport lagging or prolongued render times?
dosn’t metter.
