Lav-25

Time for another project! This time, I want some really good texturing practice with a complex mesh, so I’m going with an LAV-25. Progress so far:



Attachments


Some more work, some blocking out but also some details starting to get added


Looking good!

Thanks!
Cutting holes for the many hatches/doors in the body. If there’s anything I learned, its that the knife tool and some patience is 10x better than a boolean modifier…


I like this model - the tyres must have taken you some time - are you going to rig this with Ackermann steering? :smiley:

Cheers, Clock.

Thanks! The tyres were actually surprisingly easy to do since I found this one method of doing them, the most time consuming part was designing the tread. I kind of blended the most common tread found on LAVs with my own design. Although it’s not that big of a deal, because I’ve seen a few different treads in reference images. I’m slowly collecting any ref images I can find of the underside of the LAV-25, because I’m hoping to completely model the suspension. One thing that kind of scares me is that the suspension is fairly complicated because it has to run 8 wheels AND two propellers, and I’m already past 400,000 verts! By the time this thing is done it’ll surely be past 1mil. So to answer your question (in the most long-winded way), yep, I’m going to model and rig it.
Adding in some more details in the body/turret:


Looks really good! Can’t wait to see the final render :slight_smile:
400k verts - do you have subdivision surface on the hull? Unlike civilian cars with curvy hulls, military vehicles tend to be planes and angles, so maybe there’s a way to do hull without subdivs and save polygons for where they’re needed.
By the way you mentioned some method for doing tyres - is it array + curve one, or did you manage to discover a better way?

Thanks! I do have subsurf on the hull, but I need it for a lot of the hatches to be round. If I did that without subsurf, there’d be a whole lot of loopcuts messing up my mesh unnecessarily, so for now, while my computer can handle it, I’ll keep it on, and see what I can do to lower the polycount later on. As far as the method for making tires, in my opinion, I found a better way. I’ll show the process in a later post :smiley:

But for now, more details! (There’s a surprising amount of stuff on this thing, every time I look at a ref image I see something new.)


I blocked out the pintle-mounted 240 Bravo. Right now its lacking details, and its just floating where it should be, no mount yet.
There’s also a coaxial M240C on the LAV-25, but you can only see the barrel from the outside. Still debating whether my computer can handle a full detailed interior…


I’ve been caught up in a lot of work lately, but now that summer school is over I can get back to this project! Because of all the school work and stuff, I haven’t been able to do much work, but I did manage to finish up the M240. It’s missing some details, but my laptop is getting pretty slow so I don’t want to put many more verts into it…


She’s finally amphibious…


Very nice modeling! The details you’re adding makes the huge difference!

Very nicely detailed.

Very nice model @sdige, very clean and beautiful renders.

Thanks! Looking for and modelling all the little details is tiring, but definitely worth it.

Very nicely detailed.

Very nice model @sdige, very clean and beautiful renders.

Thank you both!

Here is the completed vertex-conscious suspension/drive train. I also went through and optimized all the meshes so now I’m at 680k. That gives me a little leeway to add more detail to the underside, but I’d rather use those verts on more noticeable parts, so if I add more to this it’ll be at the end.



Looking good! Lot’s of nice details here!

Thanks!

Added a few more details. I’m seriously still noticing stuff from ref images…but also now getting to details that I put off modelling when I first noticed them. Usually you’ll see LAVs with lots of bags carrying various things strapped to the just about anywhere. I might add a few of those, but first I have to be any good at sculpting…


From the thumbnail, I almost half expected this to be Jabba’s sail barge from Return of the Jedi. Nice progress on the tank, though :smiley:

Haha, I can totally see that… Thanks!

Got tired of modeling so as a break, I practiced texturing the wheels/tires. I could really use critique on my texturing throughout this project, because the whole point is to get better at it.



Painting the 3-tone NATO camo on the hull: