Week 6: Working Towards the End

Basic Mesh and Useful Renders

Wow, time is going fast. I had completely forgotten that it is Sunday already, so this post is going out a bit late. (Sorry!)

I started off this week by creating a basic 3D mesh of my sentry gun. Following on from last week I used my final silhouette and put it into 3DS Max and then used very simple box modelling techniques to create my mesh. While I was doing so, my main point of concern was whether my sentry gun is going to have 3 or 4 legs. This is something that I did not consider while creating the silhouette but after a bit of messing around in 3D I eventually decided on having 3 legs.

After I had created my basic model I then did renders from the front, side and perspective view. I did a very simple render with lighting to use as an overlay for my finals and also a clown render so I could easily select different parts of the sentry gun.

Lighting overlay (Perspective View)

Clown render (Perspective View)

Colourful Variations

After I had created my renders I then loaded the side view into Photoshop and started messing around with colours. I picked out several colours by looking at other guns from my moodboard and used them to come up with designs for my own sentry gun.

Colour designs

Remember how I mentioned that I wanted to give my sentry gun a medical theme in my last post? I stuck with this idea and included the symbol of life on each of my designs. I soon decided that I would choose designs number 6 for my final as I like how well the colours worked together.

The next step was to set up my final and do some value corrections. I had previously not done any values and just used my lighting overlay as a base so everything was quite mid-tone. After a bit of messing around I came up with a good set of values though and overall I am quite happy with the final design of my sentry. As of now I am currently working on completing the final and I don't have access to the latest version (I forgot to upload it as I was in a rush on Friday and I don't have access to the labs on weekends... whoops!) But just to show you what I am working on right now here is a picture of my unfinished final:

As you can see I adjusted the values already. I also decided on scale and I wanted my sentry gun to shoot syringes so I had to make sure it was big enough to fit syringes through the tiny barrels. On my up to date final I have finished the colour as well as the material reflections on both the side and front view and I am working on completing the perspective view, which shouldn't take me too long.

My plan for next week is obviously to finish this project as the deadline is the week after, so hopefully in my next blog post I will be able to show off my final as well my complete model in Unreal. I am a bit behind on my original plan, but I had already looked into Unreal and gotten to know the blueprints that have been provided for us and I am fairly confident, that I won't need much time to get my sentry gun to work in engine, so I will focus mostly on my mesh and textures throughout the week. Until next weekend~