I've been modeling in Blender on and off for over a decade. Almost all my project are based on vehicles and equipment from the TV series "Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles". The current model that I am working on is the Ape Marauder mech suit. As you can see, I'm in the process of texturing it. The top pic is the original model from the show.
In my opinion, the Roughneck Chronicles were better than that abomination of a movie. And since you're trying to recreate the series, I don't think we can judge based on descriptions in the book.
Yeah the 3D animated series took the best parts of the book and the movie its own ideas into well made for the time series. Its actually pretty good, well thought out, and enjoyable to watch. My only gripe is that the series ended at the 2nd to last show in the series. Hey rawrecuit. Since your making making these models. Could you do us a favor.. Grab some friends and Finish the show!!! I think it only had one episode left and it would be pretty awsome to see a last episode with up-to-date graphics
Well, the work on the marauder model and itAâs textures have gone as far as I want to take it for now. Any changes I make to the textures from here on out are going to be subtle, small ones. I managed to get all the textures for this to fit onto two 2048X2048 UV maps. There are things that I am still not happy with. I used a lot of mirroring in the textures to keep the number of uv maps reasonable, and you can see it if you really look. IAâm hoping that when I put the model into some interesting backgrounds and give it some action poses it will be less obvious. I've put far too much time into this thing, and frankly, I'm kind of sick of looking at it:) I'll be glad to start work on something else.
Thanks for the feedback, everyone. I really appreciate it.
After I finished the Marauder I thought I would give building a bug another shot. IAâve tried building arachnids many times over the years since I started using blender, each time with less than spectacular results. One of my big glaring weak spots is organic modeling. This time I spent a week or so trying to get something good going before I gave up on it. I did learn a lot from the experiment, though, added a bunch more tricks to my repertoire. I managed to get some interesting things going in the model, but nothing close enough to the original to encourage me to keep going. Below is a screenshot of where I stopped.
In the center is a reference pic of the original warrior bug from the TV series (<a href="http://artopia1.com/troopers_commercialwork_02.html">downloaded from here</a>). I canAât tell if a lot of the detail that I am trying to model is actually a result of textures. It seems like modeling it would require far more polys than they would have likely have used.
Anyway, I moved on to another project, this time the Skimmer from the TV show. HereAâs a reference pic I downloaded from John McGinley's old website before it went belly up.
Here's my progress so far:
The work is going slow. I feel like I spent 98% of the time doing things that I will have to undo and redo. Progress is being made though, and I feel like I can get there from here.
Hey, this thing is starting to resemble a Skimmer! Spending gawdawful amounts of time trying to get all those smooth sloping angles right, but itAâs starting to pay off. DonAât think IAâll ever be able to get it dead on accurate to the original but I think it will end up being pretty cool.
Looks great! Those models really show how the design of many elements was superior to what the movie had shown (except for the standard ships, which were more impressive in the movie version).
Do you plan on also doing some of the stuff that's only shown in the DVDs' concept sections?
And where's Albert? Did he finally get a promotion?
IAâve been working on the pilot area of the Skimmer for the last week or so. I donAât have a lot of reference for it, because there just werenAât a lot of good views of it in the show. The instrument panel I may eventually replace with a bump map, if I can figure out how to make one good enough.
Walkyrje
Those seats look awfully close together for CapTroopers in armor!
Thank you for the critique. I looked my reference material over, and did a little resizing and spaced them a little more, but the layout is pretty close. Here's a view of some troopers sitting in them in the show to give you an idea of their scale.
lennier1
Do you plan on also doing some of the stuff that's only shown in the DVDs' concept sections?
And where's Albert? Did he finally get a promotion?
I would love to build some of the variant versions of the vehicles sometime. At the pace I work, though, it may take years to get around to it. I think the next project will be an attempt at building the power suits.
As for Albert, one of the great mysteries of the series is whether the poor little guy survived the incident on the "Dakota".
Great progress!
A few tweaks here and there and you can probably generate a normal map for most of that instrument panel.
Albert is only one of many easter eggs. IIRC to get even with Babylon 5 where they got to blow up Doug Netter (as President Santiago) one of the fallen soldiers in this show also had Ron Thornton's face.
It's been a long time since I posted anything on here, but I've actually been working on texturing the Skimmer model for several months. I've grown sick of looking at it, so it will have to be called finished, for now anyways.
Blender recently updated and the new version looks completely foreign to me. So the next project I start work on is going to be slow going as I learn the new interface.
Thank you for the encouragement. It's very much appreciated.
012, 23:49
meugen06
Can you tell me how you applied the decals.I also use Blender.
The model's pieces are UV unwrapped, then I export the templates and load them into photoshop. From there, you paint the textures over the templates, then put them back into Blender as textures. You will want to look for UV unwrapping tutorials to explain how all that is done.
Since finishing the Skimmer model, I have secluded myself in a distant, mountaintop monastery and set about learning the ways of Blender 2.6. I hated it with a deep hate at first but as I've worked with it, it's grown on me and I started to understand appreciate most of the changes that have been made since 2.49. I've been downloading and watching hundreds of video tutorials and I've been blown away by how little I knew before and how much Blender is capable of. Anyway, I've taken a stab at organic modeling, one of my weak spots , and was able to make a human head that bore a passing resemblance to the Johnny Rico character from Roughnecks. For the time being, until I find a good tutorial for modeling a male body, I've attached his head to a male base mesh model I downloaded from Blender Cookie. I'm working on building the powersuit now. Here are some pics of my progress. I'll throw some more up as I move along, but updates may be few and far between. I work slow.
Moving along at my usual leisurely pace. The shoulder pads were looking too puffy, so I've thinned them out some and continued making the pieces down the arm.
Progress being made. Added more parts to the chest piece, added the belly padding, made a belt and the flaps that hang down over the crotch and the butt.
My Roughneck trooper model moves forward. I made hip pads and pouches and then I've been working on the boots, and they are taking me a while, since my reference for them isn't the greatest. They are still very much a work in progress.
Posts
I have read the book several times and that is not how I picture the ones from the book.
Keep up the good work on this model.
Nice work so far.
From the look of it, this one is based on the 'ape' marauder from the 3d-animated series, not the generic mecha from the 3rd movie.
Thanks for the feedback, everyone. I really appreciate it.
Maverick Eagle, there were actually four episodes not finished for the series. This fan site has some good descriptions of what we didn't get to see.
Love this show, especially the designs of the weapons, vehicles and gear. If you haven't seen this show, it's available to stream on Netflix.
In the center is a reference pic of the original warrior bug from the TV series (<a href="http://artopia1.com/troopers_commercialwork_02.html">downloaded from here</a>). I canAât tell if a lot of the detail that I am trying to model is actually a result of textures. It seems like modeling it would require far more polys than they would have likely have used.
Anyway, I moved on to another project, this time the Skimmer from the TV show. HereAâs a reference pic I downloaded from John McGinley's old website before it went belly up.
Here's my progress so far:
The work is going slow. I feel like I spent 98% of the time doing things that I will have to undo and redo. Progress is being made though, and I feel like I can get there from here.
And the warrior bug looks to me like it's pretty heavily bump mapped.
Do you plan on also doing some of the stuff that's only shown in the DVDs' concept sections?
And where's Albert? Did he finally get a promotion?
Thank you for the critique. I looked my reference material over, and did a little resizing and spaced them a little more, but the layout is pretty close. Here's a view of some troopers sitting in them in the show to give you an idea of their scale.
I would love to build some of the variant versions of the vehicles sometime. At the pace I work, though, it may take years to get around to it. I think the next project will be an attempt at building the power suits.
As for Albert, one of the great mysteries of the series is whether the poor little guy survived the incident on the "Dakota".
A few tweaks here and there and you can probably generate a normal map for most of that instrument panel.
Albert is only one of many easter eggs. IIRC to get even with Babylon 5 where they got to blow up Doug Netter (as President Santiago) one of the fallen soldiers in this show also had Ron Thornton's face.
Blender recently updated and the new version looks completely foreign to me. So the next project I start work on is going to be slow going as I learn the new interface.
Heck yeah!!
The model's pieces are UV unwrapped, then I export the templates and load them into photoshop. From there, you paint the textures over the templates, then put them back into Blender as textures. You will want to look for UV unwrapping tutorials to explain how all that is done.
Gonna have to hunt this series down, caught the odd episode of it when it originally aired, but never got a chance to really get into it.
Thank you for the feedback.
My Roughneck trooper model moves forward. I made hip pads and pouches and then I've been working on the boots, and they are taking me a while, since my reference for them isn't the greatest. They are still very much a work in progress.