It has been far too long since I posted anything of my personal undertakings, so I thought I'd post a render of a model that I have been working on. The model is of an Israeli tank titled Merkava Mark IV. The body of the tank really caught my eye and I thought it was an incredibly cool shape, very different from many of the boxy or classic looking tank designs. My goal with this model is to use subd meshes exclusively. I understand that most production assets are not restricted to this limitation, but I wanted this project to push my subd modeling skills, and I feel that it has done just that. I also plan to pull the completed asset into Mari and tackle the texturing using its internal UDIM workflow and painting tools, and to ultimately finish the model by fully rigging it. I chose a tank because I had never modeled, textured, or rigged anything as complex as a tank. There are also many technical challenges involved in a tank, such as a very unique suspension system, treads, and the overall body motion being separate from its lower and upper half. Having worked in games for many years, a fully articulating tank is far above and beyond what would be necessary for a typical game asset, there are far cheaper solutions, that are much easier on game engines. So with this project, I wanted to create a film quality asset, at least that's my hope. With luck I will post more updates over the year, and we'll see where the project goes!
Created using Modo, Mari, & Nuke Studio, by The Foundry
