New Unit Preview Mech

[Kinboat]

GhengisFarb requested a heavy Mech unit in the unit request thread.... Here's my try. All I have so far is the default.

 

[GhengisFarb]

Looks real good Kinboat, I've been thinking of getting some new software so I could start trying to make some units, what do you use? So far I figured out that BlueO uses Lightwave (best price I could find was about $1100), Womoks uses Maya 3.0 ( I found Maya 4.0 Unlimited for $695-student price) Maya looks great but I can't find any support software like character sets, etc. Could you use Poser 4 to make humanoid units?

 

[Womoks]

nice , Kinboat !

hep, one question , how did you keep the shadow ? ( personnaly , when i want to keep the shadow , i have to render 2 passes per frame , one with the model , one with the shadow )

oh, and just one little thing : maybe you could make it more textured , not too many , but some dirt or decals would be great.

tchô!

For Genghis Farb , if you don't want to model your own characters , there's some free models available on the net ( humans, animals etc...)
Well , Poser 4 is sympathic for fast character animation , but you'll be limited with all other tasks ( modeling , texture , rendering )
Lightwave is a very good tool , but 3dstudio Max is the most popular , and you'll find a fantastic source of tutorials and models on the web. Maya is surely the best , but it's quite hard to find related stuffs.

 

[Ed O'War]

Looks good. Civ 3 can always use more giant mechanized killing machines.

 

[Kal-el]

love those old Macross/Battletech mecha.

how 'bout making the excalibur? very similar to the one you already have just a change to the arms.

 

[GhengisFarb]

I working on an adjusted mod that merges the Industrial and Modern Ages together and makes the last age a futuristic one, but I need a a wide range of futuristic units. That's why I was wanting more Mechs and was wanting to create my own units.

Question for Womoks, can Maya import input from other programs like Poser? The reason I was looking for pre-made objects is that I Figured it would be easier to start out modifying objects than starting from scratch although I've seen a lot of tutorials for Maya on the web. (Maya's info said you need at least 512 Mb of RAM, should you have more for the software to run smoothly?)

 

[Kinboat]

I use POVRay... and the Moray graphical interface of POVRay... Both are freeware or shareware... Probably not as good as any of the others but I'm on a tight budget and it works for the art I'm doing at the moment. To answer your question Womoks, I do one render and then touch it up in a photo-editing program... it takes some work changing the shadows to transparencies, pixel by bleeding pixel sometimes. I tried some camoflauge patterns, but it just muddled the image. It made it harder to tell what was what at such a small scale... But it did look cool larger

I'd be willing to try variations on this (different arms/colors etc) just let me finish this one... I've got the run animation done now. If someone could point me to a few websites with more pictures of these guys (don't know what series it's from) I'll take a look at what's there...

Glad you guys like it.

 

[Womoks]

Well, maya ( with free plugins ) can import .3ds , .obj and .dxf .
I think it's possible to export the model , but not the animation.

 

[GhengisFarb]

Here's some websites with images:
http://www.marcsmodels.com/revell-robotech.html
http://members.toast.net/tgreer/pics.html
http://www.starshipmodeler.com/mecha/mechintro.htm

 

[Kinboat]

Thanks for the sites... I've given the whole mech a more varied texture and heres a preview of the walk. Let me know what you guys think of the color (first one better? or is this an improvement?)

 

[Kal-el]

fan-f***ing-tabulous!!! This looks great.

 

[Kal-el]

I posted a bunch of gif animations of Battletech mecha over on this thread which was started by Scipio Africanu. There are other great images at the mech commander website

there are more images in the battlefield views/art gallery section of this site

 

[Kal-el]

Here are a bunch of images that I didn't post inthe other thread:
Warhammer

MadCat

Hunchback2c

Atlas

Fire Starter

Catapult

Various Frames

 

[GhengisFarb]

Originally posted by Kinboat
Let me know what you guys think of the color (first one better? or is this an improvement?)

I think I prefer the new one.

 

[Kinboat]

I have images of most of the common Mechwarrior Mechs... Infact I have a Model of the Madcat and a Uller Mech made for POVRay by someone else... Maybe I'll try to track down the creators and ask them for permission to change them into CIV3 units.