Imperial Guard Basilisk Thread - UT40K: The Chosen mod for Unreal Tournament 3

Hey guys i have just started modeling an Imperial Guard Basilisk! Ive only been working on it for about 20 minutes, and this is what ive produced on the low poly model so far.

(Click to enlarge)

Also, geo, how many polys/tris should i be aiming for in a vehicle of this size?

4-5k for the chassis + 2k for the gun/turret, please check the GW site Games-workshop.com for more pics

Yeah ive got plenty of pics from the net and ive taken a few from DoW:SS. But i do have one question.

In the DoW games, the turret can't actually rotate left to right, it can only tilt up and down. In order for it to shoot to the side, the whole chassis needs to be moved. Should i make it like this? Or should i make it so that the turret can rotate clearly without intersecting the chassis or any other parts of the model?

no do it as the model is, i'll make it so the gun/turret can't rotate

Yeah i already went ahead and made it so that it cant rotate lol, seeing as ALL reference pics in the world use the same non-rotatable turret. Anyone wanna see some new WIP pics?

yeah, bring 'em on!

OK as soon as i get this track thing downpat ill be posting up some WIP pics

By biggest_kid at 2009-10-26

By biggest_kid at 2009-10-26

By biggest_kid at 2009-10-26

By biggest_kid at 2009-10-26

By biggest_kid at 2009-10-26

Theres the newest WIP pics, hot off the 3ds max renderer lol. If you can spot anything wrong please let me know. Apart from that i rekon its pretty good, currently at 4k tris.

As you can see the bolter needs some more work to make it look more like a bolter, as well as the underside of the tank. If anyone has any photo's of what a basilisk looks like underneath, please PM them to me, dont post them here. I also have not added the track guards yet. Anyway enjoy

I wouldn't worry too much about the underside of the tank. It would be a rare occasion that a player actually sees it. As an example, do you know what the underside of the UT3 tank looks like? Or any tank from any game? Plus you are spending time, effort, triangles, and texture space if you do put details there, and all of these things would be better spent on the areas that actually will be seen.

I'm pretty sure that games workshop follows this same idea. Last time I looked under the plastic Rhino chassis, it was totally smooth and featureless. I suspect that's what you'll find under the Basilisk too.

But if you must be thorough, I don't think you'll find the information through Games Workshop. You'll probably have to make it up yourself. Look for real world references of the underside of tank chassis.

Oh, and the tank is looking pretty dang good!

Edited by: Ministry_3D

i've been under to many tanks/apc's, all they have is a drain plug/plate or 2 and a lot of dirt, trust me it's not funny

Ok good i can just add in some details with the texture then. But what about that smooth sloping angular surface under the bolter? What should i put there? Anyone got any reference pics of this area of a basilisk?

Also geo, i noticed there is tons of rivets on the Gamesworkshop tanks, and more specifically, the basilisk. Should i use very low poly spheres for the visible, "noticed-a-lot" rivets? And then just texture in the ones that dont get seen much? Or should i use textures/bump maps to do all the rivets?

PS. Thanks for the comments ministry

for the front have a look at this one Fusedcreations.com
as for the rivets just use a texture with a normal map unless we have lots of polys to spare

Do you mean normal map or bump map for the rivets? Also, what should i be aiming for in the way of tris on this model again?

normap maps
main chassis should be ca 6k triangles
maingun/turret ca 3k triangles

So about 9k triangles for the whole model then? And i thought you couldn't actually raise or lower the geometry using a normal map, so what do you mean do the rivets with a normal map?

rivets on a game model are mostly just wasted polys which is why i said to use normal mapping for them.
think about it, if 1 rivet equals 16 triangles how many would that make for the whole model.
normal maps don't raise the geometry they just make it look that way, it's a form of cheating to add detail but not polys

Ok ill use normal maps but i cant see it working. Ill post some pictures up as it most likely is not going to work.

it'll work if you know what you're doing. Ask if you need any help.

Ok how would i go about doing this then? I just had a short stab at it then, which failed miserably. I copied the "chasis_low" over, added a bunch of small spheres to it, then attached them all together along with the chasis and renamed as "chasis_high." This is now the high poly version of the chasis. Nothing has been changed except the cylindars added to it.

I then proceded to normal map it, which worked fine. Only when applied to the low poly chasis, the rivets look horrible. They dont look raised one bit, and just look like different colours in little patches.

Any suggestions?

I don't think you're applying the normal map correctly. That and I'm not sure you quite know what a normal map does. The normal map doesn't make it look raised like geometry does, it just affects how light hits it. Make sure you're plugging it into the normal map slot, too, not the diffuse channel.

Yes ive done normal maps before, i know what im doing. Im definitly not putting it into the diffuse, im putting it in the normal map slot correctly. For a normal map to work you need similar topography in the low poly model and the high poly model right? So if my low poly has no rivets, how the hell is the normal map meant to work if my high poly is covered with rivets.

Unless geodav means bump maps, which is what i call the grayscale map which gives the illusion of surface height?

EDIT: Yes i think when geodav says normal maps he is talking about what i refer to as a bump map. Is this how i should go about doing my rivets?

I use this nvidia plugin atm, it gives clean results for things like pivots, dark equals depth and light equals height, grey for neutral. this tool however gets harder for more organic things and such.

BTW desaturate dont grey sale!

When im using this try and keep your layers, things like paint would be a slightly lighter grey then whatever the meeting part is, very slight, because well paint does have depth <--example.

im trying to go beyond this method i just need more pratice, i want to master zbrush or mudbox, but i have trouble keeping it clean in those programs so far.

Flatten image before applying tool, if on model your bump seems wrong way for some weird reason, go back switch the 'Y' setting in the plugin in photoshop.

im not sure if max gives the same render results as ut3 with normals.

Edited by: Freeranged

zbrush and mudbox are much better for organic sculpting than they are for mechanical things, like tanks. I think it is better to use the heightmap method for that sort of thing.

Lol its ok guys i figured out what geodav was talking about with the normal maps quite a while back, now im just trying to uvw unwrap this stupid thing.