Ornathopter - Game Model
 

This was a project we were working on in class at Escape. We had about 3 days to get as much done as possible to complete the model from a concept sketch (unable to show you that at the moment sorry, but will try to get permission).

It's not something I would've normally have thought to model but it's actually rather good fun. There were 2 vehicles to choose from based on a Flushed Away / Stuart Little style game that was planned but never made it. The first was a Teapot Submarine, the other was this - the Ornathopter. Made of a battery, electric motor, a few furniture casters, a couple of beer lids, a cork, lollysticks and other stuff. If you're wondering, the main character is a mouse, who has a professor mouse constructing vehicles and weaponry for him out of random household bits n pieces.

This will get finished shortly as my course has now ended and I need some portfolio-ness while I'm currently unemployed. After this is complete, I will go back and basically redo almost everything else of mine in the WIP's section ... the low poly axe should be fine as is but the speeder and rider are almost certainly going to be restarted.

The modelling is still in progress so this is NOT a finished AO render! It's just easier to see details like this. Eventually it'll be textured and normal/AO mapped. Model limit is 10,000 tris. Crits welcome chaps.

Looks nice, but looks like more than 10 000 tris... how many is it?

Thanks, at the moment, i'm at about 8800. So I'm not heading seriously over budget but yeah, I will need to cut back a bit in places to get the rest done. Hopefully it shouldn't affect the visuals too much, if at all really. Well, thats the plan anyway!

I'll have another update tomorrow night, as I plan to get the grey model done by tuesday.

Nice model, simple and sweet. I'm impressed that your poly count seems very low. What does AO stand for (excuse me I'm a rookie).

AO = Ambient Occlusion. I would explain it but you're better off looking for a proper definition. Thanks for the comment - if the polycount seems higher than it is then I'm doing an ok job i guess!

Here's an update AO render. The gearing + rotor's are modified to create a controlled lift. Kind of unnecessary some might say for a fantasy vehicle but my tutor said we must include a counter rotor somewhere. I think it's turned out ok. I've chucked out the placeholder rear wheel too and sorted it. Funny thing is now I'm down to about 7700 as I had to take the drillbit out for modifications which was tri heavy. I also cleaned up a bit elsewhere so I've got more polys to play with for wires, glue, staples and other fastening stuffs.

And yes, I know the switch is floating :) I'm probably changing it a bit for a variable lever switch thing soon.

Next thing is adding a bit of meccano (or similar) to hold the rotor up. It's gonna be a long night. :)

Cool little model!

Cheers dude :)

Right I've started getting down to details. I've bevelled the wood and placed the wires and some staples. I need to solder the wires to the switch still, and tape the excess wire to the frame. I also have to add glue, some string, and possibly another staple or two to secure the chassis together.

Thankfully I'm at 8800 tris at the moment (cleaning up along the way) so I'm not struggling to stay in budget. Thoughts and crits appreciated.

hey man looking good. what are you AO settings there? getting a nice detailed render and when i did mine it just wasnt as clear?

keep up the good work

Thanks rcb25! Does yours come out grainy when you try it? If thats the case, just click on the mib_amb_occ node and open its attributes. Up the samples from 16 to whatever you require. Best way to test is good old power of 2, go from 16 to 32 to 64 to 128 etc until you're happy with the result!

Hope that helps!

So coool that no critic can had.....really nice

cheers mate will give that a crack. did you apply the same AO material to the walls and floor? i love how clean it looks!

im loving the detail of the wires. how did you model that as my current turntable project may require some fiddly wires like that and I dont no the best way to do it. Nurbs cylinders?


robin

Thanks Gamester :)

rcb25 : Well I only have a 'floor' in my scene, no walls. To get the 'total white' effect just open the attributes for your persp camera, change under the 'Environment' tab the background colour to white.

The wires are really simple. Make a face of the shape you want your wire diameter to be (circular, square... as many edges as you like). Use the CV curve tool to create your wire path from the center of the face/s. Select face/s, then shift select the wire coming out of it. Use the extrude option box to extrude along selected curve with however many divisions you like. Don't worry about getting it right first time, just adjust the divisions in your extrude history and even the control vertex points on your CV curve history after its created to move the geometry. Hope that makes sense :s

cheers man.. much appreciated! wow there is so much to learn. when you think you have one thing down something else pops up! haha

Indeed :)

Well here's what I've ended up with. Edit : Rendering another view so you can see new bits better.

Anyway hopefully starting to unwrap soon! The model won't change much from here so this might be the last wipshot for a bit. Constructive crits appreciated!

I've got to size up the glue a lot... just noticed :/ It's under the switch and under the first bit of cork. Far too hard to see at the moment.

Nice render man, love the model. Are you going to be texturing it?

Thanks meredith, the model will be fully textured with color, normal, occlusion and gloss maps. UV'ing is on the way after some changes to the model.

I've have a list of the things i've been told to change by my acting 'boss' (my ex-tutor):

The lollypop stick blades are too short. Need to add about another 'inch' to them all.

EDit: Almost forgot, I've been asked to strengthen or add support to the front wood struts.

Change the front wheels a bit to give a more interesting shape.

Get rid of a few 5-siders i missed (:( doh)

Apart from that he said it was looking good, so hopefully I'll be able to begin UV'ing later this afternoon. UV'ing will take about 2 days (I might do 2 sets - 1 normal/occ and 1 for colour/gloss).

looks good man i say you should turn the wheels into little thread spools... just my opinion...

KUTGW:beer:

Cheers mate, yeah I know what you mean about thread spools they almost look like them already... but ultimately the task is to follow the reference as close as possible so I can't take those kinds of artistic liberties. :(

Just sorted the rotor blades out... to me they look a bit too long now but when I look back at my previous renders they did look short before. Ho hum. :/

Worked a tiny bit on the wheels but not happy with them so I'll play a bit further with them when I've placed the new support beam. I'll do another render later when I'm officially 'done'.

I like it! Keep up the good work!

Sparticus

Cheers wasatch5_sparticus! Well after a couple of minor changes, my model has now been approved to move on to UV. So without further ado, I'm getting on that today! In the meantime, here's a couple of up-to-date AO's.

and from the front again to compare:

LOL, Bloody typical!!;)


yeah I saw this, nice design. My only gripe are those blades, they look like icepop sticks. longer and thinner are gonna improve those. Get some gyrocopter references, like Little Nelly' from James Bond

Otherwise nice

Jay

hahaha if you've been reading the updates i'm pretty sure they're supposed to be popsicle sticks... he's already got bottlecaps and a 9V battery in it. ;)

Neostrider

No I haven't, like most people I dont check every posting made, despite being part of admin. This particular posting came to me via PM from Petrol himself to get a more honest opinion on the whole model. I kind of got the idea of what it was made of anyhow, but to justify this taking off I felt it needed to have longer, and perhaps more flexible blades like that of a gyrocopter.

Many thanks for your heads up though, I'll look before I leap next time...

Cheers
Jay

And those wheels remind me of computer-chair wheels...well, the front ones anyway.

LOL Jay :D

That made me chuckle. Yeah this this is supposed to be a balance between fantasy and reality. A bit like stuart little or similar. I'll extend the lolly sticks a bit further, but I cant change them as they are part of the concept. Cheers for taking a peek for me dude.

Oh by the way severinianthony, they are indeed casters for a chair or something similar like a cabinet. As it happens they look a lot like my computer chair's wheels too :)

Update: Model was approved, so I began UV'ing a week ago, but i've been working on a competition entry for another site for a couple of days and went to see relatives for the bank holiday weekend. I've put in some serious work on it now though, and I'm pleased to be now over the halfway mark, and hope to be fully UV'd by the end of tonight.

Roll on the texturing - looking forward to some normal mapping now.