I just rigged him today. Meet Heinie's French counterpart, L' Bonhomme Mechanique!

Will they get along, or will they bash the bolts out of each other? :-)

Here are a few picctures. Enjoy!

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A detail of his engine pack

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...and a close-up of his head.

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hehe, nice
You've definitely caught that WW1 french soldier look on him.
Are you going to be animating them together in an episodic way or just to play?

Si

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Heh Lt Jim

remind of the robot Tick Tock from the movie Return To Oz. Nice job

Jay

Tick,

Yes, I intend to both animate them and play with them as well. So far the rigs seem pretty indestructable and a LOT more flexible than the rigs I used a year ago (which is why I didn't put all that much up last year! :-) )

Jay,

Yes, I suppose Tick Tock and Bonhomme would have been contemporaries! I haven't seen the movie, but I have seen stills and remember the original illustrations from the L Frank Baum books. The Tin Man had that gangly look as well.

Thanks for the compliments!

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Jim I love these man. They made me smile and they have tons of character already. I say this with love: They're so good that they are worth keep refining. I think both in texture colour, speccularity, and material indication. I miss some scratches, material variety and contrasts, I think. You have a great base, I just think continue this positive trend with more little tweaks. Push it some more aye.

It probably come down to likes but I'm thinking the purple guys eyes and nose need colour tweaking. I am also a sucker for the matte surface look. You have every right to totally disagree with me

I know you're itching to animate these fellaz and I'm really looking forward to see them come to life.
I love the time period and the design language. Are they from referrence or are you more capturing a style from times gone by here?

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Also Jim don't be angry with me for pushing you with crits hehe. I sincerly think with your awesome animation skills combined with ace robots, that you will have a killer combo for your reel. I'll see if I can make a 3D scan of myself so these robots have something to bash on

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Currently working on reclaiming Space
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Alpha,

I'm already refining them (Frenchy now has brass fittings around his bakelite mouthpiece)! The "German" robot was actually a total redesign from a much cruder version I did last year. I agree with you on scratches, material variety, &c, and right now that's limited by my mapping, rendering, and lighting skills! I actually have a decent method for projecting scratches as a bump map, but I have to find that "perfect" bump level.

As for the designs themselves, I took my initial cue from "Boilerplate" (a fictional Victorian-era "mechanical man"; check out the website) and ran from there. I did some design sketches and tried to give everything a WWI era feel while keeping it simple and cartoony (with animation in mind, as that is what I do). In the era before industrial grade plastics, you had steel (enameled), copper, brass (and lots of it), bakelite, black rubber, and wood. Those are the materials I am trying to perfect. I've been playing with straight Blinn materials, adjusting the specularity, diffuse, roll-off, and reflectivity until it looked reasonably convincing. I haven't done layered shaders yet, that's the next step! I too like the "matte" look, and I'm trying to limit the "factory fresh" look.

Rigging was a big issue, and I spent more time rigging than modelling, but so far the rig works much better than I thought it would!

I totally appreciate your comments and will continue to refine these. Who ever has a model that's really "complete"?! :-)

Thanks again!

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Ah very cool. I have to look up the victorian era robots. The WW1 feel is deffo here, and you're doing a great job with the feel of these bots.

Are these guys UV mapped? That will give you great control over where scratches, paintjob and highlights go. I'm no good with UV's but I'd be happy to help in any way I can and share what I learned about them from the previous monthly challenge. Would you prefer mail or instant messaging?

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Alpha,

Yes, they're UV mapped! 2046X2046. I confess I sort of "rushed" the UV map here because I wanted to get the character rigged. In reality, it didn't take too long to UV map this character, but poking stray UV's around is probably the most boring part. Painting the UV's (I do it in Photoshop) is probably the most fun part, but it can take a while (and like I said, I rushed it this time around)! I intend to go back and re-do it and give it a dirtier, "banged-up" paint job!

One problem I seem to have is using mental ray with a 4096 X 4096 Map. In fact, I'm not quite sure when to use different sized maps. FYI I'm steering towards film and animation as opposed to games, so larger maps aren't a problem. Any advice on that topic?

Thanks again!

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I have no advice on the topic. Particularly not when it comes to Mental Ray (I've not looked into any of it yet). I have no experience with high poly or insanely large textures. I think 1024x1024 is the largest I've ever worked with, and I think my machine would choke with 4096x4096's hehe. I hope some of the lads with more experience will chip in.

It is my understanding that the final output resolution of your work (film) will be the deciding factor, and that you have to compress to match the aspect ratio (2.35 to 1 or whatever you choose).
Here's a snippet from Maya Killer Tips 6:
"A texture map should ideally match the screen space of what it occupies in the render, but animation and perspective alter that simplicity. A good rule of thumb is to find the nearest proximity of the texture in relation to screen resolution and then scale down the resolution 75%. Texture aliasing should be avoided like mad cows, so shooting a bit smaller than screen resolution will ensure some stability in the texture, which will get visually crisper in animation anyway. Also, smaller textures equals less RAM and shorter render times"

Texture artist Leigh van der Byl has some clear thoughts on the topic that will help combine all this info
https://www.leighvanderbyl.com/pdf/size_does_count.pdf

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Currently working on reclaiming Space
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