Zmodeler Glaug WIP

[Half_Life]

I want to really get comfortable with ZModeler so I decided to attempt to model the Tactical Pod Glaug (from the anime Macross). I can only work on this a bit at a time so it will be broken into chunks over the next several weeks.

Here is the first bit of geometry – the “hands”. First here is the Zmodeler created low-poly base mesh:

Here is the same mesh with dynamic sub-d applied:

Once that was done to my satisfaction I applied normal subdivision twice and burned in the creased edges. I exported the OBJ and took it into Unfold3D to do the UV’s. Once I was happy with those I took it into Substance Designer for the base texturing and Substance Painter for some final texturing FX. I then rendered both “hands” using iRay in DAZ Studio where I plan to rig and render the finished model:

I’ll probably go back and tweak the “hand” textures (which are mostly procedural) a bit more when I am done with everything else, but otherwise I am ready to move onto the next bit of geometry.

Attachments

[Half_Life]

Some new updates – I finished the rest of his arms. Here is the low poly and the same with dynamic sub-d on.

[Half_Life]

More progress. Some things are really easy with Zmodeler, other things not so much.

[Dragon]

Hey, at least your trying. I am liking what your putting up, nice.

[Half_Life]

Thank-you.

Here are some more updates.

[Dragon]

Oh man, I thought the wings were the ends of gun barrels… oops- Silly me. Everything is looking cool.

[Half_Life]

More progress – I had to rebuild a few parts because the baking-in of creases was sometimes breaking the model for other apps (most notably my UV layout app). BTW, if you try Zmodeler avoid flipping edges as much as possible… it nearly always resulted in a crash.

[Half_Life]

At this point I think I am done Zmodeling, and am ready export for unwrapping UVs and texturing.

[Pro4210]

recognized it immediately. I had that thing as a model kit as a kid.
Looks great.

[Half_Life]

Thank-you

I probably have the same japanese plastic model kit, it was a popular robot here in the states back in the day, because of both Robotech and Battletech.

I have set up the rigging and UV’s now, so all that is left is texturing.

[Half_Life]

I’ve got all the base textures done via Substance Designer (with some basic tweaks in Substance Painter). Having all the base texturing as Substances means I have a ton of variability, so I can do several of these mechs together in a scene and each can have a completely different degree of damage/dirt.

I can also change the color scheme easily, and I may play with that a bit more before fine tuning a finished texture job in Substance Painter.

[undertow1]

thats pretty cool, nicely done! reminds of one of the old mega man mech suits for some reason

[Half_Life]

Mega Man – there’s another blast from the past

Thank-you, hopefully I can squeeze some more cool into it before I am done. I have been playing with the base material color scheme (and also modifying roughness and distressing parameters). The blue color scheme is basically how this mech looked in the TV show, whereas I think the more green color scheme is from the movie.

[Half_Life]

I worked on adding details to the textures a bit more and quickly created a “blast” prop in Zbrush to see if I could make the concept work with Iray shaders… in the closeup render the blast looks a bit too “blobby” for my tastes. But as you cans see from the second test render it works a bit better from a distance. I’ll refine/remake the blast, but what he really needs are some playmates to fight with… that is a job for another time. The background is just a prop set that came free with DAZ Studio, it is only there for a basic setting so he is not against plain background.

I have to get to work on other stuff, so I’m going to call Glaug done, and work on modeling some other Macross mechs another time. In the meantime I will do a final QA pass over the whole thing and, when I am satisfied, share the model with anybody who wants it – when I do share it I’ll post the link on my Google+ page.

[Half_Life]

I had a need to do a finished render while testing the new version of Maxwell Render, so I used my Glaug model. The lighting was created using an existing commercial HDR image which was modified to suit my needs using HDR Light Studio.