Equipped to Accessorize | Working on Equipment

     This week I opted to work on a piece of equipment because I had reached modeler's block with the mech's body. I was thinking of what to start with so I chose an item that is relatively separate of the main body.

    The Gefjun Net. The equipment is simple. It utilizes the in universe FLOAT system to keep these devices airborne around a target and disable enemy Knightmare Frames. The base technology is the Gefjun Disturber. The one depicted above are akin to that of fishing bobs. The design here is simple and easy to manipulate. 

    A large portion of my rendition draws heavily from Ultraman. So it was the first place I looked. My search did not take long as I found the perfect substitution. The Beta Capsule of Shin Ultraman.

    It's simple and easy to replicate. Or so I thought. I often prefer to work in quads only and keep the amount of separate meshes to a minimum. This made things difficult when I reached the top. It splits off into three posts with a cylindrical center piece imbedded in it. The line work I want to achieve through texturing and I didn't want to focus too much on achieving that look in modeling.

    I'll start first with the topology via the wireframe render. I kept it as simple as possible and utilized fencing to hold hard edges when subdivided. The center piece was duplicated and booleaned into the upper posts that were adjusted to match the reference. I ran into a lot of issues with the upper three posts as there was constant issues with the smooth preview and non-manifold geometry. I spent way too much time trying to figure out how to fix it rather than just starting from a previous save.

    Here I have the ambient occlusion and normal renders of the capsule. These are subdivided compared to the wireframe which was not. The center button region was the most difficult by far. The cylindrical elements were easy to work into one another but it was the spherical element that was causing some issues. I wanted to ensure that the surface didn't experience too much stretching and pinching, yet this area was the most bothersome. Despite having cut in spherical geometry into plenty of other object in the past this just eluded me. 

    Eventually I put some aiStandardSurface on some of the faces to reach a quick render for the week. 

    And viola. With some added point lights and just the right settings and I achieved a fairly gorgeous render. Now compared to the reference I did change some of the aspects of the device for my purposes. I wanted to match the light colors of the Gefjun Net devices, thus the top piece was changed to green and the bottom made an emissive red. I may play with the edge flow along the dimple's edge, but this is a device that will number in the many and won't be the center of attention. When I go to get beauty renders in Marmoset many of them will end up blurred out by depth of field and how I choose to dress the scene. I'm very satisfied with how it all turned out.

    Here are the stats for the mesh. At five thousand tris its on par for a center piece in a limited project class. Subdividing obviously cranks that number way up, but much like my other work I'm happy with how low poly it is. I hope to tackle more of the mech's body next week.