Modeling. Phase 3

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As you can see here the bulk of the modeling has now been completed. A few refinements still need to be done and then the texturing can begin.

Pre-Vis mark 2.

This is the next refinement of my Pre-Vis. I got a lot of feedback as how to improve from my original Pre-Vis. From the most basic, the rule of thirds. In my original Pre-Vis I had my horizon line in the middle of the screen, this results in a boring and less stimulating shot. So in this previs I have moved the horizon line to the botto, third of the screen and have also changed the ending camera to bring the viewer more into the action.

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Modeling. Phase 2

Here is a quick update to show the progression of the tanker model. As you can see he majority of the front is done now and I am now moving onto the back of the cab where the container will connect to. I have also started the base model for the oil container.

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First Pre-Vis

I want to get the story of my piece across early on and I know that in the Visual Effect industry Pre-Visualisation is key to working out the main stages of the shot and as a fast and cheap way to set up camera angles and show progression to clients. So here is my first Pre-vis:

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Modeling; Phase 1 of many.

As I had all the blue print views sorted out I could delve straight into the modeling phase.

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As you can see here, I decided to start by modeling the largest structures to give some shape to the truck as quickly as possible. This allowed me to get the basic curvature a scale of the truck from an early stage.

I then decided to move on to modeling the front of the cab as this was the clearest section on the blueprints model from and it kept me motivated by seeing how cool it was starting to look =D.

There are a few sections that I might need to break apart as my edge loops seem to be bunching up in parts and are too spread apart in others. I will quickly be able to see these errors by adding a highly specular material to my model. I will do this at various stages of the modeling process as a simple and fast quality control.

 

Textures and Reference

As this animation was going to be in a more realistic style than cartoony I needed to get really good reference material not only to model from but to use as textures to get the tiny scratches, scuff marks and dirt that are so hard to mimic by simply painting in photoshop. I went on fun little journey to the local motorway service station to get some really good reference images.

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These images are perfect for what I need, now I can start modelling =D.

Truck Design and Choices

My next step is to choose what type of truck design I want to model and subsiquently blow up. As seen in my moodboards I have look at many different tankers.

Here is a very common petrol truck withing the United Kingdom. This is a BP (British Petroleum) Truck, that has stopped at a petrol garage to refill. This truck is perfect for the design I am looking to mimic. However I do not like the front cab design and know that this cab design is out of date now.

Here is an image of a newer Mercedes truck cab. This cab design is more common at present and has a good visual design. As you can see in the image that this is just a test truck for mecedes and when they are bought by businesses such as BP they will respray them with their logos and colours.

As I liked the mercedes cab design my next step was to find really good reference with which to model from. I found some Mercedes truck blue prints. These were ideal as my model would then be perfectly to scale. As you can see in this image I have side, front and top views of the truck and have aligned them in 3D space so I can model accurately from all angles.