Constructing the high-poly - Vehicle

I have already given a basic breakdown of my methodology in previous posts and a full work plan, so this will simply highlight the construction techniques of each major areas. I did only high-poly the essentials before mirroring them when required but for the sake of showmanship added a lot more detail then really neccersary.

Starting with the front plow, most of the required geometry was there from the blockout/ low-ish poly so all that was really required was extra edge loops to create a sharp-ish edge on each support to capture the light. The crease tool was used in moderation on the main body as i found by combining both this and extra edge loops, i could create a very fine, machined edge.

I did add a lot of extra bolts down the front of the plow to break up the monotony but these will just be normal mapped for the most part in the low poly. 

The main body was probably by far the most awkward piece to high poly but this was simply due to trying to get the window armour to line up with the curves of the main chasis. It took a fair bit of trial and error but as the blockout/ low-ish poly had very neatly constructed geometry, it removed a lot of possible problems as I could just follow the already existing awkward body shape for refernece.

As i had already modelled an air intake in the past, i knew roughly what I was doing and used this as an excuse to improve on my previous modelling. Looking at my past work for reference, i brought up multiple images from the Fast & Furious movies and set myself the goal of modelling an asset with at least 50% more detail, even going as far to create small pannels to prevent debree and sand from flowing in to the engine.

The mid section of the vehicle probably require the least work from blockout to high poly as i could mostly just add edxtra edge loops and make use of the crease tool once again to define the hard edges, especially since i went rather overboard with the geometry originally for the railings. As with every other area of the vehicle, i did want to make it structurly sound as a moving fortress and decided to quite literally re-enforce every possible area of weakness i could see with the logic of "the more detail in the high poly, the easier the texture work will be". 

Being the only two real props on the vehicle body, these made for quite a nice change in pace with the modelling. The vast majority of geometry was already present for both so all i had to do was look at some reference for the jerry can and barrel and add in basics, fully knowing that due to the amount of detail on the vehicle, their UV spaces would be fairly small, making it pretty pointless to go overboard with the detail as i had done previously. At this stage i had practically abandoned the crease tool due to the number of bugs it was causing so a small drop in quality can be seen in the assets, mainly some edges looking a bit too rounded.

The wheel is quite an odd asset. It by far got the most questions when it came to construction even though, when broken down, it becomes probably the most simplistic of all the assets bar the barrel. It is just a simple cylinder with a few extrusions as most of the detail comes from the tread. For this, i looked a lot at sand tyres , made a few pieces of the tread and copies them round the outside of the clinder, setting the pivot point to the center point of the wheel. This created the illusion of far more complex geometry than is really present.

The tracks involved a lot of research. I created a moodboard of practically every half-track design i could find and took the pieces i liked best. The physical track in almost every case was simply made of rubber with metal sheeting pinned on for added grip. This made life a lot easier for me as the real variations were made mostly of the same component but at varying sizes, allowing me to just duplicate the more complex shapes without them ever looking out of place.

This is the high poly in preperation for week 3. I recieved feedback from multiple people on what they liked and what they didn't like for the entire high-poly modelling process. Due to this, the chasis did change quite drastically but it didn't make very much sense modelling this in to the high poly as i could just model the extra details in to the already constructed low-poly and bake down a single shock absorber to save time.