3D Mech Handbook

By Caitlin Farmer

Stimulus
3D Mech
Your task is to create a believable, mechanical, digital 3D model to be used as a
worthwhile asset in a computer game. Working from your original sketched
concept artwork produce a series of models You are asked to produce a design for
a single mechanised outcome, but it should have a range of various appearance
depending on the upgrades achieved by the player. For example it could have
enhances weapons or armour. It is important that you use all of the modelling
techniques used in the past and develop these to produce your highest standards
of modelling to date. Consider lighting, textures and cameras to produce the
highest quality outcomes.

Ideas
When I had first read the brief my mind went straight to animals because I have seen various mechs
that have taken inspiration from animals and they have looked better compared to mechs that
have been made to look like machinery as animalistic mechs have a much more organic shell and
bring a whole new understanding to the intricate way their bodies function in a similar way to the
complicated clockwork of a watch. But these ideas brought along a whole new level of frustration
as they involved complicated mesh work and a very high skill level with using 3DS Max.
So I decided to take a small part of a frog and use that as the base of my mech which was their
eyes. My original idea was for a scouting mech which did not engage in much combat but then
after doing some more research I decided making weaponry would test some of the more
challenging skills we have learned over the past several months.

Legal and Ethical Considerations

Some of the earlier designs for my mech does bear some resemblance to the monitors from
the Halo franchise. If this was an actual industry assignment then the makers of Halo, Bungie
could sue the design team for copyright infringement as we could be taking ownership of
their intellectual property.

Polygon Count and Image Resolution

Polygon counts are a major setback within the industry although a poly count
was not a restraint in this assignment. If there are more polygons in the model
then that model will cost more so they make low poly models and texture
them with high quality textures.

Output Size, File Size and File Type

File sizes are not as big as a setback within the industry as a polygon count but
file sizes can be a problem because in a bigger file there is more there that the
computer or console has to process and render which makes loading times
within the game much slower than if the file size was smaller.

Planning - Brainstorm

Mood board

One of my first ideas was

a mechanised frog and
as you can see I started
to map out a standard
frogs skeletal map. After I
started to research how I
would go about making a
mesh from this image but I
had no luck in finding any
help with doing so. I then
decided to revisit my
ideas and sketches and
came up with the next
sketch.

So I came up with this

design where a sphere
had several spot lights and
floated around but I
decided it needed to look
more interesting than that
so I came up with this
sketch. I kept the sphere
and lights but added a
support frame a bottom
casing and robotic arms
that support the mech
and allow it to move.
These arms and hands
would look very blocky
and robotic. This design
also had no weapons.

After I started doing some

concept designs and I
removed the arms and
replaced them with a
propeller. I also introduced
a minigun as an idea. I then
refined the front of the
sphere design and the
propeller evolved into a
jetpack which led to one of
my more applicable
designs.

I then took my jetpack

concept and my
simple understanding
of propulsion systems
such as nuclear
rockets and space
rockets to try and
explain the working
mechanics of the
jetpack such as the
fuel which after
research would either
be xenon or cold
nitrogen. While also
trying to figure out
how this would create
the necessary force to
propel the mech and
keep it balanced and
in control.

Even though I had come to a

rough conclusion as to what my
mech would look like I still
needed to show variation and
several different design types
just so I had some idea as to
what variables I could swap in
and out to make the six
variations the brief has asked
for.

This is a sketch of the various

components and layers to
my original mech design
and on the next slide there is
a clearer version with some
early thoughts for the
textures of the various
components.

Properties and Backups

Each scene has its own set of properties which can be changed or
maintained in the render setup or environments tabs. Files can corrupt
themselves for various reasons and this is why it is important to have backups
of your scene saved in different places such as other computers, USB drives or
on an external hard drive.

Viewports
In the original settings when you load up 3DS Max you will be faced with 4
viewports all showing a different perspective or mode. One of the modes you
can set a viewport to is the wireframe setting. This allows you to see the
outlines of all your assets and each asset has its own colour outline. Each
viewport is manipulated separately from the others so this allows you to move
one viewports view without changing any of the other viewports. There are
various viewport controls that can be found in the lower right hand corner of
the application. Some of these controls are; pan, orbit, maximise viewport size
and there is also a command that maximises only one viewport to the size of
the whole viewport dock.

Virtual Cameras
You can find virtual cameras under the button on the right hand toolbar by
clicking the camera button. You can render from the cameras viewpoint.

Wide shot/ Extreme Long shot; a shot from a distance. This is frequently used as
an establishing shot that sets the location.
Aerial shot; Also called a crane shot or an overhead shot this is often used for
helicopters within films.
Long shot; the asset can be seen from top to bottom.
Mid shot; the asset can be seen from top to half way.

Medium close up shot; the framing is a quarter of the asset.

Extreme close up shot; only a top part of the asset can be seen.

Lighting Techniques
Photometric lights use photometric (light
energy) values that enable you to more
accurately define lights as they would be in the
real world. You can create lights with various
distribution and colour characteristics, or import
specific photometric files available from
lighting manufacturers.
A target light has a target sub-object that you
can use to aim the light.
A free light has no target sub-object. You can
aim it by using transforms.

The Mr (mental ray) Sky Portal object provides

an efficient method of gathering existing sky
lighting in interior scenes without requiring high
final gather or global illumination settings that
would result in excessively long render times. In
effect, a portal acts as an area light that
derives its brightness and colouring from the
environment.

Standard lights are computer-based objects that simulate lights such as household or office lamps,
the light instruments used in stage and film work, and the sun itself. Different kinds of light objects
cast light in different ways, simulating different kinds of real-world light sources. Unlike photometric
lights, standard lights do not have physically-based intensity values.
A spotlight casts a focused beam of light like a flashlight, a follow spot in a theatre, or a headlight.
A target spotlight uses a movable target object to aim the light.
A spotlight casts a focused beam of light like a flashlight, a follow spot in a theatre, or a headlight.
Unlike a targeted spotlight, a Free Spot has no target object. You can move and rotate the free
spot to aim it in any direction.
Directional lights cast parallel light rays in a single direction, as the sun does (for all practical
purposes) at the surface of the earth. Directional lights are primarily used to simulate sunlight. You
can adjust the colour of the light and position and rotate the light in 3D space.
Directional lights cast parallel light rays in a single direction, as the sun does (for all practical
purposes) at the surface of the earth. Directional lights are primarily used to simulate sunlight. You
can adjust the colour of the light and position and rotate the light in 3D space.
An Omni light casts rays in all directions from a single source. Omni lights are useful for adding "fill
lighting" to your scene, or simulating point source lights.
The Skylight light models daylight. You can set the colour of the sky or assign it a map. The sky is
modelled as a dome above the scene.

Texturing Techniques
There are a few different ways to texture an asset. You can use the simple, straight forward
way which uses the default built in textures that wrap themselves around the asset with no
seams or distortions. Although there are many textures to choose from it does have a certain
limit to how many textures are in their library. You can go into the modifiers panel and use the
UV Unwrap tool to gain a template of the asset and then you can import it into Photoshop to
create your own textures.

Rendering
When it comes to rendering there are several different rendering procedures
that can be used such as scanline or mental ray renderers. Scanline can
render much quicker than Mental Ray but Mental Ray gives you a more
detailed render than scanline.

Scanline
The scanline renderer renders the scene as a series of horizontal lines. It is one
of the production renderers provided with3ds Max, as opposed to
the interactive renderer used in viewports. Images produced by production
renderers display in the rendered frame window, a separate window with its
own controls. The scanline renderer is the original 3ds Max renderer, and it is
the default production renderer choice when you first use the Render Setup
dialog

Mental Ray
The mental ray renderer from NVIDIA is a general-purpose renderer that can
generate physically correct simulations of lighting effects, including ray-traced
reflections and refractions, caustics, and global illumination.

These are the first two mech variations

I created.
The red one has a simple propeller
made from boxes and cylinders and
the two mini-guns are made from
basic cylinders as well. And the base is
a sphere.
The blue to its side however was slightly
harder to make as it includes a
jetpack. The base is the same however
there is no propeller. The jetpack is two
capsules with a cylinder joining the
two with a belt make from many
different boxes surrounding the
capsules. The buckle was made from
simple boxes as well.

These are my third and forth variations.

The green one has a hemisphere as the cockpit and an aeroplane/helicopter
tail. This was made from a cone that I stretched a poly from the original cone
mesh.
The yellow submarine was made from the basic shell of the helicopter but I had
cloned and rotated it by 180 degrees to create the beck fin and had made
smaller fins from boxes as well as a light from cylinders, spheres and cones.

These are the last two variations of

the mech. The single wheel on the
mechs are their only mobility.
The orange mech has a different
position for the mini-guns and has a
single wheel.
The green mech has a single minigun in the centre of the sphere at
the front as well as two spot lights at
angles on the top of the sphere.

Overall my mech variations are of a good quality but they do look very simplistic and could have had more detail added to them
all but I think that in this case the simplistic nature suits the end result. I also could of made textures using the UV unwrap tool but
due to some of the complex maps I was unable to colour them decently without many mistakes therefore I had used pre-sets and
changed a few of the options and level to obtain a different look to the original pre-set. I had restarted this project many times
some because I had reached a dead end in my development and twice as all file copies had become corrupt so I needed to
start again. My production skills have improved from the last 3D assessment I have done but there are still many things I have left
to learn before I become a capable 3D modeller. Although my mechs do not match the amphibian theme I was going for some
variations are aquatic and they are all small in size. Compared to the last assessment my workflow and time managing skills have
vastly improved as I have managed to complete several variations all textured and with suitable lighting and camera positioning
within the given time frame. As far as industry standards are concerned I think my mech has just fallen short as it looks more like a
childrens bath toy then a mech and it looks more plastic than mechanic. This being said next time I would change the texturing
materials to look more metallic to give the desired effect and this would be achieved by muting the colours to more of a limited
greyscale than a wide bold colour range. I had help with several of the assets but the majority was made by myself. I have
implemented a daylight system with a Mr Sky portal to cast shadows and bring depth to the textures on my mechs. I didnt
encounter many technical problems as my skills and resourcefulness have improved greatly since the start of this project. In the
beginning I was going to make a frog mech but the creation of the mesh was extremely tricky and I had even tried with Autodesk
Maya to create the mesh. After failing on all fronts by myself I then tried to look up tutorials online but to no avail so I decided to
change my idea to make the final outcome more accessible. One of the trickier assets to make was the propeller as the shape of
the blades were difficult to replicate so I ended up choosing to use a simple box. The camera placement was to view all the
mechs in an assembly line formation. I used a bubble diagram to show some of the idea development paths and to gain a basic
foundation plan of a mech. The concept art shows the start of the drawing stages of the plan and how it has developed. One of
my favourite pieces of concept art is the page explaining in simple scientific detail with sketches of the jetpack. This page shows
that I have thought of some of the real world applications of the mech and the mechanisms needed to make it physically
possible. Although we could have made any visual design for this assignment we were all limited by our technical and mental
ability when it comes to 3DS Max. I have used the scanline renderer as the NVIDIA Mental Ray could not render the materials I
have used on my mech. The brief allowed for a great deal of creative influence although making a mech that does not exist yet
or looks visually different to most of the mechs made within the industry so this brief was definitely quite a challenge. There were
many different routes I could have taken with this and I chose an organic feel to my mech as during my research I had found that
some of the best looking mechs had a more organic shell compared to a more rougher shell.

One of the ethical issues I had run into was the spherical base of my mech which looked like the monitors from the Halo franchise
which is copyright infringement if this was for a company that would be publishing this mech. During the whole production we had to
keep the clients brief and terms in mind so that we were doing the correct work and were not going off course. The concept process
of this assignment took between two to three weeks to complete. The development process had taken about another couple of
weeks and the construction process had filled up the rest of the time we had left.