Project Metal Storm

xyz

Jesusemora
Regarding mech design/proportions in general.

Always make mech heads small (in proportion to the torso), low hung (it can safely go below the shoulder line), possibly even completely fused with the torso. This makes the mech more bulky, brutish and menacing, which is typically a vibe you'd go for with mechs. The big head in your current design makes it look kinda chibi, and therefore - harmless.

For same reasons, it's better to keep the pelvic floor as high as possible, making legs much taller than the upper body. Shorter legs, again, suggest child-like proportion, which is not a good connotation for mechs. Although low pelvic floor may work ok for digitigrade (like canine hind legs) or arachnid leg configurations, for plantigrade (humanoid) configurations, tall legs tend to look much better.

Also, for plantigrade configurations, large feet suggest more weight, which is another quality you want to have in a mech design.

And last but not least, there's no limit on how big a mech's guns can be 🙂

A quick and sloppy adjustment with all the things I mentioned above:

On a more subtle note, there's a very useful principle concerning shape and detail distribution in visual design, called big-medium-small. Applying this principle can help improve designs of any kind. It's a very good tool to have in your toolbox. Check out this presentation focused on big-medium-small in context of concept art and 3D modeling.

Jesusemora

xyz thank's for the advice, I will rework the head again and maybe the arms, then I will look at what can be done about the proportions.

xyz Always make mech heads small (in proportion to the torso), low hung (it can safely go below the shoulder line), possibly even completely fused with the torso. This makes the mech more bulky, brutish and menacing, which is typically a vibe you'd go for with mechs. The big head in your current design makes it look kinda chibi, and therefore - harmless.

yeah, I didn't have an initial idea when designing this, it was supposed to be a "basic" mech, so I tried to make it as uninteresting as possible, as I was saving ideas for other mechs.
But bulky and brutish is just ONE of the forms for a mech, one of the ideas is for a fast and agile mech or a glass cannon that's fragile but full of weapons, and also a bigger, heavier mech.
If all the mechs are the brutish type, the heavier mechs will not look as menacing

xyz For same reasons, it's better to keep the pelvic floor as high as possible, making legs much taller than the upper body. Shorter legs, again, suggest child-like proportion, which is not a good connotation for mechs.

I was going more for a gorilla. gorilla's have short legs and long arms.

xyz Also, for plantigrade configurations, large feet suggest more weight, which is another quality you want to have in a mech design.

I'll look into it.

xyz And last but not least, there's no limit on how big a mech's guns can be

those were supposed to be the small cannons, but I will rework the gun slots since it doesn't look as good.

xyz On a more subtle note, there's a very useful principle concerning shape and detail distribution in visual design, called big-medium-small. Applying this principle can help improve designs of any kind. It's a very good tool to have in your toolbox. Check out this presentation focused on big-medium-small in context of concept art and 3D modeling.

I watched the video, I think it's like another theory I knew about that's about distribution of detail, where areas must have few or no detail and others should have more detail.
I was going to do that with this, but the details would be added later on the higher-poly model and texture.

Thanks for the advice!

xyz

Jesusemora Gorillas are not really bipedal. They prefer moving on all 4, and look kinda wobbly when walking upright 🙂

Jesusemora

xyz ok, before I start messing with the proportions: I reworked the head and arms. I went for a more flat head with a protected visor and some detail. made the "hands" actually smaller, which makes the guns look bigger and protrude more. I needs some more work but I think it looks better:

edit: changed the head a bit and made the final versions of some weapons.
here there are two small cannons, medium cannon, and twin linked small cannon:

xyz

Jesusemora Yeah much better. It's interesting how a seemingly simple thing like the head proportion/placement can significantly affect the "personality"

You can try two or three leg/feet proportion variants (longer than this, and shorter/thicker than this) and see which looks the best.

Danimal

Looking good, but widening the legs would make it look even better (not the length), more balanced; unintended or not it´s got a nice dwarf vibe (you can call it the Dwarf or Shortboy).
As for the guns, the right arm one is fine but the left one with the two cannons would look better in a vertical barrel disposition, with bigger barrels and a squarish frame.

Jesusemora

Danimal Looking good, but widening the legs would make it look even better (not the length), more balanced;

I didn't understand what you meant. I made the legs thicker and feet bigger, which looks better now.

Danimal unintended or not it´s got a nice dwarf vibe (you can call it the Dwarf or Shortboy).

That's a good idea. but maybe some dwarf name instead of just "the dwarf".

Danimal As for the guns, the right arm one is fine but the left one with the two cannons would look better in a vertical barrel disposition, with bigger barrels and a squarish frame.

I can't do vertical because that's up to the alignment of the slot. In this case the slot is horizonal, which would look good with a twin laser or gauss cannon, but other mechs could have vertically aligned medium slots.
Also it's a "twin cannon", like anti-aircraft or in a ship, those are usually horizontal.

I can't do squarish frame now, that part is as good as finished. But I can add a piece to make it look better. I made some designs really quick, chose one:

xyz Jesusemora Yeah much better. It's interesting how a seemingly simple thing like the head proportion/placement can significantly affect the "personality"

yeah, the whole is bigger than the sum of it's parts.

xyz You can try two or three leg/feet proportion variants (longer than this, and shorter/thicker than this) and see which looks the best.

I think it's good enough now.
I may make some more guns, UV the parts and export to godot.
the textures and animations can be done later, this is a great advantage of godot's modularity.

xyz

Jesusemora I think it's good enough now.

Agreed, although I liked the previous version with thinner legs a bit more, as it appears to have wider shoulders. But the last one is good as well.

TheRealFame

Jesusemora How far are you into the project? 🤔, If you don't mind me asking.. Could you provide assistance over here? I'm trying to make a turn based battle system as well!

Jesusemora

TheRealFame Jesusemora How far are you into the project? 🤔, If you don't mind me asking.. Could you provide assistance over here? I'm trying to make a turn based battle system as well!

I'll take a look at your other post, but making games is hard, there are many moving parts that interact with each other while being independent from each other.
In my case I used almost every trick I knew: state machines, signals, classes, encapsulation, pathfinding algorithms and other algorithms, databases, AI and more.
It's not something that is done overnight nor something that can be explained in a single comment. You have to be specific, and I have to try to remember or look back at the code of how I did things, because in such a big projects you have to act like you are different people, and each time you work in a different part of the code and expect the rest to work without having to think about it.
And also, I'm currently in 3D artist mode, I'm not thinking about code much.

Danimal For the sizes you will be dealing with the first/last one is the best, you are wasting your time making very detailed models for small hardware that will go unnoticed.

there are close ups, and I don't think it's that detailed. At least not compared to mechs in other games.

Danimal Being exagerated when making weapons proportions is very commonly used, the new Xcom is a good example; I doubt
I could lift even some of smallest ones if they were that size in real life..

Well these are the SMALL cannons 😆 . with the modular weapon system it will be possible to swap them around before deployment.
I admit, the medium one looks not as big, but that's because it didn't fit in the slot otherwise.

There will be 3 weapon slots: small, medium and big. Here's a list of the planed weapons.
Small slot:
Minigun
Flamethrower
~~Small cannon~~
Small missile x1
Medium missile x1
Small LASER
Small plasma
Small pulse cannon

Medium slot:
Miniguns (plural)
Flamethrowers (plural)
~~Twin linked small cannon x2~~
~~Medium cannon~~
Medium LASER
Small missile battery x8
Medium missile battery x2
Medium plasma
Medium pulse cannon

Big slot:
Railgun
Ion cannon
Wave motion cannon
Graviton beam
Large cannon
Large LASER
Small missile battery x32
Medium missile battery x8
Large missile x2
Large plasma
Large pulse cannon

Some might get cut, new ones might be added, but this is the plan.

I made some progress with exporting to godot. Each part uses a different material, so far I made the chest, but it's missing some color and maybe it needs fewer sharp angles, this is what it looks like so far:

All the parts are UV wrapped already so I can just create the textures in blender and don't have to export the mesh again.

Danimal

For the sizes you will be dealing with the first/last one is the best, you are wasting your time making very detailed models for small hardware that will go unnoticed. Being exagerated when making weapons proportions is very commonly used, the new Xcom is a good example; I doubt I could lift even some of smallest ones if they were that size in real life..

kuligs2

Jesusemora im confused, is the last image texture or cell shaded shader that paints the outlines on the edges?

Danimal

Looking cool, so I take most of the detail is handpainted?, could you upload the texture? (or part of it), I would love to see what is shader and what is texture. I´m on the artistic side and always wondered how cell shading works.

Jesusemora

kuligs2 Jesusemora im confused, is the last image texture or cell shaded shader that paints the outlines on the edges?

Danimal Looking cool, so I take most of the detail is handpainted?, could you upload the texture? (or part of it), I would love to see what is shader and what is texture. I´m on the artistic side and always wondered how cell shading works.

there are many ways of doing cell shader. the outlines are done though a shader, in my case it's a vertex shader, but others use a screen space shader (these work best with deferred rendering which godot doesn't have).
the texture itself is a diffuse/albedo and the lines are painted as if it was seen from the front. I'm keeping the traces separate from the diffuse because that way I get more control over them and prevent the shading from affecting them.
a normal map is required in order to get the shading to work, this allows the faces to look sharp or rounded or cylindrical. if I were to use smooth groups, it would create seams that would break the outline. for this I have a high poly model that I use to bake the normal map.
seeing the image, the outlines need to be thinner, and have less detail.
some of the details like the squares in the corners are painted, I feel like that was a mistake and would look better baked into the normal map.
It's missing the metallic and roughness textures and some colored decorations like danger lines or numbers and symbols, the latter should probably be added in a different texture. I think metallic with this shader will look better on rounded surfaces, so I gotta keep that in mind in the future.

Once these textures are done, I'll pack the traces into the alpha of the albedo or ORM.

Update: I made a "mech workshop" area with drag and drop. the attachments can be dragged from the left into the slots and the slots only accept the correct type of part. In this case small weapons are green and medium are yellow.
Each mech will have a different scene with the slots, and in the scene there's a viewport container with a 3d scene with the mech.

edit: baked the weapons and made some icons. still needs traces so I might have to redo it. and the metal shader is not looking as good as I would like, I might have to rewrite it.

edit: weapons are now in their slots and there's a new cluster_weapon class for firing from multiple barrels/slots like the twin linked cannon or the missile battery

the twin linked cannon has outlines but the others don't yet.
funny thing happened, I spent a while drawing the outlines for the cannon, but saved the file as rgb instead of rgba, all the work was lost and I ended with a black square. So I went back and instead colored faces on the high poly model and baked it. It's not as detailed but looked good enough and was faster, so I might do that for the other meshes.

Jesusemora

I uploaded another video

It's not much and it's still WIP, I'm also using a different recording software so quality is better.
Mech textures are almost done, I'm just missing the legs, and I started the process of making animations.
I need to change the colors because it looks a bit ugly at the moment.
Here we can see the first animation, for when the mech is in the workshop. I took me a bit of work to import the animation because it was throwing errors everywhere. I fixed it by toggling "rename bones" off in skeleton profile importing.
The mech and the animation are on different files, I made this animation in a blend and am working on textures on another, and the imported mesh is from a third one, this allows me to work in parallel and not be slowed down by waiting for a model to be finished. The meshes are on one file and the animation is in another as an animation library. additional animations will be in other files.

kuligs2

Jesusemora also from quality of life point of view, i suggest add also ability to quickly set the weapon instead of dragging them in. In the long run it will only frustrate people when you are going to switch setups and want to make it quick. Dragging is very slow and takes precision to execute.

I suggest some sort of key combo, like hold shift to put it into left side and hold ctrl to put it into right slot or something.. Pls dont make players do chores 😃

DJMaesen

if u d like i can make a mech model for u.

Jesusemora

DJMaesen thanks, but I'm still testing things, and it's a lot of work. Each mech like this one will be made out of different parts that can be destroyed, and the weapons have to fit in the slots, and there's a lot of modularity involved.
I also don't want to waste someone else's time if for some reason this project ends up abandoned. I want to finish this game, but you never know if you will hit a wall or if some external problem could come up.

right now I'm starting to struggle with the code, I need to study it to figure out how it works again in order to create the new class ControllableMech, and it needs some cleanup because it currently "just works" but I need to extend its functionality. I need to take things slow for a time.

I don't know how I did it but I made most of the animations for the mech in one sitting, I'm missing some variations but these are the only ones needed to get the mech to work for now. I recorded a very small video and converted it to gif, it's too small to make a youtube video but just at the limit for an image (and sometimes I forget it's 2024).

and again, any feedback is welcome

kuligs2

Jesusemora robots dont need to sway arms like humans. when you make them sway arms when running it looks like they are human. IMO the top part should be separate from bottom in animations.. like you could walk forward while the top is facing backwards. This way it, imo, would feel more like robot. It dont matter if human sits inside, mech is a robot afterall..

Jesusemora

kuligs2 moving the arms is a balance thing and an animation thing. I made it not move the upper part and it looks a bit boring. The one in your video IS moving its arms, so it's not a good example.
I will have to remake the walk animation anyway because the mech is moving very slowly in game.

I managed to get ControllableMech to work and it's moving and firing. It's now missing hitboxes. Turns out it was well designed and I got it to work with only small changes.
The problem I had was with weapon slots but I figured it out, I was using a bitmask and each weapon had a number assigned (1-2-4-8). There's an Array of Dictionary and each Dictionary had a "SLOT" with that number. I added a reference to the Weapon node and it's more clear now. Each Dictionary is a weapon assigned to a slot.
Next is improving ammo. The ammo is contained in each of these dictionaries, but I plan to have a "ammo" attachment for extra ammo, so I need to rework that.

kuligs2 also from quality of life point of view, i suggest add also ability to quickly set the weapon instead of dragging them in. In the long run it will only frustrate people when you are going to switch setups and want to make it quick. Dragging is very slow and takes precision to execute.

that is planned but for the future.

kuligs2 I suggest some sort of key combo, like hold shift to put it into left side and hold ctrl to put it into right slot or something.. Pls dont make players do chores 😃

the problem is, this mech has weapons on the left and right, but other mechs will have slots in the chest and head. this mech also has 6 slots, 3 in each arm. I calculate at least 16 slots per mech, using an int bitmask going up to 65536ish.
I can't think of a way to make your suggestion work since each mech will have different configurations and number of slots, so a "default" key is not possible.

I don't see this as "chores", it's the admin side of the game, managing resources and personnel in between battles, researching and building mechs. I think building mechs is one of the most fun part of these games, currently there are only 3 weapons, but once there are more options, it will become a fun and important mechanic of the game to assign not just weapons but also modules with effects, ammo and more.
And soon changing the things in the slots will be updated on the model in the background.

« Previous Page Next Page »