Hey Everyone,
I was really sad to hear about the Flipped Normals marketplace closing down last week. They had some really amazing content on their site, with lots of creators making great tutorials.
They are running a closing-down sale right now, so feel free to check it out on my store page here: Ben's Store.
Despite this sad news, before the closure, I was contacted by Flipped Normals to work on an exclusive tutorial. I pitched a project I am super excited to complete, so I wanted to kick things off by talking about it and showing some WIP. I wanted to share my ideas and plans for the project and use this as a way to gather other artists' ideas and feedback. The tutorial will all be real-time, and I am going to show the process of this project from start to finish, so I'm hoping it's going to be a lot of fun to create and provide great value to other artists.
The project title is - Dinobot
Brief - Create a robot mech inspired by dinosaurs
Art bible - Art Bible Link
The first stage in any project for me is planning & creating documentation, as well as gathering references and creating a blockout
For the initial planning, I completed the following.
- Created an art bible
- Tested the shallow water plugin in Unreal 5
- Experimented with Megaplants to see if they would be useful
- Did some quick speedtree tests
- Experimented with AGX vs Aces for Unreal
Next up was reference gathering. I initially did a lot of reference work using Pinterest, then translated it into PureRef. The image below highlights a small selection of some of the references I gathered. I also bought an encyclopedia on Theropods and visited the Natural History Museum in London to take some photos. I decided quite early on that I wanted to create a Raptor, not a Velociraptor as you see in the Jurassic Park movies, but something more historically accurate, with feathers.
For the blockout, I started both a blockout for the mech as well as for the scene.
For the scene, I used Megascans and Megaplants to start with. I plan to hand-sculpt a small collection of plants later, but this gives me a way to find out which assets I need without committing to making anything. I can test how many species and what variety I need. I used Dash to place this scene, which took me about an hour.
I used Sketchfab to rip a blockout raptor into Blender and exported it to the game, and set up a cine camera and some lighting using UDS.
For the raptor mech, I started in Blender. Again, using Sketchfab, I found a really nice raptor reference model to guide me on the anatomy. When creating any mechanical or organic creature, I find it very helpful to start with a solid foundation. Once I get into the process of designing the mech, I can always change proportions and silhouette later. I used a very similar process when I made my Ecobot as well.
My general workflow for this is a combination of box and strip/edge modelling for the foundation. For very organic shapes, I use Sub D to keep the density low and make them easy to manipulate. Booleans as well, on occasion, such as to cut out where joints would go.
Also, as this is mechanical, there are often areas with a lot of repetition, such as the tail or feathers. Even repeating details like panels that follow the neck's shape. To save time, I am making a single piece using an array and deforming it along a curve. The new Array modifier in Blender is really nice, as it lets you scale, rotate and transform the array so it can taper, for example. I also use the curve points to adjust the scale along the curve.
This is the blockout so far for the Raptor Mech. There are a few bits I need to tidy up once I get into proper modelling, especially around the head, as even in blockout, this lacks a little detail.
Thanks for reading and getting to the end of the post.
If you have time and want to give any input on the project, or if you have feedback or ideas/suggestions for what you'd be interested in seeing in the tutorial, please let me know!
Thanks
Ben