guyxxed
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Just a quick drive by to prove I'm not dead (yet). Snow delayed my next flight, so I had no excuses but to sit down and start on the arms. Look and proportion seem okay to me, but still a lot to figure out on the articulation (those piston things are going to be a pain since they don't follow the movements of the rest of the arm) and the fork attachment yet to go.
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Last update before the weekend (and maybe for a little bit since I'm traveling for work the next two weeks, but we'll see, airports can be good places to work). Enlarged the wheels and added the higher articulator for the rear wheel, refined the textures a bit and started adding grunge, and beginning to add all the pretty little greebles (handholds and such). Yes, still avoiding the arms, but I'm getting there. 😉 Good weekend, all!
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Backpack. Also put some transparency on the cockpit windows, which looks nice (but now means I have to make an interior of some kind 😉). Debated over making the rear vents a cut in feature or just textured on, looks okay here but will have to see how they hold up in a rendered environment. I guess it's time to start the arms. 😔
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Basic form of the cockpit and the chest alterations are largely done now. Have to knit together the seams and do the backpack next, along with all the grips and lifting eyes. The designers of this thing used lfiting eyes like glitter and peppered them all over the place. It's probaly got about 50 of them scattered over its surface. Guess it can make sense if you think of it as a modular unit with different arm attachments and such that need to be lifting into and out of place as needed, but just funny how many they used when the Cheyenne and Frontier workroid have zero. Suppose that'sthe difference between the Delta workroid getting a close up moment whereas the others were never anything but background. And, yes, I'm avoiding doing the arms, is it obvious? Some heavy lifting there (pun slightly intended) and I can't kitbash them from anything so I'll have to build them from scratch. Oh well, at least I know what I'll be doing next week. 😉
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Delta version underway. Have I mentioned lately just how much I love the ArtDink (Macross 30 and Macross Delta Scramble creators) modeling crew? They really went out of their way to make modifying these models really easy. For example, the Delta workroid is missing the 'calf muscles' that the Frontier workroid and Cheyenne both have, but instead of having to create the new skinnier leg, they had already made it that way and just slapped the calf bulges on overtop, so all I had to do was delete them and make the texture for the newly exposed surfaces. I'm half convinced that ArtDink had access to the filming CG (or, at least, some of the lower LOD versions) since the animators seem to have taken a lot of the same design steps as the game models did. Either way, it makes working on stuff like this a lot more fun because there's a clear path to get where I want to go with it and not a lot of tedium to get there. I will need to create a new chest, as the Delta workroid has a slightly different shape that isn't just an extension of the Cheyenne chest, but it's pretty minor, and interestingly the wheels on the Delta version appear to be bigger and differently attached than the others. There are a different set of gizmos on the back (kinda looks like air conditioning units), and obviously the arms will be all new, but I think it's already coming together pretty well with the leg up the game modelers gave me. More to come soon.
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I'm on board with that, and like I said above, I'm not bothered by the awkwardness of workroids or desroids, they're cool additions to the universe, my engineering nerd mind just has to pull at the threads is all. It's part of the fun! Thanks for all the input and discussion, nerd stuff is also part of the fun! 😉 One last one, stripes and colors cleaned up, warning lights in plce, and in a more dynamic pose. Now, on to the Delta version!
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Definitely get what you're saying, but it seems like the same thing where dedicated machines could do the same jobs more efficiently. A 9.5m tall robot is super strong and dextrous, but a crane can lift something to the top of a building and be disassembled for storage when it's not needed. A forklift might be slower than a workroid, but it's also less likely to pulp your cargo spinning and dancing on the way to the loading dock (it's honestly a wonder Freyja was still alive after Hayate's transit 😉). I'll give you construction, because hands to hold a girder in place while people attach it is better than a crane, but again is going to be limited to a structure only as high as it can reach, so not great for building skyscrapers. It's all moot, and I'm mostly just being nitpicky for the sake of fun. Once you have giant robots, I'd use them for everything I possibly could, too, just because it's cool. To a man with a hammer, all the world's a nail, so why not? It does raise another another thought in me, though, which is how much are smaller power suit type machines used? Or humanoid robots in the 1.8 - 2m size? Not at all that we've seen, but it seems like another obvious extention of the technologies at play and possilby more useful at the same tasks. A robot drink machine is cool, but a robot firefighter that can go up stairs and rescue soft meat bags from back hallways would be truly useful.
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As long as it looks cool, I'm down with it. 😉 First try at a workroid texture. Some clean up on the arms where the caution lines got distorted, and some of the scrapes and scratches need refined, but overall not too bad, I think. Along with all the above talk, I have to think even a workroid struggles to find a real application in world. Other than manhandling Vajra corpses onto a truck, I'm not sure what else they'd be good for. Poor Cheyenne, the red headed step child of the Macross universe.
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This is actually the other thing that always pops to mind when thinking about destroids. If they can't be made useful, why do they exist at all? Yes, plot reasons, as sketchley pointed out, but in a setting with AI as advanced as we've seen and mechanical systems as durable and flexible as has been shown, why is CIWS not an impenetrable defense for just about any ship or fort? It's already pretty formidable in current real world settings, in Macross it should mean that a fighter can never even get close to an opponent ship unless they fold right next to it. For the most part, though, we only see WW2 style flak cannons spamming relatively uselessly into space while fighters fly in without much trouble. (This doesn't actually bother me all that much, it's just where my brain goes with any technical analysis of a setting. Armchair quarterbacking, there's always a nit to pick! 😉)
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The arms are definitely weird on the Delta version. I need to go back and watch the episode clips again to see what each piece is meant to do. I thought I remembered the hands and forks being opposite ends of a reversible arm (like the Cheyenne does with its guns, and has the hands on its elbows until needed), but that line art makes it look like the hands fold down from the upper arms. Will see what I can find in the animation. I actually always had the opposite feeling on Macross designs: if Valks can be made so tough when they're dividing the power between flying and holding themselves together, then a destroid with a dedicated power source should be a lot tougher. Mobility vs sitting duck, I know, but the armor on a Cheyenne should still be an order of magnitude greater than a Valk just because it can afford to throw a lot more power at it. Transforming tanks would be cool, too, though. 😉
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First pass at a Frontier-style workroid. Both the Frontier and Delta workroids are just the Cheyenne with various amounts of editing, but I was surprised at how much of a Cheyenne they both are. Also surprised at the game modelers, who went ahead and made all the shoulder and back parts even though they're covered by the giant missile launchers and other bits on the actual Cheyenne. They really saved me a lot of time, I just had to delete stuff and make arms for it! Started with the Frontier workroid because it was the least editing, Delta version and textures to come soon (along with the warning lights).
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Officer Shenzi of the Al Shahal Interspace Commerce Commission has had it up to here with freighter captains that think impound law and unpaid import fees are negotiating points. She's thinking of a nice bottle of whiskey and how many hours away it still is, meanwhile her assistant is learning of lot of new Zentradi words that she's never heard spoken in a business setting before and first mate Vera is just over it already. Finally got some time to push these models into the game space and put some better textures on things. It's not much (this group right now just kind of wobbles and waves their arms at each other when you walk past), but exciting for me as it's the first step towards having this giant diorama of mine turn into a 'living' space. Still a long way to go (code, why does it have to be code?), and a million nuances of Unity still to learn, but you celebrate the small wins, right? Also a pic without the people to get a rendered view of the background. Also, credit where credit is due, none of the characters are my creations, these are all assets from other games (Night Archive and Solo Leveling, mostly), just using them as fast track for learning and they seemed to fit the setting. Hopefully more to come soon (cranes lifting containers into the freighter and workroids are on the to do list)!
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Solidworks definitely takes some getting used to, especially if you're used to more 'artistic' programs like Blender or 3DMax, etc. (or vice versa), but once you get the hang of it, it goes pretty quick and typically gives good results. I like it a lot better than Inventor, anyway. Good luck, looking forward to following the progress!
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Minor iteration. "Fattened" the cheeks and reshaped the mandibles to angle inwards a bit, as well as maneuvered the notches around the eye to expose it a bit more. Also added the vent fins on the top for a better filled in look there. Maybe? Dunno, may also try an alternate color scheme as that helped clarify the shape on the earlier one when I was working on it. Anyway, onwards and sideways!
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I agree, I think it is an early version of the 25S and the mandibles evolved into the "cheeks" and "face" of that design. I just used it as a jumping off point for an idea it inspired, but which isn't panning out so much. I'll keep playing with it, but it's already drifting in the direction you indicate, so we'll see where I end up with it.
