Neat tricks for modelling the Robo Maestro robot

Here are a bunch of fun, slightly unconventional techniques I used to make the Robo Maestro robot in Blender.

I wanted shapes that are both smoothly curved and tight industrial.

Today I might want to share a few fun, somewhat unpredictable procedures I used to make the Robo Maestro robot in Blender. I needed shapes that are both easily bended and tight modern. Hard surface demonstrating! I think it ended up great, so we should view how it was made!

The idea workmanship I was going by is this unpleasant sketch by Robin Keijzer, maker of the magnificent point and snap experience Space Rescue (accessible on Steam, NSFW!). As may be obvious, all shapes are a blend of bends, straight lines and hard edges.

Region displaying is an extraordinary approach to making these sorts of bends, however it's a piece lumbering when you want hard edges and corners also. The tip you for the most part see for getting hard edges is to add supporting calculation: additional vertices around hard edges.

Be that as it may, the more vertices you have, the harder it is to change the shapes: the model becomes clumsy. Additionally, the less vertices, the smoother the bends you get. So I outrageously needed to have as barely any vertices in the base model as workable for the best smooth bends.

Here Blender acts the hero! It has a superb element called "wrinkles" that allows you to check edges that ought not be smoothed by the development modifier. This allows us to consolidate hard edges and smooth bends with not many vertices in the base lattice. Extremely cool, exceptionally helpful!

Here you can see exactly what a small number of polygons the base lattice for the Robo Maestro has, and how smooth the bends are that that outcomes in.

Be that as it may, 100 percent hard edges feels modest and counterfeit 3D. For excellent models, we need to somewhat incline the hard edges. Fortunately, Blender can likewise give this: we can essentially add a Bevel modifier to do this consequently.

The incline modifier naturally is possibly one hard edge (still noticeably flawed) or more edges. Adding more edges makes Auto Smooth kick in, which causes us to lose a great deal of the snugness. The "solidify normals" choice fixes this (by not utilizing interjected normals on the slant edge).

The slant modifier naturally searches for edges to smooth, however in some cases it misses the point. In such cases switch the "limit strategy" to "weight". Presently we can stamp edges that need an angle in our base cross section, and we can even check per edge how wide the slope ought to be. Slick!

Having the option to stamp edges and vertices with exceptional highlights that are utilized somewhere else is one of my beloved elements in Blender. Other than "wrinkle" (for regions) and "slope weight" there's moreover "crease" (for programmed UV planning) and "sharp" (for smooth overshadowing).

Consolidating these procedures I had the option to make the Robo Maestro before long and still stay adaptable until the last phases of displaying: Robin had a few input on the shapes and I had the option to transform them rapidly in light of the fact that the base cross sections have not many vertices.

At long last, assuming you were considering what this model is for: Robo Maestro is a procedural music toy that I'm creating for Steam. He even plays the real notes with his fingers! Here is a little trailer that shows the idea.

For more blogposts on improvement of Robo Maestro, Blightbound, Awesomenauts, Swords and Soldiers, Cello Fortress, Proun, procedural music, my cello collection and any of the other stuff I work on.