3D Paint Over Gun Turret

This assignment was given to the class, the goal being to create a realistic concept of a gun turret using the 3D paint over method.

I started by doing some simple pencil thumbnail sketches to get a design I liked. I found this very difficult as I have not had much experience drawing mechanical objects. I did a web search of gun turrets to get some inspiration.

I chose the bottom left design because I felt it was the most detailed and I had a clear idea in my head of what the story of the turret would be.

Next I started to model my turret in 3DS Max using just the thumbnail as my reference. I chose 3DS Max because I am more familiar with it than Maya and felt I could make a model much quicker.

I decided that I did not need anything more detailed than the thumbnail because I felt that the thumbnail was enough, however if I was to pass the design on to someone else I would have done a quick design in Photoshop with more detail.

Starting with the barrel I used separate cylinders and changed them all to editable polys so I could manipulate them into the shapes I wanted.

Using the boolean objects I was able to cut holes in my model.

To create make my model more interesting any cube shaped object I chamfered the edges to give them a smoothed out and shaped look.

Originally I was going to cut out the polygons on the cockpit so when I moved to Photoshop I could paint windows on it and have it see through however this caused me some difficulty in the renders since some of the normals on the cockpit were not visible.

I did a simple red and grey bitmap material on my model to get an idea of what my colour scheme would be.

I did not need to change much from the original design concept and the model came together relatively quickly.

The tricky part was the lighting, I had not done a realistic lighting in 3DS Max before so I had to search on ways to do this. I found using the Daylight lighting to be my best course of action.

I had to experiment around with this tool to find what I thought was the best kind of lighting I could acheive.

Highlighted in red is at what time I set the sun to be at which was 12pm, I fiddled with the daylight parameters and found Standard Sunlight and Skylight to be my best course of action along with shadows to be on ray traced shadows. 

Coloured and uncolored renders of my model. I had difficulty rendering my models at a size that would fit the A3 size on Photoshop due to my computer not being powerful enough to render an image that large so I settled with the coloured render at 2000x2000

I could now start my paint over in Photoshop. I already knew in my head that I wanted the turret to look as if it had been unused for a long time so I found rusted and broken textures to use.

I had planned to make my own textures however with falling ill I was running late and had to improvise.

To apply these textures I used the warp tool as shown in the provided tutorial video at 2:28 to wrap the scratched metal texture around the barrel and other areas.

I already knew how to use most of the transform tools and found Distort to work the best at fitting the rest of the textures, especially the paneled textures over flat surfaces.

The layer mode I used was overlay, I tried to use screen as demonstrated in the video but it seemed to become too light and ruin the lighting on my model.

I added some small details to the turret such as the smiley face using the custom shape tool and the distort to place it on the side of the turret. By reducing the opacity I could make the face appear faded .

The wires and ladder I simply painted on with the paintbrush tool. I didn't add much detail to the turret because I had designed it to be extremely big and felt that the textures were working well enough on their own to give it a realistic look.

Finnaly I added some extra shadows and highlights using a combination of the paint brush tool, dodge and burn and levels to make the image pop from the background.

I placed a black and white gradient over the image and erased it from the top half to stop the turret floating so much as well as painting in some extra shadows at the base.

The story behind the turret is it was designed to be an anti mechanoid sniper. A futuristic weapon designed to  destroy giant robots and similar turrets with one shot from a distance. However due to their long reload time and having to re calibrate each shot due to the enormous kickback produced from firing the turrets were quickly put out of production. They became a popular collectors piece that many people customized.

This one in particular is sporting a custom paintjob but has been left out in the open for a long time to decay and break.

I am pleased with how the end result turned out however I wish I had designed the turret to be smaller since I feel I could have done much more detail and much more actual painting on a smaller scaled turret. 

Because I was ill I felt very rushed to finish this piece and felt that I did the best I could especially on my very first ever paint over job.