3D Paintover Robot

This homework assignment was to produce a 3D paintover of a robot character.

Since I was still playing catch up from being ill last week I didn't have much time to draw some designs so I used two silhouettes that I had painted previously.

I had already decided in my head that I would be using the design on the left.

My robot character is named Marvin. Marvin is a worker robot very common in a warehouse since they are used for heavy lifting and completing complex tasks such as building products at the warehouse.

Marvin stands about 6 feet tall and is programmed to never leave the warehouse, if there is no work to do he is programmed with a 'look for something to do' code. Not that this helps him much because the setting is post apocalyptic. 

Marvin has been abandoned in his warehouse completely alone so he wanders the warehouse occasionally doing repairs to the building when needed, he is a very worn down robot that is often falling apart himself.

Over time Marvin begins to get curious about what is on the outside, this is a result of the 'look for something to do' code but the code restricting him from leaving leaves him conflicted in what to do actually do.

From my design silhouette I had a very clear picture of how to build Marvin in 3Ds Max.

I began creating Marvin from head down, focusing on detail all the way through.

To create Marvin's broken arm I just created a cylinder with 1 cap segment so I had several vertices to play with, by using the move tool I just dragged some of the vertices around to make it look snapped.

I was not very happy with the arms and had planned to go back and change them since they didn't match the design very well, instead I decided to save time and change them in the paintover.

As I was nearing the end I began to put Marvin into a pose so I could see how the end result would look and I was happy with this.

To create the broken panel on his leg I simply detatched a polygon and rotated it outwards and then created a new polygon in place so I had a surface to paintover later.

For my lighting I used the standard Omni tool and placed several around. I wanted one on his eye since his own glows there needed to be a light source there, one inside his broken arm since it had just broken and was sparking and another just above to illuminate the rest of him.

Final render of my Robot. I decided not to have any kind of background so I could place one in Photoshop.

Once my model was in photoshop I started by placing textures on to it. I used the same textures as I did for the gun turret as it seemed appropriate for a run down robot. To place these I used the distort and warp transform tools with an overlay layer so I would not lose my lighting.

Using some simple textures I placed them onto the background with a cast shadow made by selecting Marvin and on a new layer filling it in black. I then seperated the legs from the floor so it looked like the shadow was hitting the wall behind.

Now I had my base set up I started by painting some simple details, highlights and shadows using the paintbrush tool.

Here you can see that I added some extra detail to the forearms that I said I would previously.

I continued adding detail with the paintbrush using different type of brushes to paint in the rest, I tried to make it realistic by having the rust look like it was by water damage from the streaking lines in places.

I designed the nametag and barcode using the custom shapes tool along with the text and then using the warp transform tool to make them look like they are on the body. I also used a rough eraser brush to make the stickers look torn and worn.

Finnaly I added light reflection from the eye to add realism and I added the sparks from the broken arm along with a glow from it that fades out the shadow in the background.



 I am very pleased with my end result although I feel that I am relying on textures too much with this technique. This is something I will work on in the future and I will try to create my own textures rather than pulling them from the web.

This is where I need to try and improve my workflow since I seem to take a very long time to create most of my paintings and drawings.