Here I will post a thread of progression renders and the development that has gone into my Fan Art project of making a Game Ready Death Guard Leviathan Dreadnought.
Any feedback/ways to improve is welcome and greatly appreciated.
Throughout I shall include my own personal comments and observations detailing my intentions and direction for the piece. This shall be in the form of annotations.
First set of images showing roughly the early stages of where I am at with the project. Further iteration and development is being made on increasing the level of detail in the high poly as well as further optimisation for the low poly. Utilising Zremesher and 'Polygroup by Normals' I am able to maintain the silhouette but keep the topology clean for sculpting. With a little bit of extra clean up after this method has proven to be efficient on achieving base needed. The images following shall show this method more clearly.
Workflow
This workflow will be carried throughout the whole of the mech to ensure a nice clean, not too hard, edge. This may have to be tweaked piece by piece but following this as a general guideline works well. This exact same process will be applied to the Storm Cannons that sit on either side of the mech.
Continuing Development
Seeing some noticeable errors with the proportion of the feet I went back to 3DS Max to alter the model. Having defined the workflow and having done it for the whole mech already it was super quick to repeat the process.
The Storm Cannons have seen a huge change in the amount of detail as well changes in proportion. The next step to this is to get it inside of Zbrush and to repeat the same workflow used on the body of the mech. Having this extra detail will now give me more options inside of Zbrush.
Although, keeping in mind that I still need to optimise the low poly as a lot of this extra detail, like the bullets, could just be baked down. Similarly, this approach is being taken with the mech to drop the polycount, making it more game ready.
Adding Chaos Elements
Rather than just making a stock Leviathan Dreadnought I saw an opportunity to push the model a little further and being obsessed currently with all of the conversions I have seen social media. My plan is create a Death Guard Dreadnought and have all of the cool and gross Nurgle themed elements.
Standard Leviathan
Chaos Inspiration
Continuing Development
I wanted the design to be striking and suit the Dreadnoughts style. I like the idea of having a huge unique scratch down the middle to add some story to the model. The Leviathans being quite rare and quite old within the universe I wanted the battle scars be quite prominent. The idea behind this was as if a Tyranid had lunged and scratched at the Dreadnought.At the beginning I really struggled with the helmet. Trying to find a design that I liked was really tough. Above there is a comparison accompanied by some notes that I made on the current design. Testing and placing the helmet into the mech was one of the main mistakes I made at first. At the time I was spinning several metaphorical plates and it got a little overwhelming. Shortly after I took a small break and came at it from a different angle, got a bunch more ref and continued.
Somewhat of a big leap with the Dreadnought, I am looking at wrapping up the high poly very soon. I am pushing to add more Chaos elements to the front and back whilst trying to maintain a balance and not going too overboard with how much is added. I could spend ages adding and detailing the model, but soon I am going to continue with optimising the low poly and move towards making this game ready.
The overall look I have achieved so far I am happy with. The amount of elements I think read well to give it the Nurgle/Death Guard Aesthetic. Some refinement is needed all over but I shall progress with this as I develop the high poly further.