Tank Trial

     As part of our new project we are required to create something where there is some kind of interactivity. For example design a level layout, or a small playable part of a mission. I have chosen to further some of the work I did in our last project and model the amphibious tank I made. As I am still not all that experienced with maya I have done a quick trial version to help me prepare for the real thing.

I began with pretty basic shapes with not too much detail which I have used to build the turret and the main body of the tank.

     Using the "chamfer vertices" tool I learnt how to make rounder shapes into the faces of the model from which I could extrude a rounder object like the gun, this is an improvement as before I would have just unioned another object onto it which would leave me with more difficult geometry.

These next two pictures demonstrate how I began making my tank track. I followed some steps that I found in a youtube tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtG7vdwZsKw I basically started with a cylinder that I began to extrude faces from. The benefit of starting with the cylinder was that the pivot was already centralised within it which was handy when it came to rotating the tracks as in the picture below.

This picture shows the tank tracks all positioned, the next step was to place the wheels within them.

The wheels were pretty easy to make but I quite liked how they looked. This is where I decided to leave my model and begin working on the actual version, as I am particularly aware of the impending deadline.