Clay renders of the turret up today, hopefully I'll have clay renders of the hull up in a few days, then final, textured renders.

New: 17-08-2012

Thank you for the answer, about those circles, once you extrude them to become cylinders, will Rhino then make them into polygons as well? Because, in that case, I can easily use cylinder from Sketchup right?

And about 3D max, does that work in the same way as Rhino, or does it also use circles/cylinders, made of polygons?

Thank you

Hi, so I'm on a team were we work with several 3D solution, including Sketchup, 3DS, Rhino, etc, we all have our preferences and that is fine, however, I have nearly no experience in exporting Sketchup files into the other packages. Luckily, I have been issued with the Pro version of Sketchup, so I can export through that. What I need to export is .obj. .dae and .3ds files, now I have some questions.

1. Quality is extremely important for me when exporting to another file format, so that nothing is lost in the proces. Now, can Sketchup do that? When exporting I'm not seeing a great lot of options, which is good, but I want, as an example, the .3ds file to work as if it was natively made in 3D Max, is that possible?

2. This is based on nr. 1. I know that Skethup works with another type of geometry, (Faces) compared to most other solutions, that work with polygons. Now, when converting, how well does Sketchup perform here? Will my team mates have to clean up a lot of bad geometry, or..? (please note, im good at making clean geometry in Sketchup, so this question is purely about its converting abilities)

3. And how about circles? Sketchup works with edged circles, I know that as an example, Rhino do no such thing, there, a circle is round. Now, can Sketchup d this also, make a circle truly round, when exporting? Or how does that happen? Also, this question might as well be about everything "smoothed" in Sketchup, how will that look in other programs?

4. Last but not least, lines, Now, I dont use lines to simulate geometry, (like making a line stand alone, simulating a wire) but how does Sketchup handle lines when converting? What will happen to them?

Thank you for your time And if anyone know some great tutorials or tools that excell those natively in Sketchup for conversing, please let me know

So after a very long time of inactivity im finally back to work, so heres a very small update.

The gun barrel:

A closer look:

As you might guess, I'm working on the Turret part of the tank now. Have a great weekend everyone!

Hi Coremster, just checked out your pics on the WoT forum, it looks very very good! With that amount of faces, your circle, round shapes etc, must really be smooth! Unfortunately, I'm very busy in school for the time being, any architecht will probably know what I speak of. So I'm not going to post anything for the next month or so.

Very nice, I like all the small bumps and scratches that you have modelled, they really add some depth to the sword. However you might like to look at some texturing to add more details/scratches, im sure the handle is not just some red "plastic" like material, but perhaps leather, wood, etc? Also, I dont know if you have tried out rendering yet, but it also could add a lot to the scene. Here's a roman Gladius I did a few years ago.

Keep up the good work!

Another update.

I'm starting to get a bit bored of just modelling pure geometri, so I've started to texturize and render the model. First of all, I've tweaked Podium into giving me some decent results, actually this render engine is more powerfull than I first thought, as long as you want to edit the preset files in a text editor.

I modelled the firewall which separates the fighting compartment from the engine compartment.

Also I've done a few renders of the fighting compartment, which is probably around 80% finished by now, in terms of pure geometri. The texture work still needs ALOT of attention tho.

From above:

From the side:

Very large (3840 x 2160) version here:
http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o88/stoferr/TigerIIHull.jpg

I have a question regarding textures that I hope someone can answer. Is there a way to place something like sprites on an already textured surface? My images seem a little too clean, so I would like to add some textures on those already placed there. Can this be done in Sketchup?

Alright another update. Something about the model has been bothering me alot. I modelled the hull in one single piece, meaning that it couldn't be disassemblied, and thus didn't represent the real deal. So today I decided to redo it, I knew it would be a rather difficult decision, but that it would take me 10 hours to correct, was a surprise. It propably has something to do with the fact that I had to remodel most of it, add new details and reassemble, while still keeping the mm perfect precision and compatibility with the other components that I had before. Anyways, I got it done and now im more than satisfied with the new result.

One of the main reasons for redoing the hull was to show the great interleaved welds. This is one of the examples of germans over-engineering their weapons, but it proved to be very effective.

As said the new hull allows me to disassembly the plates, this will make it easier for me to showcase the enterior in my renderings, once the model is finished.

This is one of my favorite parts of the entire tank, those engineers really nailed it.

Here is the bottom hull plate. You see the supports for the hull, and torsion suspension. Alright, I admit that the interleaved welds on this plate aint accurate (there was only used normal welds) but I quite like this, see it as my personal mark on this model.

A side view of the tank and welds. Ofcourse the floor plate welds are made so that they make sense compared to the rest of the tank.

The upper front plate, notice the sheer volume of the thing, where other natoins made square amour plates, the germans made overly complicated ones.

The tank with the front plate removed, revealing much of the interior.

And thank you for the nice comments everyone, they are really motivating me to keep going, even when things dont play out as expected.

Very interesting pictures, it must be a very comprehensive project.

Very nice images, I like the integration of vegetation and building.