Day One
You sort of start thinking anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve - J.K. Rowling
Every project starts with a bit of research.I always look up images and videos to get a brief overview of the vehicle I’m working on. Obviously blueprints play a big role in that. A great artist named Vincent Bourguignon has made hundreds of blueprints based on ww2 and ww1 armory. Visit his site here. The blueprints I am using can be found here.
On day one we will look how the make Cromwell Tank turret was made.
On a close inspection we see that the turret itself is not very complicated. However it does have some smaller details that we want to include to the model (Numbers one and two). The most problematic area of this turret is the front side. The hallow inside (Number three) of the turret must be done with care. If it’s done wrongly it will cause problems in the texturing part. The only shape we actually need to use on this turret is UV Sphere. The rest of the tank will be done by single plane faces in Blender.
Those of you who have used Blender before will understand more easier what is written next here. Also this is not supposed to act as a tutorial.
I start the process by doing the top part of the turret. (Number four). This is easy to do with a single plane face. I duplicated the vertices of the single face three times and manipulated them into place according to the blueprints. That way we have the top part of the turret already made and ready for duplication to give it some width.
Image#1 - The width of the turret expands. Work time 9min
Next I did the hollow entry of the turret. This was a bit more complicated to do because of the awkward shape it had. Multiple faces had to be connected with each other to form the needed shape without using too many vertices. Sad part about is that texturing will suffer from it and many faces had to be formed.
Image#2 - The hallow entry for the gun has been made. Work time 20min
With the hollow entry done it was time to include the armament on the tank. Cromwell tank has a 75mm tank gun which is quite a mouth full but with a basic construction style it was very easy to make. Using UVSphere with 10 segments the turret turned out round enough to feel smooth.
Image#3 - The simple style made it very easy and fun to work on. Work time 27 min
With the main armament done it was time to move on to the detail. The big detail was done first followed by smaller detail. All that was needed to do was a few faces in the shape of a box for the few square type hatches and round hatches done using UV Sphere with 16 segments. I decided not to include all of the tank details 100% because it would be way too much. However smaller details like the bolts I decided to include on the turret because having to do them in texture does not look so great.
Image#4 - Big detail on the tank has been finished. Work time 39 min
The smaller detail consisted mostly of bolts on the sides of the turret. They were made out of UVSpheres but then turned into cones to reduce vertices count. It also made the texturing part easier for later on.
Image#5 - Small detail added. Work time 50 min
In less than a hour the Cromwell turret had been created. It has 694 vertices and 570 faces which is quite a large amount compared to the standards of Enemy Territory. It was very easy to make due to it’s box type shape that is similar to the Tiger Tank. You can check the work yourself out if you have Blender. Downloadable files are in the thread end.
Give your thoughts and ideas. Open the files and modify them to your need and share them here. Also I am happy to see some interest in this.
Download Files
These files are for learning purposes only. You need Blender to open the .blend file.
