Having completed the primitives for two previous models in a fairly straight forward process, I first tried to make an outline of the shape using the spline object. I soon realised the snowspeeder was a complex shape and the reference images were somewhat misleading in terms of angles and positions of the different components. After finishing this first attempt at the main body of the ship, it became apparent that the object was out of proportion, especially in the side and perspective view.
After finding a new set of reference images, I decided to take a new approach. Rather than having modeling an almost pyramid shaped object, I decided to model the outline of the cockpit and wings at the thickness of the wings. This allowed me to then extrude the cockpit add and some edges to the bottom to give it some body under the wings. This approach created a much more accurate look but took much longer to tweak. Keeping in mind the above issue I positioned the cockpit a bit lower than the reference image and I believe this has kept the model in better proportion with itself.
When creating the gun supports, I was torn between different methods. From previous exercises I thought about using the spline tool with autogrid, creating extra edges and vertices with the connect tool or simply creating a new box primitive, shaping it and the using boolean subtraction to fit it perfectly. The auto grid method would not sit perfectly on the angled surface of the wing and adding the connect tool would require inserting vertices and assuring they lined up perfectly using the transform type in. Boolean subtractrion using a new shape made to intersect the wing allowed me to delete the element below the intersection and leave the support positioned and angled correctly on the wing.
The guns were modeled quite effectively from extruding the front face of a cylinder. In some cases, the inset and extrude tools were used to create the thicker rings. This part of the model is probably the most polygon intensive, but the detail pays off and the rest of the models relatively low poly count allows for this.
The grappling gun was made up of different primitives except for the detail between the turrets. This detail was created by inserting edges using the connect tool. I chose to use this method rather than adding a number of segments at the start as the division was only needed on one face and this reduces polygon count contribution. Any holes created when deleting parts were filled using 'cap holes', a modifier requiring an editable mesh. Converting to editable mesh could be problematic so I only use this tool when bridging will not work and make sure to convert back to editable poly at the end.
The progress so far is shown below in all views and in grey - the base colour of the ship.
Good parts:
- Low poly body of ship allows for more detail on the gun
- Gun and body are separate groups allowing for easy movement of multiple objects
- Body is split into different parts (support, main body) within the group so can be manipulated and have separate textured applied easier
- Doesn't perfectly match reference image; the model may benefit from using a better reference image that doesn't make it appear too elongated
- While the gun has good detail, it's polygons can be quite clearly seen and could do with more segments to create a more rounded appearance
- The cockpit could be a separate object to make applying different textures for the windows easier
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