Model preview& chest modeling

In the image above, I have decided to make sort of a test pose. I duplicated the arms and the legs inside my scene and mirrored them across. I also added in my low poly head and the gauss cannons that I created after making the legs. You can also see in the model the beginning of the torso coming along.
I wanted to create this image as i had been modeling all these separate pieces for a long time and it was a satisfying feeling to see them all coming together like this. I wanted to make sure they all worked together and nothing looked out of place. 

Here is a big more of the progress I had with the torso. At this point in my modeling process I was wondering what I would use for a pivot for the arm, as similar to the leg, the original reference simply has a plain sphere that connects the arm to the torso and I don't want to carry this onto my model for the same reasons as with the leg, so think that what i will do create a similar joint as I did on the leg but re size it a bit so that it fits right in the torso.  

Leg Modeling

You can see in the above screen shot my process of creating the leg. In the window to the side, it shows how I have created the leg out of three separate objects, much similar to how I created the arm model. This process will continue on through my project, and the final outcome will end up being quite a lot of parts in the end, but it will be advantages for me as it means later on down the line posing this model will be a lot easier.

Above you can see, much like my process again with the arm that I am placing in the pivot points on my leg model. I wanted to place one and the top of the foot so that it could rotate on all axis as the legs are designed so that they wouldn't look right if I was to rotate them along any other axis, so the foot and the top of the leg need to be able to do this. 

This is another area of my model that I decided to be a bit more original with to increase its realistic values. On the broadside figurine the models leg simply has a ball attached to the top of the leg, which is able to move around with in its socket. However, I didn't think a plain sphere would look that good on my model, as I wanted to make it appear like it would actually be able to move my models leg.
I instead created a sort of hinge, that is able to swivel at the top to enable the legs to spread out, but it also attaches the rest of the leg by a hinge so that the top part and the bottom part of the leg can only move along one axis and cannot go side ways.  

Above is an image of the final part of detail that I added to the foot, being the heel. The heel is a separate part to the foot which can also move, making the final model piece count for the leg up to

five. I wanted the heel of the foot to be separate so that if i was posing the model to be stood with its foot on a ramp or something the heel would be able to appear as if it was supporting the rest of the foot by rotating itself. 

Arm Modelling

Bellow are some screenshots of my process of modeling the broadsides missile arms. 

You can see above from the original broadside model that I have made some alterations to add a bit more detail to the arm. I instead wanted too have some exhausts that would extrude out of either side of the arm to give the idea that when the rockets fire off they can let out head from the side of the arms. I wanted to do this to add the extra detail of realism to my model, as I don't want my final outcome to look as if it was a 3d render of a warhammer figurine and is instead an actually asset for a game.

You can see above how I began adding in the pivots into my model pieces so that I could pose it later on. I ensured that the arm had two pivots, one which could move the entire arm if it wanted too, and one that was placed within the elbow, so that I could bring the arm up and down as you can see in the second screen shot of the three.

Head modeling

As my model is only going to have one part of it that is going to be organic, I decided to begin creating my head model early on into the project. 

As I already had a basic head model that I had created to practice the topology of a face, I took that into maya and expanded on it, I extruded out around the bottom of the head to make the shape of the leather armor the tau has wrapped around his head and I then created the shape of the communication device that he has on his ear.
With this basic shape ready it was time to take it into zbrush and begin making the detail that it needed. 

Im fairly happy with the final outcome of the head that I created in zbrush. At this point, I had not created anything organic within zbrush, so this was  new area for me, and as it was only loosely based to resemble a human face I had the ability to be a bit more free with my design. I think I got the resemblance to a Tau's head pretty good though, I wanted to give him a bit of character too so I added a few scars going down his eye.

Heres is a screen shot of a quick test I did within quixel. I had baked my high poly zbrush model onto my low poly model to see how it would turn out so that I could edit it somewhere down the line if I needed too. From this outcome, I can see that I will indeed have to make some alterations, only to the low poly model though. As what I mistakenly did was not edit the high poly model after the zbrush process, hence why the face is quite flat. What I will need to do is bring the zbrush model into maya with my lowpoly model and make the high poly model a live surface, so that I can shape my lowpoly face around it a lot more to get a better sense of the shape. 

final reference piece for broadside model-

Admittedly, im quite out of practice with using my graphics tablet to draw using photoshop these days, after taking such an interest in the 3D modeling side of game design, so starting off this work flow was quite difficult to get going, despite how basic the images are, fortunately it seemed my muscle memory kicked in and i managed to get a pretty accurate reference image to work from.

Despite this being one image what ill now be doing is splitting the image into several pieces so that i can place them onto planes within maya so that i can begin making a start on creating my model. This will certainly not be my final pose that I will be putting my model in however, what i plan to do is model it in the this stance to begin with and then perhaps rig it or something like that to give me the ability to pose the model in any way that I please.
There will be a lot more detail on the model that i plan on adding in while i'm modeling, the reason i didnt include it in the model reference sheet was because i used my figure that i created and and the reference images i pieced together to put this work together, and on those pieces, the model is quite basic as it a simple minutre figurine, so I plan to add a lot more detail on the pieces that have flat boring plains like the sides of the jet pack like part of the model for example.
Also, the face will certainly not look quite as boring in the model as it does here, I will attempt to replicate the Tau head that I featured in my mood bored reference sheet that i posted in one of my previous blog posts for the head on this model.

Post primer model paint

Despite finishing putting together my reference model, I didn't like that there where parts of the model that where made of metal and some parts that where made of the grey plastic.
Using the model as a reference proved difficult with the two different materials present on the model, so I purchased a can of grey spray primer and layered the model in the primer to give it a nice even coat of the same grey all over. Now when i go back to view my reference model it will be a lot easier to pick up the details on the previously metallic parts of the model

Easter 3D Project

I've decided for this project that I want to model a detailed iteration of the Tau Broadside battlesuit from the warhammer 40k universe. So the first thing i      decided to do was go out and try and find the type of figure that I wanted to model to use as a real life visual reference when modelling the battlesuit in maya. There will of course be some visual differences between my final model and this figure as I don't want it to be exactly the same, but i didn't want to miss out on the opportunity of having a physical piece of reference as with my previous project I didn't have that luxury.