The Sphere Project – Deciding the Sphere

The project for this module is to model a game ready asset that is in the shape of a sphere, it has to have some rendering and animation. It is linked to the http://cgsphere.com/ website.
After looking through some of the spheres on the website, I thought of possible game ready assets I could model, render and animate.

My aim was to animate unique movement that was an improvement on the bouncing ball animation.

Being a stereotypical student and fan of Star Wars, I thought the machines within the vast Star Wars universe could be used for the project. I did this for two reasons. Many of the Star Wars machines have been used within video games already so it relevant to a games design course. Also, as the machines exist in video games and film, there is plenty of reference material to compare to, this would show an understanding of modelling that an original creation would not be able to portray.

I considered the droid destroyer from the modern trilogy which is spherical when in motion, and unfolds to fire its weapons. However, the droid destroyer is very thin so may be difficult to model. Something more solid would be easier.

The AT-AT from the original trilogy is a four legged walker which resembles a horse or camel. Modelling this to resemble a sphere would be very difficult and the number of legs would require a lot of animation.

I decided the best machine to recreate would be the AT-ST from the original trilogy. It is a two legged walker that resembles an Ostridge or Chicken.
The AT-ST only has four parts (cockpit, engine compartment and two legs) which would be easier to animate than the AT-AT.
The shape of the AT-ST is recognisable because of its angular and box like cockpit. If a spherical version of it was made that people recognised it would be considered impressive. Also doing my own version (spherical) of an existing model has more merit than merely copying one.
Finally, the legs of the walker are similar to a chicken or Ostridge, they are inverse to human legs. This gives the unique movement that I wanted in the game ready asset.


AT-ST preliminary design sketches:

This sketch below was the first sketch I did of the ATST walker, It has a lot of detail that would mean a large polygon count and a long time needed to render and UV the whole thing. I decided that a simplified version would be better and if I got everything finished early I could then re-model in the missing details.


Below are front and profile sketches of the AT-ST walker that I would use as reference when modeling the parts of the model I would keep the same as the original.



Below is a simplified version of the walker. To compensate for the modeling simplification, I added some rivet detail. The next stage was to work out what part or parts of the model would be made spherical.


Below are some design sketches of how I would achieve a spherical shape which also included planar surfaces. Some drawings include where the edge loops would go showing I have thought about the polygon count and economic modeling in my designs.








Below are two design sketches to see which sides of the ATST head would look best as spherical. They are more conceptual rather than accurate as I wanted to exaggerate the spherical look of the model to see if it would still look recognisable as a Star Wars Walker.