CAT DROID

The main idea is to create a working/reconnaissance droid which can be sent to asses damaged areas or retract valuable assets, search for survivors, eliminate minor environmental threats.

Short story

The world has been hit by a very destroying pandemic and the rest of the humanity has been living on the surface of the moon since then, only sending this recon droids to earth in search missions. To see what’s left of humanity.

This is where Rig.B comes in. After being sent down to earth, to look for survivors after 20 years, the AI from his logical processor decided never to return to the moon base. Instead he wanted freedom in a desolate world. It has developed a curiosity of the old world and his new mission is to find out what and how exactly had happened to the rest of the humanity from earth.

Started working with a blockout of color, to try to give him a more industrial appearance. There would not be used more than 3 main colors, with some variations here and there and the main target is to keep things simple and any change made, has to be impactful. At the moment the robot seems too packed with colors and the step is to define the final color layout.

Wood. How and what happens to wood when it is exposed to weather effects for too long. The fact that our droid has been on the desolated earth for quite some time that means that the wood itself has to be old, cracky. The constant exposure to wetness and heat makes the wood to develop cracks and also the paint to peel of, similar to metal paint but in a different way. Varnish starts to disappear, therefore the whole appearance is going to be a bit rough.

Working on oil details. After some research, I found out that black grease or vaseline is used for screws and with the time, this gooey thing comes out and leave its mark on the metal. It’s more like a dripping effect, which stains the metal permanently as it gets into the pores of the material.

I placed the material on all the wooden parts and the next thing to do is to work on it a bit more. Changing colors, paint pattern and damage is kinda like a no brainer to do next.

Always important is to test the displacement map in the render engine, my case was vray. Works pretty well but I still have to add some micro details. Generally I like to avoid normal maps when showcasing any kind of renders because I believe that real displaced geometry increases the level of detail and the overall quality.

Testing the materials in vray, to see if everything works.

Going back to the story again.

So the moon base drones are actually hunting to locate and capture this rogue droid. So what better way to display the final textured droid than in a pose where it’s running from one of them.

Going back to the story again.

So the moon base drones are actually hunting to locate and capture this rogue droid. So what better way to display the final textured droid than in a pose where it’s running from one of them.

Anchor points in Substance Painter are a great workflow to get the desired result of rust underneath the paint layer.

Anchor points in Substance Painter are a great workflow to get the desired result of rust underneath the paint layer.