With February 4 start date and a March 12 deadline, I had to move quickly to tackle this beast. I’d taught myself a lot about Blender last year, so I jumped on a chance to test my new skills in Pwnisher’s Endless Engines 3D challenge, where over 4 thousand 3D artists submitted animated renders of vehicles.
Most renders in the contest would be cars and airplanes, but any vehicles were allowed. I wanted to be as memorable as I could. I knew from the beginning I wanted to do some kind of giant mechanical creature. So, I took inspiration from the mantis shrimp, and aquatic robots that I could find footage of.
This was the biggest 3D project I’d ever taken on at this point. I researched hard-surface modeling and rigging. The legs move automatically using inverse kinematics and paths, offset from one another. Before this project I had never done much rigging, so I sunk over 30 hours into just that aspect. Now, I feel prepared for anything.
I’m proud that I was able to finish designing, modeling, texturing, rigging, animating, and rendering this project in time to submit it for consideration. I didn’t make it into the top 100 (I didn’t expect to with the amazing talent that I’ve seen in these contests), but I took a step up as a 3D artist because of it.
Just for funzies, here’s the crowd I was up against.
