Pit Droid Tinkerings

[savagecreature]

As you may or may not have seen (things have been mighty quiet lately) I've collected up more reference in the Ponderings thread. Thought I would share some of the fruits of those labors:

As kresty pointed out above, there were some parts missing below the dome so I thought it might be a good idea to add some of those. 




I started out fairly low resolution and then continued to refine the shape and contour, carefully checking against my reference to be sure I was getting it as accurate as possible.  I used every reference I could find. I looked at all the toys I could get my hands on, I carefully viewed The Phantom Menace a hundred times, including the special features, making screen captures of anything that looked helpful, I did extensive internet searches reading forums and blogs and book reviews to see if I could glean any clues or find the names of other sources that might help and when I found the titles of books that might be helpful, I went out and bought them. I even hunted down the few models of the Pit Droids that had been made for video games.

It was a slow process because at each step I would find a new resource that showed me I had done something a little bit off and I had to go back and correct it, but eventually it started to take shape.



As some of you may have read in the the parallel thread, Ponderings, I found that  Star Wars Chronicles: The Prequels had the next best thing to orthographic renders of the pit droid in them.  I sent out some e-mails and a friend was able to send me back some images from the book.  These were incredibly helpful, enabling me to carefully check my proportions. I brought them into my 3D software so I could make direct comparisons.

      

As you can see in the above images, there were some inaccuracies here and there, but the droid was taking shape surprisingly well. I continue to adjust things as I went, and started to add new parts and details.

Legs came next. They look deceivingly simple but they have quite a bit of detail and a number of non-rectilinear shapes that make them more of a challenge than expected.  Next came the upper arms and I realized I had forgotten toes.

 

Then forearms and hands:




Looking fairly pit droidish if I do say so myself!  I still haven't been able to find good reference for the underside of the dome and all the detail that lives there, but I continue to hunt for it. I also need to add some sundry details; panel lines and rivets and such pretty much all over the droid.  But it's getting very close to complete.

Here's a view of my mesh projected on top of the ILM render for comparison.



Now you, my fellow droid builders, might be thinking to yourself, "this is all well and good, but why do I care about a CG version of this cute, little, utilitarian droid? What good does this do me?"  My answer; Plans, measurements proportions and even 3D prints can all be generated from a 3D model such as this.  The more droids we have accurate CG models of the more droids we can accurately and much more easily construct using any of a number of awesome methods. 

As a terribly incomplete example (but it's just an example, right?) I present exhibit A, what could easily be the start of a set of dimensioned elevations of our little friend, which was generated without much effort from this new CG model.