A tank that is not in World of Tanks


Hello everyone, this is Denis Weber.

Today I will tell you how I simulated one of the tanks that is not in the game World of Tanks and will show a small promotional video so that you can imagine that this tank was really presented to the players.

As usual, especially for those who prefer the video format rather than the text, I will leave the link to the video and the final result at the end of the article.

When I started doing 3D, I didn’t even think that almost all 3D models are created from such a simple cube. It will take hours, days or even weeks before the model looks like something completely indistinguishable from an object in real life.

3d reminds me of the work of a sculptor who carves his volumetric work of art from a large piece of stone.

I think that now I can create everything that comes into my head in 3D. Ideas are actually in the air and you just need to catch them in time.

To be honest, I have never been a fan of military vehicles games. Even as a child, I liked shooters or fights like Contra or Comix Zone more. Probably almost all of you have ever played Battle City on Dendy. This is a primitive toy in which you control a tank and try with all your might to save your headquarters.

The creators of one of the most popular modern tank games were definitely inspired by that very Battle City. I have played World Of Tanks only a few times and I like more, for example, Call Of Duty, but I cannot but agree that the recruitment and elaboration of tanks in a tank simulator is simply amazing.

The game features 11 countries from the USSR to Italy and several types of equipment. Let the fans of the game correct me if I am inaccurate somewhere. There are light, medium, heavy tanks, self-propelled guns and the like, the ability to upgrade your vehicles and change their configuration. For fans of military equipment, there is simply expanse here.

Once I came across an advertisement for one of the tanks, which the creators of the game presented in such a cool video.

And I thought, the developers, even of the most sophisticated game, cannot add all existing tank models there. Yes, the garage of equipment is huge, but there are definitely no models in it.

I climbed onto the World Of Tanks wiki and did not find several well-known tanks in the list. I think you guessed it, I decided to create one of these tanks and make the same commercial for it. So, if it was he who was added to the game and presented to the players.

In this article I will tell you how I chose a tank, how I modeled and added textures for it, and I will show the same promo video with the model I created.

There are actually a lot of vehicles from different countries on the Tank Wiki. But I immediately decided that I wanted to make a tank made in the USSR. Probably the most popular tank in all of history is the T-34. They wrote books about him, made films, and if an ordinary layman is asked about tanks, the first thing that can come to his mind is the T-34. This tank belongs to the average in weight and in terms of its characteristics and qualities, I liked tanks of this class.

So I found the T-24 tank, which would have been created back in 1930. Remarkably, this model was generally one of the first Soviet middle class combat vehicles, which was put into mass production. The tank had the ability to fire in several directions at once, but was too high in size, had problems in coordinating the rotation of the turrets and the engine cooling system.

Despite the fact that the T-24 became an improved version of the already existing T-12, it still did not enter service with the army and was supplanted by more modern machines. But you and I can dream and give the tank a second chance, because it was the designers of the T-24 who subsequently developed the iconic T-34.

In World of Tanks there is a Czechoslovakian Skoda T 24 tank, but as you could understand, it has nothing to do with the Soviet combat vehicle.

To create 3D models, ready-made drawings or blueprints are often used. You just enter the T-24 blueprint in the search and if you’re lucky, you can download the blueprint of the desired tank. I was lucky with the drawing and I downloaded several references at once to see the tank from all sides.

I roughly outlined a plan of action in advance and decided to start with the foundation of the entire tank – its hull.

The essence of modeling from drawings is to understand how the model should look from different angles. It may seem simple, but you have to be mega-attentive and not miss any little things. Still, we want to make the most accurate copy of the tank so that it can move under its own power and it was finally adopted by the army.

When I finished the base of the hull, I immediately took up the towers. There are two of them in the tank. Maybe from a technical point of view, this was not the best solution, but the idea is just great.

A red silencer shines on the left rear of the tank. Looking at the T-24 for the first time, I thought that the designers had placed a tank of fuel there and was already beginning to be indignant, but then I looked closer and realized that everything was in order.

Now it may seem that everything is going fast and parts of the tank are created from ordinary cubes and cylinders, but believe me, this tank has a lot of small parts that I will have to model very soon.

One of these parts is the tail. Interestingly, it was quite popular in tanks of the First World War and was used to lengthen the supporting surface of vehicles. The tail was removable and helped to overcome the trenches, preventing the tank from overturning.

The T-24’s tail consists of several metal runners connected to each other. I put it together and then went back several times and edited parts of it, trying to get as close to the original design as possible.

It’s time to create the chassis. It consists of track and carrier rollers. And in the role of a suspension, vertically installed springs are used. Only now, when I started creating a model of the tank, did I understand how they generally move and work.

I struggled a bit with the drive wheel, but it worked out in the end. The tank has wheels of different diameters. 16 paired wheels at the bottom and 8 at the top. In total, as many as 48 wheels for one car. It’s good that in 3D you can clone the created models. I modeled 4 suspension bogies each and attached the wheels to them. There are also small elements of the trolley that may not be visible at first glance.

In the blender, using the settings, you can show the created models in such an interesting way. The program simply paints each individual model in its own random color. Not only does the tank now look like an amusement park ride, it has also become much more convenient to model.

The tracked mover is one of the most important parts of the tank. Without it, he simply will not budge. The movement itself in tanks occurs by rewinding the track. Even having references from different angles in my hands, I couldn’t make tracks that looked like the original, and I spent a lot of time creating them.

You can create a curve, one cell of the caterpillar and use modifiers to multiply it and launch it in the desired direction. I really took hours to get the caterpillar to suit me.

I will paint the tank. And do it in Substance Painter. She has a huge collection of cool stuff. For example, using textures, you can make similar bolts. They will certainly look different from the ones I’m modeling here, but as you will see a little later, I will add a lot of small elements to the textures.

In the upper part there is a 45 mm cannon of the 1930 model. Interestingly, only a part of all assembled vehicles received such standard guns. On the sides, on the upper turret and in the front part, there are as many as 4 machine guns of 7.62 caliber. Since they are the same, then these models could simply be copied.

I had already modeled almost all the main parts of the tank and it was up to the details. I added towing earrings to the front and back and a couple more on the sides. In the back there is a hole for engine cooling, which is covered with a mesh. If in real life the cooling did not work as it should, in our version of the tank everything will be fine.

There are literally a few details left for me to finish in order to send the tank for painting. Remember this ring, a little later it steals several hours of my life and a ton of nerves from me.

Since the tank consists of riveted armor plates, I decided that they should be created at the modeling stage. The seams could be drawn on textures, but I thought that for them you still need to make your own geometry. Now he looks even more fun.

To prepare the tank for painting, I cut it into several parts. The main part of the tank, top, guns, they are also towers, wheels and tracks. For each part, I created a UV mapping so that the 3D textures match the 2D textures and pack them. Scanning and preparing a model for painting is one huge topic and if you are interested, I will talk about it in one of my new videos and articles.

Now I have exported the model and loaded it into Substance Painter. First of all, I baked the textures to prepare them for creating materials, and if you look closely, you will see that the hull of the tank looks strange. Some parts are gray, others are darker. This should not be, but what is the reason I did not understand.

I guessed that somewhere there was an error in geometry, but did not understand where. Therefore, I began to add the model in parts and bake each of them separately, but nothing helped. I spent several agonizing hours before I accidentally found this cursed ring. For some reason, his geometry was broken and when baking textures, it completely spoiled them. I removed the ring and everything was as it should be.

I thought that if a 1930 tank survived to this day, it would certainly look like a rusty, life-beaten car. Therefore, I chose this photo as the main reference for painting the model.

Substance Painter is a bit like Photoshop. There are also layers with their own order and a set of settings, but unlike Photoshop, this program is sharpened specifically for 3D. If you see a 3D model that looks as realistic as possible, it may have been painted here.

I added some layers. On one there is paint, and on others there is metal, rust, abrasions, scratches, chips, and so on. Even the painting process itself caused me some kind of great delight. When the gray model you created turns into a real tank of the times of the 30s in front of your eyes, this is something.

If in 3D there is still some final version that can suit the designer, here these frameworks are greatly blurred. You can sit for several days and just pick up the type of rust, twisting the sliders in different directions. And what’s most interesting is that it won’t get boring. As I said, a lot of elements can be added using textures. For example, I added all the rivets on the armor plates this way. It took a couple of hours, but it was worth it.

As promised, I made a video that will present the created T-24. You can watch it in the youtube video that I added at the end of the article.

It was another difficult project in its own way, which I really liked. If you want to support the development of the channel or you need this model of the tank, I will leave links to 3d stocks in the description under the video.

While conceiving a project, I often have no idea how I can implement it. But when I see the final result, I understand that nothing is impossible.

Write in the comments if you have your favorite tank. Perhaps in the future I will model it.

Original video:

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