SEA Bot

Final texturing done in Substance Painter, mainly stamping masks for height. Final render in UE5  with path tracer.

Background created with basic mesh then tessellated in substance painter with two great textures from Substance 3D assets. Render path tracer in Unreal Engine 5.1.

Gradually sorting the background. Need to tweak the pose and sort more detailed textures, render from UE5 path tracer.

Refining the design a bit. Went for classic yellow submarine look. Iray render from substance painter.

Settled on a design based on a crab. Robot is a mini sub that can also work on land. Got as far as a basic block out of the main forms and a initial material pass in Substance Painter. Renders from UE5.

SEA Bot Pose, job, parts and shape library

Looking at different aspects of the robot and what they might do. Might be fun to create a multipurpose robot that could do a variety of jobs at sea, in the sea and on the coast. Not sure on the form yet but have enough options here to start doing some variations now.

Sea reference

I wanted to look at some marine and sea based reference to get an idea things that needed to influence the robot character early on. All the above pictures I took at various small fishing ports in Cornwall, UK.

Textures like the algae and rust could be used for the robot materials or background. Objects like the chains ropes and tyres could either be used by the robot or be accessories. Larger props like the cleat and anchor could even be used to kitbash parts of the robots body. 

Cutest object is the buoy because of the bright colour, soft round form and little bit of subsurface scatter that makes it glow a bit.

Cute robot analysis

To start my project I looked at some robot designs: looking at cute features and what makes a robot a robot. 

Cute seems to equal big eyes, simple forms and child like proportions, and a certain lovable goofy quality.

 Robots tend to be hard-surface with an exoskeleton, with bolts, panels and external pistons.