Tesla Turret

Finally done! My last piece of homework from Michael Pavlovich's course in CGMA, ZBrush for Concept and Iteration!

This was done during the last 3 weeks of the course as I was still getting used to the interface and testing out things to do for the earlier parts before finally settling on doing and iterating on one thing as the weeks went past. 

The main objective here was to create and iterate in as little time as possible, and be able to create a render that would be easily understood even by those who aren't 3D savvy. It isn't the most optimized, game ready, and 100% polished work, but it serves as a good proof of concept to get ideas going and allow people to understand what the main goals of the prop are. 

Through quick and dirty decimation and UVing in ZBrush, as well as some time spent in Substance Painter, I was able to reach a more or less good result and I'm quite proud of it! (Just don't look too close!!)

My initial inspiration was drawn from Tesla Troopers in Red Alert 2, which gave me the idea to make a sort of ceiling mounted Tesla Turret that uses camera detection within its proximity before it turns on and charges up. 

The shape was derived from looking at roombas and the simplistic nature of their design. For additional reference, I also looked into drones to see how they would go about a little more detail while using the same-ish shape. Turrets and other pre-existing mechanical objects came last to serve as inspiration for all the greebles and visual noise that comes with creating something like this. 

I researched a bit on how the Tesla coil itself works, and even tried to think of a way to implement a faraday cage of sorts but I just didn't have as much time to work on that for the duration of the course. I'll likely revisit this idea again, with way better textures and presentation (and hopefully in engine shots!) 

Some process shots: