8 Hour Drone Challange - ROBOCROP

In this project I present ROBOCROP. A cute drone companion that tends to all crops and vegetation. I created Robocrop within 8 hours and made sure to keep within the time frame given.  I had created my own concept, modelled and textured using Maya and Substance Painter. 

As a plant lover I really enjoyed making the drone and thought about the characteristics I would give it. I had made it so Robocrop would be able to grow saplings inside it's glass helmet, or tend to ill plants in which then Robocrop would plant them once they were strong. I also wanted it to have a seed gun which would shoot out seeds to help make planting efficient, as well as a cute little weapon when enemies were nearby. I also tried thinking about how my drone would be powered and wanted him to have a solar panel inside his glass dome, as well as a battery pack at the back in case it didn't charge enough energy through the day if it wasn't sunny enough.

My aim was to give my drone a personality with my renders and to show my creativity within a short time. 

Here are the front and back renders of my drone. I feel like the lighting really made the difference in the final renders and gave it more life. Also by adding subsurface scattering I was able to make really nice leaf textures within Maya. Simple but effective! 

I wanted my drone to look like it had been through some wear and tear, so I added scratch marks in Substance painter. Aswell as a roughness map on the glass which gave it nice detail. In total I did my concepts within 1.5 hours, modelled for 4.5 hours and then textured for the rest of the time.

It was important for me to make sure my model was low poly and game ready. Here are wireframe renders and a turntable of my drone. I also made sure topology was clean so there would be no problems with the look of the model. 

Here is also my texture maps! I wanted to keep to a colour palette and liked how green matched the idea of being a plant drone.  I also photoshopped a little heart sticker which says ' I love plants' which I then put at the front of the drone to give it more personality. I really thought it was a cute little detail to add. 

And lastly here is the concept art I did for my drone! My final model was very close to how I planned it, except some changes to the texture design and small changes. I really enjoyed the challenge as it got me to priorities what needed to be done, and got me thinking creatively in a short time. I learnt how to be more efficient in how I model and learnt some cool short cuts along the way. If you have any questions please feel free to ask! And I hope you love this cute little project. Also try doing a small little project in a short time yourself! You may surprise yourself in how much you can do.