Map or model or mspaint or hand sketch Chalcedony, the robot war machine described in the Sci-fi story, Tideline:

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Best creation earns bragging rights and chooses the next one. Winner chosen from voting of the participants, so the "chooser" may also participate in each challenge. (i'm working on mine now)

Loved the story, will try my hand at it.

here's my unfinished Chalcedony:Her big grabs are too big and i didn't build the singular small grab. i'd also like to make the main body/carapace less-round looking, and add some distreess/damage to the whole thing.

The center part that the arms connect to is a func_tank and is supposed to rotate/track the player (like the security cams in cs_training) but it won't rotate fsr. (I was hoping to make the tank "not solid" or "passable", because i think it's getting "stuck", but i don't think it's possible)

Here's the .rmf and .bsp if anyone has the time to troubleshoot the tank problem.

Looks great. I'm drawing mine, but are you sure she doesn't have 4 legs?

a three-legged oblate teardrop as big as a main battle tank

she limped along the beach, dragging one fused limb

Butterfly coquinas unearthed by retreating breakers squirmed into wet grit under Chalcedony's trailing limb. One of the rear pair, it was less of a nuisance on packed sand. It worked all right as a pivot, and as long as she stayed off rocks, there were no obstacles to drag it over.

Because I can't be 100% sure. I'm assuming she has four laegs. Correct me if I'm wrong.

chea you're right! I never noticed the mention to the "rear pair" and just focused on the "3-legged oblate teardrop".

this is nice because i feel 4 legs gives you a little more design freedom.

)

Looks like an ACU (Armoured Command Unit) from Supreme Commander. Very cool.

Finished. = )
(as finished as it's going to be..)Download

I can't even begin to imagine how painful that VM work much have been.

I can't keep up with shit like this...

Really wasn't that bad.

gratutitous use of the scale tool (alt-e)
+
pretty much making everything func_illusionary (else you get nasty visual errors)
+
Standard HL textures

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very-fast prototyping.. =)

Note on func_illusionary:
i'll take a group of brushes and alternate them in seperate func_illusionaries, so one brush of one doesn't touch another. Like if i was building a bumblebee: all the black would be one func_illusionary, and all the yellow parts would be part of the second. if you made all the brushes func_illusionary individually, you'd run out of entites very soon.. =)

Put that sucker in a hangar and submit it for the cubicles project.

Did you read/listen to the story Soup Miner? i would love to see what your vision of the Chalcedony war machine would look like..

Will probably update it one more time, recognizing i left many things out of the robot's design after hearing the short story again:

-Big floods
-Mesh reinforcement and bags of shells
-Second fine manipulator(not clear to me in from the story if there are 2 or 1, but i think 2 would look better anyway.
-Heat/battle damage to her carapace
-weapons pod

You should turn to modeling for things like this. Looks awesome!

chea i agree, yet i have no talent skinning with modeling programs. I know rim has suggested some texure map helpers like roadkill, and my friend said zbrush is relatively easy to skin with, but i haven't tried it yet.

Do you model and if so, how do you go about it?