The running gear is by far the most challenging aspect of this build. Each wheel is rolled, and then welded approximately a trillion times… and it has to be done for all 32 road wheels. It’s all downhill from there. Not to mention the road arms, the rotary dampers, and – of course – the tracks. Yay!
The plate likely to be stepped on is all 1/4", while the rest is between 1/8" and 3/16". Considering the square footage involved, the weight adds up fast! The Abrams turret is the size of a decent boat.
I used to think you house guys had it so easy. Architecture is just straight lines and square corners and simple angles! No compound curves or conic sections or the freaky little details that plague something like an Abrams. Houses are boxes made of squares and rectangles and triangles. Little kids can do it. Everybody knows that drawing houses is the drafting equivalent of lying in a hammock, sipping drinks with little umbrellas in them. So easy. Architects are deadbeats, everyone knows that.
This is why I was actually kinda looking forward to modeling the tank’s exhaust structure.
One other thought just crossed my mind: I don’t know how much you rely on components, but you can right click on a component and save it out separately to disk. If your whole file goes down, the work put into the component file is still there.
I think Chris Rosewarne was going to do a talk at 3D Basecamp called “Component the @#$% out of Everything,” but I think he got COVID and couldn’t come in the last minute.
Edit: Warning, it’s potentially soul crushing to look at his work, but if you haven’t seen it you need to. He’s a movie prop creative:
You’re right, I really need to look at using components. Others have previously made strong cases for this – eg. “You’re an idiot if you don’t use components!” – so it’s probably time for another retraining session.
It was a little frustrating to finally get the model more-or-less right only to then lose it due to a save!
Chris Rosewarne doesn’t appear to have been active here in three years and his listed ArtStation page is 404. Some of the people I work with may be in contact with him, so I’ll ask around.
At this point you could slide my soul under a door and not even touch the floor.
Slowly, slowly, sloooowwwwwwly getting there. It almost looks kind of not completely wrong now. Still several light years short of correct, but it’s nowhere near as completely incorrect as it was yesterday. Who knows what progress I’ll make by tomorrow…
“Is it a fish? Is it a brain-damaged cat? Or is it an ancient Central American prophesy about visitors from the stars who came to Earth long ago and built the pyramids? Yeah, it’s aliens. Everything is aliens.” – History Channel
Didn’t even bother adding the bigger “volcano” holes to the upper section (on the left of this image) and those on the lower section will be revised, since they’re kind of a joke so far as accuracy goes.
Here’s that pic of the real intake grilles, just for laffs.
Finally added the radio antennas and springy mounts. These are the slim profile coils – ie, the wrong ones – but they are easy to draw and I am very lazy. Will obey my OCD and correct them later.
Main (dual) SINCGARS antenna were modified. The EPLR antenna in the foreground is the original slim profile coil, as that was correct at the time. This has since been eliminated, and a voodoo black magic box of tricks was installed in its place, but pictured is the Desert Storm era config. Also, I haven’t drawn that new equipment yet…
