Added the commander’s cupola:
Basic shape is kinda correct, but lots of tweaking and tuning to do before I’ll be able sleep nights.
Yeah I’ve been a circle jerk a few times on my own.
On the plus side, those curves look awfully smooth when they’re done rendering! (Two days later…)
More little stuff. I use the stripped hull and turret as bases for modeling other components and accessories. It never ceases to amaze me to discover just how wrong I got something I was previously so sure I got right!
Anyhow, here are the transmission sump access covers, the taillight mounting brackets, and taillight electrical JB and some conduit.
I like your models. Why do you model only tanks? And how do you know a lot about them? Were you in the military?
Thanks! I appreciate it.
Why do you model only tanks?
It’s for a project. Once finished, I may never SketchUp ever again.
And how do you know a lot about them?
Research, research, research!
Were you in the military?
Nope.
That’s sad, you should keep sketchuping as a hobby. According to research I’m making up, 2 hours of sketchup a day improves your mental health.
If I only had the time!
According to research I’m making up…
That’s the best kind of research.
…2 hours of sketchup a day improves your mental health.
And yet I’ve never been so messed up.
Finally got around to begin modeling the glacis.
No driver’s hatch yet. Also a lot of things to refine – eg, the turret race ring armor; accurate mudguards; complete headlight guards, as well as model the actual headlights.
Question: I need to add industrial strength anti-slip texture to much of the vehicle’s upper surface. This is very coarse, more like gravel than sand. The various textures I tried were not even close… is there a way to 3Dify this stuff, or create a new 3D texture?
Sure, if you want to bog down your computer again!! I would recommend searching for a suitable texture…
Agreed. Given that you are using V-Ray, a texture that has bump map properties is more efficient than actually modeling it in SketchUp. One thing I’d like to learn some day is how to make your own bump maps, like in Photoshop or something.
OK, I’ll keep searching textures.
Not sure of the exact look you want but…. You can create “noise maps” that you can use with a plain paint color when rendering to get a rough textured effect. It can easily be done with GIMP. Spent maybe ten minutes to make a noise image make it seamless and then create a regular bump map and a normal map. Did a quick render in Twilight ( I assume you can do similar in Vray ) Painted the blocks in SU, in Twilight I assigned a flat enamel paint template to each color then linked the bump map to one box and the normal map to the other. Took longer to type this than to make the maps. 
That looks excellent! I have Photoshop, and I assume it can do the same as GIMP, but I’ll have to figure out the equivalent process. Maybe use randomized noise at high levels to simulate the large grains and clumps of the real anti-skid pattern.
I’m sure a little internet searching will turn up some video tutorials you can check out. 