Mech-Bee

Friendlier than the ones in ‘Hated in the nation’

This is the first mech animal that I created and was largely born out of just experimenting with the solidify modifier, deleting and extruding faces.

The body was created in sections that were constructed by adding a sphere, insetting and deleting faces and then adding (applying) a solidifier modifier and then in selected places using the ‘region(vertex normals)’ extrusion method, then all rounded off with a subdivision surface modifier.

Rather than try to animate or show moving wings I opted for a sort of sci-fi vertical engine thing that glows, something that I continue(d) to use for other mechimals. For the legs I opted for a fixed structure similar to the landing supports on some helicopters, mostly out of laziness.

The water was added as when the mech-bee was just against a white background it looked a little boring. The water was created by adding and subdividing a plane, then once it has sufficient divisions a randomise deform was added to create waves, again all topped off with a subsurface modifier.

The water material is a basic glossy / defuse shader mix, with the colour for the diffuse shader being made with a colour ramp node of various blues controlled with a noise texture.

The mech-bee’s body uses a material that tries to mimic a ceramic glaze, using a Voronoi and Noise texture to created the cracked surface pattern as well as a subsurface scattering node.