With the release of Halo: Infinite some time next year, I thought it would be nice to add one of the chonkiest of bois from the Misriah armory to my collection
WIP
As with my MA37 model, I modeled the SPNKR completely from scratch using mesh files from Halo 5 game assets as reference.
I started this project immediately after finishing my MA37 project and employed a lot of the same techniques.
However, the MA37 took me around 2-3 weeks, where as this model only took my 2 days.
The large difference is that I was able to speed of the process by significantly
Above you can see what happens when you import the initial .obj file. Essentially you'll get a singular mesh or perhaps a couple of meshes as was the case with the MA37 which had about 9. The problem with this is that obviously this singular mesh is comprised of many overlapping meshes. This makes utilizing the internal vertices extremely difficult as you can't modify the mesh and making the mesh transluscent makes vertices visible but still extremely difficult to select (segmented view also does not help with this issue).
To remedy this issue, I have found that if you import it into Onshape, but then reexport the file as an .STL file, it will actually separate all the meshes. In the above picture you can see that once I reimport the .STL file, that I now have 110 meshes to work with, this made the process so much easier as I was able to work on one mesh at a time while making the others invisible.
One other thing that sped up the process had to do with Onshape processing speeds itself. When working on the MA37 I found that even making a simple plane became an extremely lengthy process once i was hitting the 500-600 feature range in that workspace. What I was able to do with the SPNKR was to export the 110 meshes into about 5 separate .STL files and import them in different workspaces. This allowed me to work on the meshes without Onshape slowing down. Once I was finished with all 5 workspaces, I exported all the parts as a .sldprt file and imported them all into a single workspace. Because the parts' locations are remembered by the .sldprt file format, the only thing you may have to do is rescale the parts depending on whether it imports in mm or inches, but as long as you rescale all those parts correctly relative to the origin, they will be in the correct space.
Current Status
I have yet to start merging the parts, or adding texture features. As usual I will divide the parts in such way that there are not big visible seams bisecting any features. I also plan on designing it around a set size of PVC pipe for the missile tubes, so that I don't have to print those.
Using the new techniques developed in both this project and the MA37, I believe I will be able to model much of the Halo weaponry with incredible accuracy and speed in the coming weeks.
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