3D Spider Tank

For starters, I'm sorry this blog has gone more than a year without updating. Infant mortality among blogs is pretty high, but I'm still here and I want to develop this venue more as a place to share works in progress, tutorials, and tangentially related material. I'll be revamping www.doscher-design.com shortly and be using that space to display completed work.  It'll also show up here, of course.  My page at mikedoscher.devianart.com is my most current portfolio, but that green background gives me a headache.

Anyways, some time back I did a painting of an 8x8 armored car that was exploring the 'spider tank' cliche from the direction of superficial realism:

The vehicle backstory is this: An aging APC chassis converted into a rocket artillery unit. The batteries lower and are reloaded hydraulically from a magazine between the tube bays. Normally, the gun would be traversed to the rear when firing rockets to prevent damage to the barrel and muzzle brake. In this case, the commander has left the gun deployed to be able to more quickly engage infantry or light armor. This is the sign of either a highly experienced or dangerously inexperienced crew.

The painting was well-received and I found myself wanting to 3D version of it for some time, especially to explore the layout and action of the drivetrain and suspension.

This is just what I've got so far, though it's going pretty quickly. Most of what I've done lately has been for work, and not the sort of thing I can share because of my NDA.