Rover – Exploration Vehicle

I’ve been fixated on the design of this vehicle ever since the concept art popped up in my feed many years ago: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/KvoDR

Back in 2018 I modelled a low poly version of the rover in 3DS Max and even took it into Unreal Engine and made it a drivable vehicle to explore a stylized environment. In 2019 I revisited the design in Blender trying to achieve a higher quality version.

Now in 2020, I have modelled it twice – borrowing elements from previous versions and really tried to increase the quality of all aspects of the model. One thing I did this year was start with some exploratory sketches and get uses to its edges, shapes and overall silhouette. This let me get closer to the vehicles image in my head and helped me work on it as a hard surface model. I also created 4 perspectives in a model sheet style so that I had clean views of it in front, side, top and back to help with modelling in the viewports. I hope you enjoy the renders and early/previous versions I decided to include on this page. Everything 2019¬-2020 is Blender and the low-poly 2018 version is 3DS Max and Unreal Engine. Any sketches or image edits were done in Procreate or Photoshop.

I'm still learning the best way to UV in Blender and I'm relearning some aspects of Substance Painter but I enjoyed doing this.

My main 'hero shot' of the Rover. I'm so happy with how it turned out after trying to model this thing version on and off for months.

Front veiw in the same render setup, I love how it looks!

Higher angle side and front view so you can see some more of the roof details and little windows up there.

Double view so you can see the front side and rear side at the same time.

Model sheet I drew before modelling, I made some changes/ditched somethings while modelling but this is what I used while modelling. I used Oscar Cafaro's original concept while making this - link in the description.