New Release: Aeridian Drone Robots [Commercial]
E-Arkham
Posts: 733
I'm very happy to show off my latest product, the Aeridian Drone Robots:
Three different fully articulated drones, with 4 different material options (and lower rez versions), poses and partial poses.
If you need a swarm of man-sized killers (and who doesn't!?), these are perfect. If you need a walker "mini-boss," there's also scale settings to give them a more menancing size. And if that's not large enough, you can manually dial them up to 300% -- the hi rez textures are 5000x5000 each, so there's a lot of room to make these giant.
Themed texture sets included with the set:
- Default (desert tones)
- Futuristic Americana (for everything from an oppressive North American Federation to the remnants of a patriotic underdog)
- Socialistic Faction (for those wintery Russian fronts of the future)
- Tactical Fallout (if you prefer an aqua tinged retro-future).
If these do well, you can expect to see many more lines of mechs, robots, and vehicles in the future from me. As always, let me know what you think, what features you like, and what you dislike!
https://www.daz3d.com/aeridian-drone-robots
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Comments
BUMP!
When these drones were released, they didn't get much attention and didn't sell particularly well. I probably should not have named them "drones" as that means something very different to most people (lightweight flyers with rotors). I also would have handled promos very differently had I released them today.
With the recent Plat-for-a-Day sales, the drones did better than any of my other offerings for that sale. Since so many people now own a copy of these, I thought I'd bump for some updated feedback.
I'd love to get back to creating mecha and robots, but I need some feedback before I can realistically consider it.
So if you recently picked up this set (and there should be quite a few of you out there now!), please let me know:
Appreciate any thoughts and feedback. :)
Off-topic, but I'd like to see an IRay update to https://www.daz3d.com/muelsfell-rocky-outcropping-display-base . I'm terrible at converting older textures to IRay and I do like a good display base.
Have you tried:
https://www.daz3d.com/rssy-3delight-to-iray-converter
It works nicely, converting old materials to iray in Daz Studio.
The rocky outcropping is a Daz Original. I don't own it anymore, so I won't be doing any updates for it, sorry. As Artini mentioned, there are some nice converters in the store that should be able to handle it fine.
I have to admit I'm disappointed that I've had no feedback on the robots. The lack of it does send a pretty clear message what the forum goers think of the set though. It's strange it did so well during the Plat-for-a-day sale and yet ...still no feedback. I'd like to avoid whatever mistakes I made with that set in future mecha releases, but I guess I need to just avoid mecha entirely and remove some WIPs from my to-do list.
They look fantastic and I like them very much, but have not chance to use them even once.
You probably do not understand what happened during this Plat-for-a-day sale.
There were so many nice products available during that time, that it will take me years to use them all.
Please be patient.
Yeah, maybe so!
I'm eager to do another mecha themed set, but not until I understand the reception to this one.
Sorry if this isn't quite what you wanted, but if you are asking for feedback, I can tell you why I wanted to buy them but ultimately decided not to do so. At the price they were being offered at, they were a steal, but my cart had about forty products on it at the time, and I badly needed to cull it, so I ended up over-analyzing everything in it before dropping what I could live without. Here's what I thought about the drones:
- I loved the multiple texture sets as they made the set very versatile. Also, it was a nice touch to include lower resolutions.
- I liked there were three drones with consistent and compatible themes and functions, which added a great deal to the versatility of the set.
- Having a pose for multi-limbed figures is a must. It's not that I considered this a pro, it's that the lack of them would have almost surely made me discard the product out of hand.
- I disliked somewhat that there wasn't a clear aesthetic the set adhered to. On one side, the detailed and gritty textures would make me use them in a hard sci-fi story, but the stylized and not overly detailed design (with little in the way of structural details, softly curved surfaces, and almost faces in the front) would place them in a manga-esque piece (which I guess it's not that surprising... Harima).
In the end, at that price and with only that nitpick to tilt the balance, I would've probably bought them and modified them somehow (either by putting some greebles on them to add to the sci-fi feel or by using brighter shaders and making them more toonish) but I needed to make a decision and the fact that I couldn't see myself using them in any of my current projects made it for me.
Nah, this is great feedback and exactly the kind of thing I was hoping for! Thanks! :)
Glad to be of service :)
Apparently I bought these, but with my new job I’ve barely had the chance to use DS*. I’ll play around with them when I get a chance and let you know what I think.
* but I do have more money, and time to shop while I’m working, so I’m in a very precarious situation.
Below is the iray render from Daz Studio. Used:
https://www.daz3d.com/muelsfell-rocky-outcropping-display-base
https://www.daz3d.com/aeridian-lady-stardust-for-zelara-8--genesis-8-female
https://www.daz3d.com/aeridian-drone-robots
I like these drones very much.
... or slightly postworked version.
That looks pretty great! Really captures the feel of a miniature modeling project. Well done!
Was there anything about the set that you specifically did not like? Things that bothered you about the design, etc? I'm looking for ways to improve future robot/mecha projects.
Thanks. Would like to see more textures options like industrial or steampunk, if possible.
Will try to render more and see, if I can provide more thoughts.
I bought them recently but haven't got to render them yet. I was planning to use them as kind of "alien bio-mechanical creatures" but I'll see what I can do about blocking out or obscuring the words and numbers on them. Aliens don't write in English.
In future considerations a texture set without any human language writing on it (maybe use symbols or glyphs instead?) would be useful. Also perhaps an optional "smoother" look with fewer parts protruding out, perhaps corners a bit less sharp? These couple of things would make future robots more versatile.
Also you know what I'd like somebody to make? Something like a mechanical centipede with body segments consisting of spheres and each segment has a pair of legs sticking out. Mabe 8 or 10 legs total. Plus big mandibles to grab or bite a character with.
I really liked the set back when it first released, but they came accross as too strongly diesel-punk, and just didn't fit weel enough with any of my usual styles for me to be able to use them enough to justify the cost. In addition to hitting at a time that there was entirely too much month left at the end of the paycheck. It was a hard decision not to get them at the time, and I fully intended to get them at some point (I do realize that doesn't help your bottom line, but I've got to work the budget somehow). If they had been a bit more future-tech sci-fi I would have been more likely to talk myself into making do with half a cup of ramen at the time. On the plat sale they immediately went in my cart without a second thought, and I am looking forward to working with them soon. I've just been too busy to get much of any work with DS done since then. I am a big fan of your work, and have purchased quite a few products, and been very happy with everyone single one of them.
I was actually going for industrial on these. My favourite texture set in this pack is the aqua "Tactical Fallout" and was the direction I wanted to go with future projects. Worn, used machines, as opposed to the glossy shiny metal or all plastic.
That's a good point. It's pretty trivial to make a texture set with no textures (just hide the writing layers) but then the issue becomes more about extra textures increasing the total file size.
I don't know about smoother or more organic as that seems to be a very different direction and takes us away from mecha and more into biotech.
Interestingly, "too strongly diesel-punk" is kind of the opposite of Artini's request to lean more into steampunk. Maybe I just don't know what you mean by diesel punk. Or maybe there's elements that are mildly steampunkish but not enough to be considered full steampunk.
Either way, steampunk was not at all the direction I wanted, haha.
"Bit more future-tech scifi"... there's so many different types of scifi. Can you clarify a bit? Feel free to say something like "more Star Warsy" or "more WH40k" or whatever.
That is awesome to hear, really a great thing to read when starting my day. :)
The drones are pretty cute. Also used
https://www.daz3d.com/ark-modern-food-pack-i--sandwiches
"What is my purpose?"
"You make sandwiches."
"Oh my god."
Thanks. It looks like, I will have a lot of fun with them.
Thanks for the clarification.
I'd consider a Bugatti Veyron as "modern sleek" or "modern racecar" rather than scifi. Funny how perspective works. I do get what you mean with the comparison of technology to an old pickup though.
Wolfenstein is probably not far off from the industrial look I was going for... Maschinen Krieger is another thematic style I'd like to explore.
As a fiction writer, my own rough genre breakdown (other wrtiters would probably disagree on the fine points):
Steampunk = roughly alternate history 1840-1910. Most advanced technological thing is probably an early zepplein.
Dieselpunk = roughly alternate history 1910-1950. Most advanced technology has to be just before atomic power or the transistor. Think HYDRA from the Captain America: the First Avenger movie, but probably no alien power sources. Or what if Tesla's inventions had actually worked out.
Atompunk = roughly alternate history 1950 - 1970? "Johhny Quest" & atomic spaceships with fins
That's pretty helpful, pctech4ny. Thanks!
Yes, I want all the textures mentioned. I want them all.
Veni, vidi ...
Really brightens my day that you're enjoying these! :D
I wonder if I didn't make the scale adjustment preset large enough, looks like the figures in them all have to hunch over too much. I was visualizing it being a rock/cargo hauler, sort of going along with a troop of infantry (and in fact that was an unfinished promo I did for the drones).
Do you find the weaponized ones having a seperate wearable for the alternative guns useful? I'm wondering if future projects should just use wearables for the weapons, seems like it might be the best way for customization.
Thanks a lot. I have lots and lots of ideas for using the drones.
I do not use weaponized ones at all - have no usage for them.
Just trying to expose cuteness of your creations
Sorry, I hadn't yet seen this thread. I've not played with them much yet, but I'd share some of the thoughts of others.
- Pre-made low resolution textures are great. It'd be nice to see more artists include such things.
- Materials with less specific details could have some advantages. One way or the other, all the skins here would need modifying for my use. In my universe, sentient machines* are exceptionally rare, the Soviet Union no longer exists, and we're definitely not in an atomic age. None of this is that hard to adjust in an image editor, but the fact that all of the textures add "rules" to the universe (other than that of the overall styling) might be a consideration for some people.
* Also, I'd argue that if it's sentient, it's not really a "drone". Something more like "Caution: Moving Machinery" would perhaps be a more generic warning label that was more friendly to whatever canon it ends up in.
As far as adding my own thoughts (and things a bit more fundamental and hard to fix for the end used) they have a very wide footprint that does limit how they can be used. There's a bit of the old-Who Daleks to them, except their weakness seems to be narrow doorways rather than stairs. (Certainly, it'd be interesting for them to be able to smash through walls and the like, but few sets actually have that kind of capability). Obviously, them being non-humanoid is kind of the point, but something with a more vertical silhouette might possibly be more versatile for people.