Chōdenji Machine Voltes V - Stage One

As described from Wikipedia: Chōdenji Machine Voltes V (超電磁マシーン ボルテスＶ, Chōdenji Mashīn Borutesu Faibu, lit. "Super Electromagnetic Machine Voltes Five") was a Japanese anime television series that was first aired on TV Asahi starting June 4, 1977 to June 25, 1978. Voltes V is the second part of the Robot Romance Trilogy of the Super Robot genre which includes Combattler V and Daimos. Here's what the intro of the old series looks like...

This is one of my most sought-to-build in 3D for the longest time simply because I'm a fan of this old mecha anime series (alongside Daimos, and Mazinger Z). In my early days of 3DS MAX, I was able to build a crude version (really crude) of the robot itself. Extremely low poly and just the use of diffuse textures drawn from Photoshop (badly drawn if I'd criticize myself). Based from the image below, this was done on 3DS MAX R2.5 (at that time, I was pretty happy that they've thrown in UVW Unwrap).

An old 3DS MAX model of Voltes V.

After more than 10 years, I've decided to model this mecha from scratch starting with each Voltes craft. The mecha consist of five different machines to form a single giant robot. These machines are: Volt-1 Crewzer (or Cruiser), Volt-2 Bomber, Volt-3 Panzer, Volt-4 Frigate, and Volt-5 Lander. Here are first pass works of each Voltes machine.

Voltes Machine 1: Crewzer done in 3DS MAX R9

Voltes Machine 2: Bomber done in 3DS MAX R9

Voltes Machine 3: Panzer done in 3DS MAX R9

Voltes Machine 4: Frigate done in 3DS MAX R9

Voltes Machine 5: Lander done in 3DS MAX R9

Although the work couldn't be pulled off in a few weeks (as I thought I could), I've decided to turn this into stages of development. At the moment, I'm still working on the textures as well as laying out plans how to go about other stuff such as SFX. You can keep tabs on the actual development of this project found in the WIP pages of 3D Pinoy forum, or just come back to my blog.