For the second milestone, we decided that it would be a good idea to work on the turrets since the coders had made a lot of progress with those mechanics. It was really awkward to watch their demonstrations with only basic blackouts, so I got to work on making those models. 

The turret designs, unlike the enemies' designs, were made by  Owen, Yeferson, and me. I sketched some concepts out onto a pair along with some ideas for how they'd function. Since our train would hover, I wanted our turrets to do that as well. It would help explain how they traveled with you and made the turrets seem more high-tech that way. The designs above were for our gatling turret, which was supposed to get more barrels the more you upgraded it. The turret also had corruption tanks, which was from an earlier idea where the turrets become corrupted instead of the player.

The first turret I made was a flamethrower, as that had already been blocked out by one of the coders. I simply remade it with fewer polygons and some tweaks to the design. I added the barrel with the holes in it to better resemble a flamethrower and tweaked the canisters to make them look more rounded. I also changed where the tubes connected to make the design less crowded. This was my first real attempt using low-poly modeling techniques, as there was no sculpting involved with this process.

The final flamethrower had a "lighter" added on to the front and a protrusion at the top meant to act like the sights of the turret. The base that the turret sat on was actually turned into a separate object, both to save time and to create a consistent base for all of these types of turrets. The colors were chosen because I simply like how purple and orange go together. These placeholder colors also help me and everyone else see the parts of the model better. 

Another turret I worked on was Sherman's house, which is the home to our explosive bot. I think Yeferson made the original model, but I basically retopologized it since the poly count was a little high for a model this simple. I used a couple of boolean tools I had to make the body of the house one entire piece, rather than several jammed together. That really helped lower the poly count and still stay true to the house's shape and details.

To finish off the model, I added the tubes, the satellite, and the hover rings as extra details. I also made each triangle in the circular door a separate object so when I animate it later, they'll be able to move individually. This was probably the easiest of the turrets since I was simply following the shape and details of a previous model, rather than making them from scratch.

The last turret I made was the "gatling" turret I designed, though we got rid of its rapid-fire property. Instead, we decided to go with a single-barrel turret that would fire more like a canon, with the projectiles hitting harder but going slower. I used the same shape as the flamethrower for consistency's sake but tried to make it look different. 

I made the barrel of the turret more rifle-like to give the impression that it would shoot bullets. I also added a ring of extruded cubes to look like the rounds of a machine gun. The idea was that the bullets would come out of the cylinder chambers on the side and be fed into the gun, allowing it to fire. I separated the bullet ring from the model so that when I finally animate it, the rings will be able to move and spin. Like with the flamethrower, the turret uses the same hover base for consistency.

The final thing I worked on for this milestone was the "Glow Boss," which is the final boss of our first level. This was based on a brilliant design by Avery, which I tried to follow as much as possible. Like with my Puffboom model, I started out with some basic cylinders and spheres. I sculpted these into the shape of the boss and used some brushes I had to create the finer details of the model.

The thorn vines were the hardest part to sculpt, as I had to create the base using curves first. I've always found positioning and adjusting the curves to be a pain, so having to do that more than 6 times was grueling. Blender's mirror tool did save me some time with that process. For the arms and legs, I actually used a welding texture to make them look more organic. I figured it made the mushroom look more lumpy and frilly, like it had growths forming on it. I also added some folds to the hips and torso, so it would be clear how the monster moved. For the mushrooms, I used a cracked stone texture to give the mushroom a more realistic look. 

During this milestone, I only got to sculpting the Glow Boss. And I didn't even finish, as you can tell by his distinct lack of hands and feet. I wanted to get to retopologizing him during this milestone, but I didn't have enough time to and I spent too much time sculpting him for that.