Weapon Designs
MT9 Tormentor
The first weapon introduced in The Briefing is the MT9 Tormentor carbine. This rifle was based on a design I threw together some years back while messing around with SolidWorks, which I named Folding Rifle “A”. When I later started learning Maya, I decided to do a beginner’s project in making Folding Rifle A into a more detailed and colored model:
Folding Rifle A, first version made in SolidWorks
Folding Rifle A, second version made in Maya
Before I designed the first weapon shown in The Briefing, I needed to develop a set of mechanical design rules that all Biomech weapons would obey, and saw that the MT9 would serve as the archetype for all weapon designs to come. These rules would set the standard for how all weapons would connect to the Biomech’s Armaments Migration System (AMS). Another rule I wanted most weapons to follow was that they should fold somehow, to become less of a giant protrusion when the wings of the AMS migrate the weapon. The idea is that these weapons are massive (the MT9 fires .50 cal rounds!) and designing them to fold allows their center of mass to relocate to a more manageable place. While watching mechanical transformations is eye-catching, my directive was to minimize the amount of moving parts involved, in order to seem a bit more practical. Fictional media these days features a lot of transforming weapon and robot designs that look beautiful on screen, but would be a nightmare to maintain if they were actually built and sent into combat, simply because of the amount of moving parts involved. Thus, the MT9 employs a rather mild folding mechanism; a simple bifold with a sliding silencer and barrel.
I originally intended to just recycle Folding Rifle A with a few touch ups, and call it the MT9. The first issue with that game plan was that I needed most of the gun’s roof to have a completely flat top. This was so that the rails on the Biomech’s forearms, used for AMS position 2 (wrist mount), could easily allow the gun to slide back and forth. However, because the folding hinge of Folding Rifle A was located in the gun’s roof, there wasn’t a way to make the roof totally flat without the design looking a bit silly. My solution was to move the folding hinge to the bottom, requiring a completely new gun design. The second issue came to light when I realized that all Biomech firearms were better off being bullpup, meaning the ammunition had to be inserted behind the trigger handle, as opposed to in front of it. I found by testing a wrist-mounted Folding Rifle A (which is not bullpup), that it was exceedingly difficult to get the Biomech’s wing to load a new mag, since the gun kept colliding with the motors that support the wing. Switching to a bullpup design would minimize the distance between the wing and the magazine insert, which turned out to be crucial in order to keep the Biomech wings reasonably sized without needing to enlarge them. In short, the whole venture was a spectacular balancing act, so much so that I created a page just about designing the Armaments Migration System.
You may notice in the last 3 images above, the orange magazine release latch is longer than what actually appears in The Briefing. I had to shorten the mag latch for the final cut, so that it wouldn’t collide with the fork that reloads the magazine in AMS position 2 (wrist mount). I didn’t notice this design error until I rendered every scene up until the wrist-mounted reload in Part 3. It took three days just to re-render the necessary frames!
Metal Angel: The Briefing - Part 2
MORE WEAPON DESIGNS AND ANIMATIONS ON THE WAY!
