I wanted to make something with eight legs. Why not? There's no law against it.

The legs were modelled in Ray Dream Studio, between crashes. Each leg is actually a fully linked and articulated model to make posing easy. Linking objects in RDS is a lot of work, but worth it.

The hull - which is significantly simpler - was made out of two Ray Dream freeform objects, to which eight copies of the leg were attached. The legs were then posed individually, tweaking the joint angles to move the various parts of each leg in different directions. The model was then imported into Bryce in 3DMF format.

A modified standard texture was applied for the mechanical look. Heavy bump, the secret solution to under-complex models (the hull is really very simple), helped create the illusion of detail.

The figures beneath the vehicle help to give an idea of scale. They were modelled and rendered in Poser, and then imported as PICT objects.

The reason for the name Sleipnir may or may not be obvious, but at least you can look it up. Most references, however, don't explain why Sleipnir had eight legs. If you don't know, mail me your best guess and I'll tell you if you were right. The explanation is rather neat ...

I tried out various different views just to see if I could improve on the earlier renders. This one gives you another perspective on the model.

Alternative view [39K]