Dump Truck Progress

It's been a few weeks since I last posted the blockout screen shots.  Below you can find additional images of where I'm at now in my modeling progress.  Below are some notes:

• The underside elements will mostly be hidden from view.  At least 60-70% of the objects, particularly those up towards the front of the truck, will mostly be hidden by the frontal elements and the front tires.  The elements more to the middle and those in the rear will have a greater chance at being seen, so those were modeled out more specifically to the reference images.  
• The underside elements tended to be less involved as the other areas of the truck.  Most of them were created using either box primitives, or the ep curve tool.  
• The back section which includes the actual rear container was a mess in terms of topology.  I went back in and fixed things up so the flow was a bit better.  I still don't quite like how the edge flow in some areas just pinches into the corners where the loops are responsible for holding the transition and form.  There could still be a few fixes that I should go back and clean up.  But believe me, it's looking worlds better than before!
• The tires took some time.  I remember Max, my teacher for Hard Surface 2, saying not to worry about treads until a class in which he was going to tell us more about them.  But given the time crunch and the fact that I wasn't sure if I would be able to finish the whole model (plus UV and naming conventions) if I started on the tires later.  So I started now.  I used a technique Mark Dedecker showed me in Hard Surface 1 (involving a plane, cut faces tool to cut the tread details, lots of edge and vertex manipulation, followed by some extrusions.  The tread, the side of the tire, the cap and the cap details are all separate objects.  I may need to go back and fix things up (or worse, start over) depending on the critique I get on them.
• I also modeled out the different caps.  The outside-front tires had a certain kind of cap, the inside of the tires had a different kind and the outside of the back tires had a third different kind.  Those were very easy and quick to do, involving curves, curve offsets and followed by lofting.
• The front section was probably the most involved.  The majority of all the elements of the vehicle seemed to be cluttered here.  I won't go naming everything that I modeled and dup'ed, but it's all there. Some things I had to literally approximate and I know of at least 2 pieces I had to really just think up off of the top of my head because there was no reference image that had a close up of those elements.  None.  If they had it,  it was waaaay too blurry to see anything.  I do plan to apply a mesh -> smooth to some of the cylindrical shapes so when they smooth, you'll see less faceting along the edge.
• Last note is that the driver's box is something I'm very...ikky about.  I don't like how the edges are flowing and there are a lot of edges in very tight areas.  This is a piece I'll be going back to and trying to find a way to get the flow to look better.  The door handle in the side doesn't help the dense topology either.
• All in all, this entire model is just about to break 1.2 million faces.  
• My next step, after fixing up a few stray topologys here and there is to UV everything (transferring UVs  when I can) confirming that I have all the smaller bolts on the vehicle, then the arduous task of renaming everything properly.  Renaming should take a day.  UV may take a day or two.  The rest of my time will be spent making sure the topology is as best as I can get it.