MT-LB

Incredible 80,000 MT-LBs have been produced since the beginning of production in the 1970s. This makes the MT-LB one of the most produced tracked vehicles ever. Although the MT-LB is no longer being produced, thousands of MT-LBs are still in active use, providing thousands of reasons for us to engage with this vehicle in the context of military training and simulation.

The MT-LB was developed in the 1960s as an armored amphibious troop transport in the Soviet Union, based on the unarmored MT-L towing tractor. The MT-LB was produced in the Soviet Union, Poland, and Bulgaria.

An MT-LB in the service of the Ukrainian army

The commander and driver form the two-man crew. The MT-LB has space for two tons of payload or 11 passengers. In addition to its use as a transporter, the MT-LB is employed in a variety of other roles, such as an artillery system, a pioneer vehicle, or an air defense system.

In 3D modeling, we opted for a modern approach using mid-poly mesh, multi-textures, and mesh decals.

We forgo high-to-low-poly bakes and instead build a mesh in the mid-poly range that does not require a global normal map. The visual quality of the materials is ensured via a custom shader, which combines tiled textures with a global map. Visible patterns are thereby broken up.

Polygonal model of an MT-LB

For high-resolution details, a combination of shader decals and mesh decals is used. The difference lies in that mesh decals are placed as planes just above the geometry and have their own material properties (roughness, metalness, normals), while shader decals are simply blended as color values into the shader, inheriting all other properties of the underlying material. Additionally, these decal textures are combined into trim sheets to significantly reduce the number of necessary draw calls.

In contrast to high- and low-poly meshes, this approach has several advantages:

• Shorter modeling time, as the effort of developing a high-resolution polygon model is eliminated

• Good texture resolution at all distances

• Few texture sets and lower polygon load, thus ensuring good VR performance

MT-LB in front view

MT-LB in top-down view

MT-LB close-up

MT-LB in front view

Even if the last MT-LB is scrapped, it will surely not be missed. It remains a typical representative of the cheaply mass-produced Soviet military equipment, which, with its light armor, offers little protection to its crew.