AKM hard surface practice

woot

hi polycount, ive been working for a couple of weeks on improving my Hard Surface techniques, and thought i should show it to get some criticism to help me improve my model!

ive already posted a few renders in the What are you working on? thread, but rather than attempt to hijack that, i thought i may as well make a new thread for it.

here are some WIP renders, hopefully you guys can help me improve my model and help with any inaccuracies and flaws in it.







some of the crits ive had from the other thread have been pretty useful, and im working on improving it from those, but anything else you guys can say that will help would be really appreciated!

KnechtRuprecht

I think its way too thin.


another pic: http://www.dandbmilitaria.com/images/D/ghk-akm-gas-blowback-assault-rifle--%5B4%5D-7285-p.jpg

also the wooden "bulge" at the front grip is smoothed and the holes are bigger: http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q86/Blue_Falcon_One/AK%20and%20AKS/100_0738.jpg

woot

KnechtRuprecht wrote: »

I think its way too thin.


another pic: http://www.dandbmilitaria.com/images/D/ghk-akm-gas-blowback-assault-rifle--%5B4%5D-7285-p.jpg

also the wooden "bulge" at the front grip is smoothed and the holes are bigger: http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q86/Blue_Falcon_One/AK%20and%20AKS/100_0738.jpg

thanks, you advise scaling the whole model to make it thicker? or remaking the top reciever to make it thicker?

KnechtRuprecht

i would try to scale it and see how it looks. Also your charging handle is way too small:
http://www.hiflow.org/img/guns/ak47/akm_detail.JPG

woot

KnechtRuprecht wrote: »

i would try to scale it and see how it looks. Also your charging handle is way too small:
http://www.hiflow.org/img/guns/ak47/akm_detail.JPG

alreight, thanks man!

woot

ive tried scaling it up, and thought its gone alright. have a few smoothing issuses that im working to fix, and i havent changed the charging handle yet, but i think this looks a lot better than previously.





hopefully this is the thickness issue sorted, do you guys agree? and does anyone have any more of them sweet, sweet crits?

hamstocks

thickness issue(status_report): SORTED

KnechtRuprecht

Looks much better than before, good job!

LANKUS MAXIMUS

Looking really good. So much better with the added thickness and the extra length to the handle. Great job!

RedRogueXIII

Still looks too thin, along with being too angular on the dust cover :


Pistol grip has odd smoothing near the bottom.
Missing lever on the iron sights.
Iron sight aiming notch can be exaggerated larger for better visibility in game.
Dust cover rib stampings are pretty sharp, should be blended smoother with the base.

woot

RedRogueXIII wrote: »

Still looks too thin, along with being too angular on the dust cover :


Pistol grip has odd smoothing near the bottom.
Missing lever on the iron sights.
Iron sight aiming notch can be exaggerated larger for better visibility in game.
Dust cover rib stampings are pretty sharp, should be blended smoother with the base.

thanks, ive been working on sorting the dust cover today, the one in the pictures is from the old reciever that was too thin, so it isnt the correct shape. im working on the details now, im not really getting the irons done yet, its proving quite the challenge!
im also trying to solve the smoothing issues, i think its some dogy topology down the bottom of the grip, should get that done soon.

what do you mean by rib stampings by the way?

RedRogueXIII

By rib stampings I am referring to the extrusions on the top of the dust cover.

s6

Yeah. i have to agree with most everyone here, Dust cover needs love overall. the shape is off, As RedRogue said. And the stamps on the top do look a bit off. Sorry for the crude paint over. But you'll get the idea. The Round parts that run side to side wrap around the left, top, and right side of the gun. making about a half circle. And the profile of them is fairly round too, Less pointy than yours appear. Granted, we don't have a side view, So maybe I'm wrong. Then the stamps running front to back should be shallower, and planar on the top.





In addition, There is some pulling happening on the dust cover and the fore grip areas. Take a look at the first person image you posted and notice the shade streaks running down the side. not too bad atm, But not the kind of thing you want baked down to a normal map especially viewed at that angle.

woot

s620ex1 wrote: »

Yeah. i have to agree with most everyone here, Dust cover needs love overall. the shape is off, As RedRogue said. And the stamps on the top do look a bit off. Sorry for the crude paint over. But you'll get the idea. The Round parts that run side to side wrap around the left, top, and right side of the gun. making about a half circle. And the profile of them is fairly round too, Less pointy than yours appear. Granted, we don't have a side view, So maybe I'm wrong. Then the stamps running front to back should be shallower, and planar on the top.





In addition, There is some pulling happening on the dust cover and the fore grip areas. Take a look at the first person image you posted and notice the shade streaks running down the side. not too bad atm, But not the kind of thing you want baked down to a normal map especially viewed at that angle.

thanks for pointing that out, i'll have a look at sorting the pulling. what is the general way of sorting that out by the way, i havent really encountered the problem before.
ive been doing some work on the dust cover anyway, it still doesnt look great though. im finding it difficult to get the overall shape correct :poly122:

ill have a look at the stamps on top, as they seem to be fairly important in the first person view.

s6

The pulls you have there, Without seeing the wireframe, appear to be caused mainly by faces not being planar. What i mean is, it isn't bad topology, As it seems, But it's just some points on some areas are raised up higher/lower than others. You can try to grabbing a ring of faces(with one face selected, Ctrl +Shift click on another adjacent face in the direction the ring runs), setting the scale tool to local, and try scaling them down. Do that one by one on some face rings near the problem. if that doesn't help. Look at your topology and and see if there is any reason they should be pinching/pulling other than uneven placement.

woot

ive taken a quick look at it today, and tried to fix some of the issues coming up here.

so far ive had a look at the pulling on the handguard, and i think ive pretty much fixed that, which is good. i am getting some dodgy smoothing errors in other places, as you will see below.
other than that, i took a look at the top stamps, and made them a bit more planar, but cant seem to edit the 'humps' without messing up the geometry around them.





the closeup has some odd smoothing on the reciever/ dust cover (i dont know the correct term for this, ive been calling it an upper reciever), i really need to sort that, its very annoying. other than that, any more crits would be awesome!

AlexCatMasterSupreme

This still doesn't look right. If you PM me I can give you pictures of mine from any angle you want inside or out. The button on the dust cover doesnt look like that, the dust cover doesnt have extrusions on the side near the safty on any that I have see, the bumps on top are less sharp and more round, the back has some odd issues. Your modeling overall is getting better but you need better refs, a lot better ones and more of them.
The size of the bolt carrier bolt is too small.

It's not bad, you just need refs. If you want some PM me later.

jonincgi

Damn, That's good. If you don't mind me asking, where did you learn your technique? Were you following a tutorial or maybe you already had experience? My next project was gonna be an AK or M16, and this work puts mine to shame.

woot

jonincgi wrote: »

Damn, That's good. If you don't mind me asking, where did you learn your technique? Were you following a tutorial or maybe you already had experience? My next project was gonna be an AK or M16, and this work puts mine to shame.

its not good enough, but ive been working in max for about 6 months.
ill link the tutorials i used, they are really good.

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=100984

props to millenia for this, awesome tutorial, teaches everything about game assets.

http://vimeo.com/10941211

this one is really good for just general techniques.

AlexCatMasterSupreme wrote: »

This still doesn't look right. If you PM me I can give you pictures of mine from any angle you want inside or out. The button on the dust cover doesnt look like that, the dust cover doesnt have extrusions on the side near the safty on any that I have see, the bumps on top are less sharp and more round, the back has some odd issues. Your modeling overall is getting better but you need better refs, a lot better ones and more of them.
The size of the bolt carrier bolt is too small.

It's not bad, you just need refs. If you want some PM me later.

hmm, the ones ive looked at have got the extrusions, but i see your point on the other stuff. the back has some serious problems that i need to sort anyway, so ill try fix the bumps if i can. is the bolt carrier bolt the ejection port cover by the way, i havent heard that term before.

and i probably wont be needing the references for a few weeks, as im away for those few weeks. i will be needing some when i get back, so i will PM you then. thanks. i can only seem to find differenct references because of the mass of variants -_-

woot

okay, sorry its been a while since my last update, i was on holiday. but now im back im determined to get this done!

so really, what ive been doing since ive got back is more sorting out details, as well as fixing the corrections said above. apart from the button, thats next on the list.
after that, its some more corrections on details and stuff.

stuff fixed:
- smoothing errors
- staples on dust cover
- completely remade the fire selector, but im having some issues with that. topology is better than before though
- changed indents on lower reciever
- change charging handle bolt thingy.
- gas block details fixed to be more with references.


anyway, here are some WIP renders.











im not really sure about the floating cylinders on the reciever. they look okay, but i think i can do them better.

as for references, i found a set of awesome HD pics from a ton of angles which is super useful! they can be found here. http://www.bomanufacture.com/en/produit-466-akm13-aeg

any crits would be awesome!


at this rate there will be too many Kalashnikov's on the front page...

woot

had a absolute whale of a time remaking this rear sight block to fit better with the references.

think ive fixed it, looks decent enough. also had another go at fixing thins like the indents, the size of the actual rear sight anda bit of work on smoothing errors and pinching on teh grip.

woot

big update here, ive basically been trying to fix absolutely everything that i can see wrong with it.



annoyingly though, the magazine doesnt seem to have that smooth curve, even using a bend modifier. very odd, and somewhat frustrating because i feel that after that is done i can go onto the low poly work. if anyone has any advice on how to remake it/fix the issues, it would be awesome!

any crits/ feedback is appreciated.

woot

high poly finally finished after remaking the magazine and changing a few details.




also finished the low poly today, settled at 10k tris.



dont think it needs any more work before UVW, but any feedback on more places to optimize would be nice!

cR45h

Your model still has some inaccuracies overall. Nothing too serious tho.

Your lowpoly on the other hand could use a lot more optimization. You have a lot of useless loops, uneven/ illogical distribution of geo, some leftover floaters etc.

woot

hmm, i was told that having those floaters left was a good idea, due to them being in the players face quite a lot.

its designed for cryengine 3, and i was told 10k tris was what was usually good, and that was what to aim for.

what would you say is uneven?
the lower reciever has very little geometry because its got very little detail that im going to add in the normal map.

but i will try distribute what the player will see more evenly!

BARDLER

woot wrote: »

hmm, i was told that having those floaters left was a good idea, due to them being in the players face quite a lot.

its designed for cryengine 3, and i was told 10k tris was what was usually good, and that was what to aim for.

what would you say is uneven?
the lower reciever has very little geometry because its got very little detail that im going to add in the normal map.

but i will try distribute what the player will see more evenly!

10k triangles is not a bad spot for a gun, but that isn't a good reason to be wasteful on your triangles.

Red=optimize, collapse, and remove pointless edge loops.
Green=bake to normal map.
Yellow=put geo there instead to make the silhouette better and easier to bake.
Black=unplannar quad.

I circled the top part of the gun with the little notches that come off, but you should keep those, just collapse the edges that support them so they dont run all the way down. Also if you want those buttons/bolts on the side of the gun to be geo at least simply them down to be much less dense.

woot

ok, i will have a look, i can probably sort those out fairly easily.

thanks for the feedback, im just trying to keep the major parts looking decent, because its for an FPS.

woot

with a bit more optomization, ive managed to get it to 8696 tris, not bad i may say. even with the floaters, and extra geo added to grip and trigger.

i decided to keep the floating geo on the reciever as its right in the players face, and im not sure how well normal maps will do it justice.



yup, feeling good about this one.

cR45h

I used your previous screenshot since the angle was better, so I might have addressed some issues that have already been fixed.



Take a look at Amsterdam Hilton Hotel's AKM wireframe as he did a pretty great job with it.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1805531&postcount=23

Also, sorry if I misspelled anything, just woke up

tj990

Adding to what cR45h said, is did a really quick pic of better ways to improve mesh:

Take advantage of using triangles. Your no longer using a high poly so supporting edges and loops are not that necessary anymore. Mine was just a quick one but Amsterdam's is a lot better.

Here is the picture of Amsterdam's


Support loops are only useful if they help the silhouette or the functionality of the model.
Your model is also incredibly skinny.

woot

hmm, well. im also aiming for 10k, so im thinking the areas that are right up near the screen dont need to be that well optimized, stuff like the dust cover and magazine.

either way, i had a go at it, and have tried distibuting my tris a lot better to what needs to be curved etc.

im also not so sure what you mean about the extrusions on the dustcover, can you explain it in more depth Crash?




anyway, i think 7500 tris is a good amount for this

cR45h

Basically, it will bake bad due to the way 90 degree angles are projected.

http://wiki.polycount.com/NormalMap#M

Scroll down to the 'Sloped extrusions' part to get a better idea of what I'm talking about.

woot

like this?

cR45h

You got the 90 degree part (kinda) right. Except for this part here;

You can optimize the dust cover a lot more. Just because you're aiming for 10k tris, doesn't mean you should waste any.

woot

can anyone think of an idea of how to do this section without seams or distortion?

anything i try just ends up with annoying distortion.



nevermind, ive got it sorted.

Shrike

It is not about 7k or 10k, its about how much you need to give the model everything it demands. Current gen assault rifles are easily 12k+ and next gen will more or less double that, so forget thinking in numbers and think in quality. Make it as good as possible without wasting, not make it as saving as possible. Atleast for portfolio usage, mobile or console demands are another thing. Your want your stuff to pop, and for that you need best looks, not best numbers, so don't thwart yourself for no reason ; )

woot

okay, ive finsihed wrapping it but im having some problems with Textools.

when i finish wrapping, it looks like this.



but when i hit normalize to scale it, this happens:



for some reason after it finishes, all my islands disappear, and i can select anything. i have no idea why it happens and its completely stopped any progress i have done.
any one had this problem before? is there a fix?

Stoy79

I've never used Textools normalize function, but the bottom left button in the "arrange elements" panel does the same. It's not flawless either, there's occasionally a part or two that vanishes (it's fairly rare, though).

oobersli

or do it like we've done it for ages.. by hand/eye manually *gasp*:poly124:

WarrenM

woot - Did you zoom in? You're sure all those islands aren't down there waiting for you in the 0-1 space?

woot

ah, well it doesnt really matter now anyway.

ive decided to remake the whole model anyways. im not really happy with how its turned out after looking at it a while.

thanks for the help, but i dont think its my zooming.
i zoomed all the way in and as far out as possible and it still wasnt there.

woot

ok, its been a while since the last update. but anyway, i totally restarted the model and i think its turned out so much nicer than before, although it still has a few issues.





things to fix are
- smoothing errors on dustcover
- small inaccuracies
- adding more detail

woot

im planning on finishing this up today, can anyone give any more crit?

Stoy79

Overall, it's a nice improvement, but some parts still need fixing. Here are the main areas that I've noticed and think could use some further improvement.



1. The extrusion looks really weird - it should be much shorter. Example :
http://www.rusmilitary.com/images/akm_3pcs.jpg

2. The stock too looks strange, almost as if it's been inverted - your previous one was much closer to what it should look like. My advice would be to swap them.

3. These are too rectangular (on both sides) - both ends should be rounded to semi-circles. Example :
http://0.tqn.com/d/hunting/1/0/g/A/strip_02.jpg

4 & 5. There is one more part between this and the receiver. On the right side, a small rounded protrusion is used as limiter for the fire selector lever.
http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4009/4539148470_d4859c5185_b.jpg

6. That "thing" at the front of the mag is positioned way too low - it's barely visible as it's mostly hidden inside the receiver. Example :
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/AKM_automatkarbin,_Ryssland_-_7,62x39mm_-_Arm%C3%A9museum.jpg

7. That's not quite right : http://ak-builder.com/images/detailed/2/AK338R-v4.jpg (the thing sticking vertically on the left side is the locking lever - it's horizontal, when locked)

8. Why is it jagged? Shouldn't be.
http://ak-builder.com/images/detailed/2/AK338R-v3.jpg

9. The bayonet lug is much simpler than that :
Seen from the side :
http://images.photo1.walgreens.com/232323232%7Ffp43364%3Enu%3D3235%3E%3B75%3E248%3EWSNRCG%3D323%3A%3C7435%3B324nu0mrj
And seen from the back :
http://images.photo1.walgreens.com/232323232%7Ffp43352%3Enu%3D3235%3E%3B75%3E248%3EWSNRCG%3D323%3A%3C74758324nu0mrj

This one's from an AK74, but it's standardized on both models. Only difference is that on the AKM there's only one, on the gas block.
http://50ae.net/VZ-vs-AK/ak-7-c.jpg


Keep up the good work. :thumbup:

woot

ah, thanks very much!

basically, the stock i found sort of gets a bit thinner towards the end after the area where it attaches to the receiver. anyways, thanks for the crit, ill get right on it

Stoy79

Depends a bit on the manufacturer - some seem to get thinner there, but get wider again towards the end, others seem to be more or less the same width all the length. It's not always easy to see exactly, because of the curves.
If you measure the width on this picture, for instance, it's almost the same width at the back and the front - it's only a slight bit thinner in the middle.
http://jesticearms.com/image/cache/data/june/AKM-stock-set%20(13)-500x500.JPG

That's not super important, anyway, what matters most is how your textures and normal map make it look like in the end.

On the other hand, one thing I can say for sure (and that you can't always easily figure out from pictures) is that the handguards are the same width as the receiver (~3,4cm for a stamped one), but get thinner up front.

woot

didnt notice the handguard thing, ill take a look, thanks.


this is what i did today, fixed some stuff and made a few modifications to my lighting. maybe it helps pic out the details.

Stoy79

Good job on the fixes. :thumbup: Just some further suggestions (mostly stuff I hadn't paid attention to the first time).


* : The limiter is part of the intermediate part, not part of the mag lock/trigger guard. It's constructed like this : http://www.arizonaresponsesystems.com/notes/notesak/ak47build/akbmag12.jpg
http://imageshack.us/scaled/landing/803/imagekdq.jpg

Your trigger guard looks a tad too thick to me, btw.


Anyway, almost done, I'd say.

woot

cheers man, i was planning on adding the rivets so have done that now



cheers for the crit!

Stoy79

Mostly Ok, I think.


Just circled in yellow some of the areas that I think would benefit from wider edges (at least the ones I could spot).

The red dots mark areas that seem to be convex, while they should be concave.

woot

i went over it and did the stuff, but havent managed to fix the smoothing errors on the dustcover. ill do that tommorow, i think it might be pretty time consuming.