FN FAL / Rhodesian R1

gfelton

20 hours or so of work.

Fell in love with this gun after I found a picture or two of it and felt the need to re-create my own in 3d. This is the first actual project that I've kept up with and taken so far as to bake, texture, and then render out as a complete model and comes as a product of the ~300 hours I've poured into my work just this summer. I really would appreciate some crits on anything you see that displeases you. I'm overall quite satisfied with my work and hope you all are as well. If anyone out there is a gun expert, please let me know if my interpretation of this piece of history does it proper justice. Thanks for looking!

Daf57

That's slick, man! Nice work!

gfelton

Daf57 said:

That's slick, man! Nice work!

Thank you

I just now realized I had meant to put some maps in the OP, I'll get right on it next chance I get. 

Oniram

some minor crits. your grip currently looks a little too fat. it should taper in a bit more and only fan out toward the top where it connects with the receiver. 
the paint job is a nice add but i feel like its overdone, and the material response from it looks basically the same across the entire gun. aside from the wear. id love to see this done with properly defined materials, and then bits of paint on top. have some exposed metal in some spots to break it up. 
itd be nice too to see some wear on this gun that doesnt come from the base material definition. too much these days people rely entirely on presets to achieve a look of wear n tare, without any consideration for uniqueness. fingerprints, oil smears, dirt buildup. give this gun character. tell a story with it. right now it basically just says "im painted"

gfelton

Oniram said:

some minor crits. your grip currently looks a little too fat. it should taper in a bit more and only fan out toward the top where it connects with the receiver. 
the paint job is a nice add but i feel like its overdone, and the material response from it looks basically the same across the entire gun. aside from the wear. id love to see this done with properly defined materials, and then bits of paint on top. have some exposed metal in some spots to break it up. 
itd be nice too to see some wear on this gun that doesnt come from the base material definition. too much these days people rely entirely on presets to achieve a look of wear n tare, without any consideration for uniqueness. fingerprints, oil smears, dirt buildup. give this gun character. tell a story with it. right now it basically just says "im painted"

Hey thanks, I really appreciate some good crits from someone of your skill level. As for the paint, I felt the same way, I just really wanted to avoid going with the original gun's palette because it's nothing but black polymer, then black metal to mix that in. Some more wear is certainly in order, as 90% of the reference images I was using had gun parts that had little to none of the original paint job still intact, yet I wanted to leave more than that, as though mine was still in service. Anyways, really appreciate the critiques either way.

As promised, here are some of the maps I used:

ComradeDispenser

yo, how'd you manage to do the camo effect?

gfelton

ComradeDispenser said:

yo, how'd you manage to do the camo effect?

In substance, under your wear layers, throw down a fill layer with 'uniform black dirt' and give it a black mask. Using a white brush you can paint any pattern you want then simply change the color of the layer to whatever you need. I used two layers so I'd be able to change around my colors whenever I wanted as I was having some trouble getting the colors of the paint just right.

Zi0

Nice gun, like mentioned before the first thing I see is that the grip seems to fat. But overall nice work! I like the fact that you made it a bit unique by adding the Rhodesian camo.

Zodd

Apart from what Oniram said, i feel like there are too many scratches, also they are of same sharp scratch type, try layering really light and subtle wear it makes for a more believable effect.
The paint looks like its almost as thick as metal itself in some places, so tone down the height on layer and use material definition more to differentiate between areas.
Fire mode switch looks too flat, but since there are no reference images i cant really tell if this is worth mentioning.

Other than these, there are no other notable critiques and cammo idea is super cool.

gfelton

Zodd said:

Apart from what Oniram said, i feel like there are too many scratches, also they are of same sharp scratch type, try layering really light and subtle wear it makes for a more believable effect.
The paint looks like its almost as thick as metal itself in some places, so tone down the height on layer and use material definition more to differentiate between areas.
Fire mode switch looks too flat, but since there are no reference images i cant really tell if this is worth mentioning.

Other than these, there are no other notable critiques and cammo idea is super cool.

You're absolutely right about some of the scraping I've got going on, it looks like someone tried cutting it with a knife heh. Really want to go through and maybe re-do textures at this point, I kind of feel like my colors are a bit off from the actual camo.

maxie706

Looks amazing, but one weird fact which could make it more accurate. due to an incident where spent brass deflected and hit the eye of a Rhodesian soldier, the carry handles were removed on all R1 rifles. Apart from that, keep up the good work!