FPS Weapon - Kary - MGL 140

kary

After a few sketches I realized I don't have the experience (as I can't remember modelling a gun before) to put together something that looks like it would both work and have a unique style. So I moved on to this real gun: http://www.defensereview.com/article749.html (I took most of my ref from the company's site yesterday, but apparently they lost their domain to squatters today -- this does not inspire confidence in the military-industrial complex).

The gun reminds me of the demoman's a lot, but has a bit more of a rl feel to it. There is decent coverage online -- not detailed pics from every angle, but enough to work from. It's considered a simple low tech design, but pretty effective: "The MGL-140 will fire six rounds of these unique munitions in 3 seconds at ranges up to 400 meters (437.6 yards) and will effectively cover a minimum destruction area/zone of 20x60 meters. The weapon will also allow the operator to engage specific targets with pinpoint accuracy at up to 150 meters."


I made a box that met the outer dimensions, then placed in rough shapes using the pic from a side view. Everything fit so I expect to be able to place the high poly shapes with this draft, and then do the low poly from the high. In theory anyway

kary

I didn't get started on the high poly until last weekend. A friend asked me to do a drawing and (as he helped me move awhile ago) it seemed a good way to clear the outstanding favour.

I don't have much of a chance of getting this wrapped on time. That is okay as I've learned a ton in the last couple of days and if the low comes out okay I should have a portfolio piece out of it. There was a lot more structural stuff and interesting detail in this gun then I expected -- and everything is based on tubes (yes, much like the internet) so, running off joined shapes was sometimes more complicated then I was expecting:

(xvid format, 1.1mb)

I need to get some more detail on the back of the scope and do a bit of general cleanup there. There are a couple smoothing errors that I hope are small enough to be beneath notice (or something I can flatten when I see how much comes out in the maps). I might try to get a few more welds into it, what is the best method for that? Something like running a renderable spline along the edge with face snapping on, then deleting the front half and flipping the normals?

Anything else that you folks notice I’d appreciate knowing about

EarthQuake

Looks pretty cool, tho the rails arent modeled very realisticly, unless that wasnt what you were going for

kary

Thats a great point EQ, thanks.



That was an area that I did Saturday and wasn't using decent ref (I wasn't bright enough to research what rails should look like... or are). Looking at the ref that I found Tuesday the whole front area I made is snafued. One of the big lessons here for me was care in reference: once I ran into that nice high res ref I realized how confused I was getting from the shots I'd started with, which had 3 or 4 generations of the gun with minor differences and not enough detail for me to read them.

I'll rebuild that section with the above in mind.

kary

An old version of the grenade launcher: [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SB6TRpZGz2A[/ame] It's a soft sound when the rounds fire, but a decent bang when they land.



I hope that gets the rails to passable.

Now that I'm modelling more of a M-32 then a MGL-140 the big cage on the front changes the look a fair bit. Adds a little noise in the FPV, but would make for some interesting angles when moving.

I included the reloading view this time (bottom left). An unusual movement, it would be interesting problem to handle in animation.