M4 Sniper - First High to Low model...I'm stuck!

Spunky

Hello everyone

I have been lurking this forum for probably a good year at this point and love everything on here. I don't see much hard surface modeling on here, but hopefully you all can still help me.

I have been learning Maya and have finally begun my first weapon model. I'm modeling a sniper version of an M4 rifle. I started out immediately modeling the high poly version, and now I am stuck sitting here not sure how to approach modeling the low poly!

I have given it several attempts, both times ending up with an extremely messy mesh. The main problem I am having is transitioning from the barrel/hand grip and into the body of the gun. The handgrip is cylindrical in shape, and then the body turns squarish....this is where my mesh is getting most of its problems.

Do you guys have any tips or techniques I could try out?


Here is where I'm sitting now
http://i.imgur.com/XVjYH.jpg

ivanzu

I'm not sure if I understand about what are you talking about so are you trying to merge the barrel and grip with the body?If so you don't have to do it you attach it to the mesh and delete polys that cant bee seen.

Spunky

The picture I posted is my completed high poly gun. It made up of a bunch of separate pieces that are all fine and dandy. Trouble I'm running into is the low poly needs to be one complete piece. Say I start modeling the low poly starting at the end of the barrel. I get stuck when I need to transition from the hand grip and into the body of the gun. I just cant figure out how to do it cleanly.

ivanzu

It doesn't have to be one single piece you can start with 3 and then merge them into one.

Olli.

just a clarification to the above,


even if for some reason your gun has to be a single object, you can still have multiple elements in it.

passerby

it can be as many pieces as you want, and working with multiple parts will make it easier to UV too.

just when you done select all and merge so you can get 1 object with multiple elements.

Joshua Stubbles

Yeah, is there a reason the barrel HAS to be built into the mesh? Separate objects are perfectly fine and are in fact, the norm. The mesh doesn't need to be completely solid/contiguous.

Spunky

I really appreciate all the responses everyone and thank you for the info.

Now that I know I can indeed model my low poly in pieces, this will make everything about ten thousand times easier



Thank you again everyone. I'll keep posting my progress if you guys are interested.

Quack!

Spunky wrote: »

I really appreciate all the responses everyone and thank you for the info.

Now that I know I can indeed model my low poly in pieces, this will make everything about ten thousand times easier



Thank you again everyone. I'll keep posting my progress if you guys are interested.

Be careful. In many cases it is much better to model everything attached that isn't going to move/be animated. You will have a much higher texture resolution with fewer uv islands, and having split objects helps to create more islands. This is up to you to figure out through practice, but I would suggest not just assuming splitting your objects up is the best way to go, especially with weapons.

ZacD

Quack! wrote: »

Be careful. In many cases it is much better to model everything attached that isn't going to move/be animated. You will have a much higher texture resolution with the few islands you have, and having split objects helps to create more islands. This is up to you to figure out through practice, but I would suggest not just assuming splitting your objects up is the best way to go, especially with weapons.

Also it depends on the engine, but some count every seperate pieces of geometry as a draw call, I know unity use to do that, I don't know if it does currently. You can always model seperate and merge later as well.

ivanzu

ZacD wrote: »

Also it depends on the engine, but some count every seperate pieces of geometry as a draw call, I know unity use to do that, I don't know if it does currently. You can always model seperate and merge later as well.

It still does that.

Olli.

Quack! wrote: »

Be careful. In many cases it is much better to model everything attached that isn't going to move/be animated. You will have a much higher texture resolution with fewer uv islands, and having split objects helps to create more islands. This is up to you to figure out through practice, but I would suggest not just assuming splitting your objects up is the best way to go, especially with weapons.

If something is connected, it should be modeled as one piece. I think what Spunky was fretting about was because he was trying to weld the handguard in to the reciever even though they are not connected at all.

Its also important to consider what purpose youre modeling for. if its for a mobile app or a world model of a weapon for fps games, you can and should optimize it to the max, because it will rarely be seen up close.

but if youre going to use it in a scene for rendering or as a 1st person weapon in some game, its important that it looks like it should, and most of todays engines are advanced enough that a few thousand polygons here and there dont mean squat.

EarthQuake

Generally speaking, I try to model as much as a solid continuous mesh as I can. Things that animate or detach, or will be overly complex(overlaping bits) I model separately but for the most part I merge the rest of it together.

Merging simplifies the bake process, as you have less to explode etc, gives you(often) better texture usage, and less separate meshes = less "hard seams" that look aliased in a game. If your entire model is one solid chunk, it will look seamless like a nice highpoly mesh. If you've got 30 separate chunks intersecting each other, it will be a mass of messy lowpoly aliasing.

Merging things together often comes at only a small hit to your overall vert count too, but you may end up using more geometry to correct ray skewing etc.

What you model as separate chunks in the high should have no bearing on the low. I model as much as possible as separate elements in the high, but it doesn't make much sense in the low.

Spunky

Alright. Through the process of trial and error, I have finally built a low poly around my high poly!

Parts that move or are going to detach are separate. The parts that are all one piece are the stock, main body, pistol grip, and trigger guard. The reason I made the accessory rail and heat shield separate is because I want to eventually keep modeling a bunch of parts and gadgets for the gun that can be swapped out. Seems like all the fps are doing that these days :poly124:


I just wanted to post my progress and thank you all again. Every single reply on this thread has helped me greatly. I'm now going to start uv mapping and hopefully have a pain free normal bake (which I doubt!)

http://imgur.com/a/rXUdh