Halo 4 Battle Rifle (WIP)
polycounter lvl 7
I started work on the Halo 4 BR a while ago.
I'm cross-posting from the WAYWO thread now that
it's got some more content.
Here is what I'm going off of:
What I have now:
Daily Progress
Day One:
Day Two:
Day Three:
Day Four:
Here's What I got right now, 4 days in:
Look at my shitty N-Gon laden wires:
After a short break due to college finals, Day 5:
First Person Shot lined up to a Frame from the latest Vidoc
I'm cross-posting from the WAYWO thread now that
it's got some more content.
Here is what I'm going off of:
What I have now:
Daily Progress
Day One:
Day Two:
Day Three:
Day Four:
Here's What I got right now, 4 days in:
Look at my shitty N-Gon laden wires:
After a short break due to college finals, Day 5:
First Person Shot lined up to a Frame from the latest Vidoc
Hit the picture limit, further progress is posted inline with the thread.
At this point, I am pretty much done with the High poly and moving on to the low poly.
Crits please!!!
Replies
Looking at your clean wires and mesh flow makes me feel like a noob xD
As for critics I am so tired that I feel drunk, but the trigger and the parts around could do with some smoother edges for the bake.
New day new update?
I really wanted to practice getting some nice topology and I am trying to completely avoid using floaters in this asset. I still don't know if I will be able to model this curve:
It might be better to Dynamesh and lazymouse DamStandard that shit.
Some people LOVE them and others hate them. I suspect those people are using netbooks or phones, or have a data cap. I can definitely see how they can be worse than pictures because they are pretty large in size and only got 256 colors, but the point is that they show off the hard surface better because you can see the specular move as I tumble the camera. You can see any pinching or wierd topology that I might have missed. I tried balancing it with high res pictures, and I will be posting more as I finish, maybe even a video.
Thanks for the feedback, definitely going to need it if I decide to texture this baby.
Its my understanding that for the high poly at least anything goes as long as the end result is clean!
Your absolutely correct, trust me, I understand.
Clean topology is still desirable because it allows you to iterate and add changes faster. I am trying hard to learn to model cleanly and not take any shortcuts that can cost time later.
Clean modeling can end up costing time sometimes, but I'm doing this as a learning experience, I want to spend some more time on this.
Plus, who doesn't want a nice clean topology to show off in their wireframe portfolio shots?
Quick tip for any beginners:
One thing I learned kinda late to block out as much as you can first, identify any problems and iterate on them before you add support loops, preferably in a sepparate edit poly modifier. That also helps when making the low poly, you can just disable that edit poly.
also i've now learned to avoid edit poly modifiers whenever possible. opening them in different max versions are iffy at best. generally it will completely break everything and render your mesh useless.
and agree with racer if had some weird shit happend and some broken meshes from using too many edit polys, i tend to just block out, copy to new layer than add support loops, than copy the blockout again later on and optimize for the lp.
Glad to see you seem to have got that one problem area figured out too
I have had some modifier stack problems in max 2012, but the edit poly never caused any. Manipulate in view plus some stack options have made max crashe an lose work for me though.
I'll post more pictures when I get on my computron. But get with the times racer, make a .GIF video paint over. Lol :poly124:
I understad, ngons are great, I use then a ton on the stock of the rifle, but editing it is kind of tedious. Thanks for the layer tip, I'll try that if I have any problems.
I actually haven't gotten back to that yet, :poly122: but I was over thinking it. I know how I'll do it now. Thanks for your help!
were you able to model this out? just keep trying son! that's the way i do it
Is there any reason why your avoiding floaters?
Like I said, I am trying to learn to model cleanly and properly for practice. Its a portfolio piece so I have more time. Nice wireframes look beautiful and you get clearner AO bakes without using floaters for concave parts. (I am using some floaters for convex shapes on flat surfaces)
more progress, I got to stop now for a few hours:
Not much of a weapons guy but so far so good don't see anything that really stands out except for the top area those areas need o be a little tighter, right now they looks too soft.
I'm calling it a day now. I might not be able to work on it tomorrow, college tests to study for and papers to write.
Here's what I got right now, Day 5. Hope you like 3-point lighting
Low poly is gonna be a pain in the ass though, can't wait. :poly122: :thumbup:
No crits so far, keep this up I can't wait to see the bake!
The way I get around it is to model my shapes first, use the knife tool, and cut a hole, align the item with its new concave section, select both the border edges and use the bridge tool. Easy.
For more simple things like the screw indents, since they are perfect circles I use the GeoPoly tool. (found in your Graphite Modeling Tools of max 2009 and up)
Select any polygons on top of your future hole, inset and then delete them, cap the edge borders and select the new polygons. That part is important as GeoPoly works best with one polygon with many edges.
GeoPoly, inset, bevel, inset, inset. add support loops after you find the correct depth. DONE. :thumbup:
Sometimes when you get to close to an edge, you may need to go up one level of subdivision before you proceed to avoid messing up your edge width consistency. That gets annoying :poly122:
looks hot O_O
As far as all the screws and such goes, if you didn't want to float nor model them in, there's this (100% time saver)...
Eat 3D - 50 Free Custom Bolts Normals
Thanks for the screw normal link. I've put them in in post before so that should be useful. I am trying to model everything in though thIs time.
It looks that way partly because the 'concept' is at an angle.
I think he meant that the chamfer should be farther down the grip.
I am going to need a lot of help with that.:poly122:
i look forward to your trial and error : )
I think you will do a fine job, got a pretty solid concept to work from
I started to work on the scope and the top of the stock and the scope rail (IDK what anything is called).
Or I would like a brighter material :P
Thanks Perna, the scope has some much crisper edges, I am going to give it some more UV space as well as the areas around it. I am trying to keep things nice and phat for everything else.
Can you elaborate more on the 'plastic look' and 'floater-style'?
I just finished (unless something else gets brought up:poly122:) and I am going to post some high quality renders soon.
but that should be easy!
Working on a piece over several days does cause slight variances in proportions, no biggie.
First Person Shot lined up to a Frame from the latest Vidoc
Time to get started on the Low poly then?
I definitely see that the screws/holes are a like chunky looking now, thanks for pointing that out. (I made one in the beginning and just instanced it around early on)
I'm going to have to do a once-over on the rest of the model and make sure everything is consistently metal thickness, I can see a few panels here and there.
Any other strange proportions you can point out?
Quick question on a slightly unrelated note. When baking normals, have any of you 3point guys ever considered baked out all mip levels separately? If I were to bake out the top level, and scale for each lower mip, wouldn't those technically be slightly incorrect or at least require a re-normalization?
Oh and just for reference, what was the resolution for the normals maps for the brink weapons? (I know it depends on your game and other such factors, but what was it for the Brink guns on your site?)
Also, any lighting/material tips I can use to better display my model (Preferably in the Nitrous Viewport)?
What does that have to do with anything?
Bevel tightness is independent of type of gun.
The same principles apply, be it a LMG or a SMG.
Interesting. So I take it, something Like UDK or Cryengine only do a re-normalized scaling when set to importing normal maps? Is this enough? I would think implementing sepperate mip bakes would only lengthen the bake time by 1.3x, but I guess thats not worth it?
Also, has anyone ever tried matching groups of mip levels to their corresponding LODs? I would think that at wide angle, this would cause inaccuracies without some kind of filtering, so maybe you could limit the mips range accordingly with the current LOD? :poly141: Just a thought.
As for resolution, I assume ~%45 of the guns UV space is mirrored?
Awesome. I thought it would be cool to match the background with the Polycount board's color and have it blend in, but your totally right.
Thanks for the info Perna
Thanks Snefer. :poly128: :thumbup:
Not sure where you got UDK, I haven't even started on a low poly yet.
Maybe your confusing this BR with some other thread?
As for the thckness of the rifle, you are right, it is more wider in the stock area. TBH, it's kinda grown on me, I like it to be a heavy rifle. The Gas-Powered Assualt Rifle in Halo is really wide, and the Halo 4 BR is supposed to be more brute force and less accurate so I think it's fitting.
I think he was talking about the proportions of the rifle's pieces, not the edge thickness. *shrug*
EDIT:
BTW, I just found a 'more smilies' button under the smilies that I never noticed, and I think I found my new favorite one:*shrug*
OMG, Have you ever even seen a smilie with shoulders?!? :poly142: this is some Polycount 2.0 shit right here!
At the least take a stab at it from the FPV perspective, the bits around and below the scope there look a bit sloppy, and the 45 degree angled "charging handle" bit there just sticks right into the base piece akwardly there.
Its also a shame that like the coolest area here is the butt stock, not your fault though if you're working from an existing concept. Silly concept artists putting the coolest details behind the player's view.
I'll see what I can do about some of the less jarring areas, there are a few towards the front of the gun that I already incorporated and smoothed together because I felt they looked more natural that way.
As for the charging handle, I found some more views of that area an I think I might redo it for the most part and figure out a better way to make it more symmetry friendly (there should not be a charging handle on the other side)
I think I will have some time to work on it today.
Thanks for the Crits guys, I'm getting a lot of feedback from a couple other forums as well and it is helpful.
This is some serious dedication with all those crazy bits of geo modelled in. You better make the bake 4k, for science.
I love the Nitrous viewport too, it effortlessly handles millions of polys. Big change from the old max viewport! Although I can never get good control of specular maps, they are always too dim, and if you try boosting that map slot they turn darker (wtf).
Btw, those are the biggest screeshot's I've ever seen. Do you have 6 monitors?
Oh, and 11 Monitors. Just not all on one computer at once. :poly124:
I got some time today to put some more tweaks on the High, integrating the mashed shapes by adding in some indents where they intersect and making the edge widths more consistent and get a good start on the low. I remade the bolt/charging-handle area so that it will now be an asymmetrical part of the model, with more UV Space and custom Geo. I changed some of the screws and floater-style element's scale as well.
I'm getting to the point where I noticing more and more the unfortunate design choices in the BR as I model the Low.
This is a great learning experience, I'm picking up a ton of the subtleties in modelling and I'll be much faster on my next model.
I'll post more pics as I get more time to work on this stuff, keep the crits coming if you got something to add. :thumbup:
Hey, 3point gents, what was the average polycount for the in-game Brink guns?