tommy gun

jwhittingham001

hey guys
just spent a good 2 or 3 hours working on this overly high poly model of a Thompson sub machine gun. i still have to model a hand grip for the barrel and a drum magazine for it. the plan from there is to make a low poly mesh to bake normals to. then texture it and get it rendered in marmoset.
im new to modeling mechanical stuff most my other work is flesh and bone characters. so any advice you feel like giving would be awesome.

theSixtyEight

your mesh isnt prepared for subd and you wont have nice normal map for ur bake...

jwhittingham001

Paul68Rageous, im not entirely sure what you mean. im not taking this into zbrush or another sculpting program.
i have made the high and low poly models in maya. here they are side by side.




as for the normals baking i have gotten what i believe to be really nice results using x normal.
here is the result of baking maps for the stock of the rifle.
please note i am baking all the separate parts out to their own maps then combining it all into one after everything is baked. my reasoning is the same as why you paint a texture map at like 2k then resize to 512.
is this a waste of time or good practice ?

theSixtyEight

I meant your model has probably no supporting edges to make gun looks "soft"
and it looks like youre not using any subdivision are you?

jwhittingham001

no im not, i dont see the point in doing so for a mechanical object.
is there any benefit ?
ive started texturing, almost finished defuse just got a few small details to finish off then on to the spec map

theSixtyEight

benefit of it is, you will get nice soft edges on gun and u will bake nice normal map

Impala88

Here're the benefits of some nice detailing and edge loops + sub-d on high poly models (really it's one of the main reasons to bake from high to low):



All those soft edges, even though it's metal, are needed. You get the nice polished look on the wood, the smooth rounded edges of the metal and additional scuff marks where the corners and edges may of been rounded off through general use.

edit: swapped image for an actual real gun.

jwhittingham001

hey guys thank you for the advice. i went back and added supporting edges to the highpoly and subdivided it in maya. i got a much nicer normal map out xnormal.
i have gotten a much better result because of this. i purposely avoided using zbrush because i wanted to try my hand at a high detail mesh in maya, in future i will definitely go to zbrush to add extra details. the gun still has some hard edges but i believe it is due to the 1.5k polycount. i didn't want to go much higher than this as i was treating the model as a game asset and wasn't too sure on how high i could go.
I learnt alot making this and feel that for my first firearm model i got a good result.
thank you again for the explanation, i will keep them in mind next time i attempt to create another mechanical object.
here is my final result. i would love anymore feed back you can give me, thank you.

theSixtyEight

jwhittingham001 wrote: »

in future i will definitely go to zbrush to add extra details. the gun still has some hard edges but i believe it is due to the 1.5k polycount. i didn't want to go much higher than this as i was treating the model as a game asset and wasn't too sure on how high i could go.

I didnt see much weapons in zbrush, you should avoid it , except causes u want to make some bio weapon or some rly rly damaged one, or want to add welds..
nowadays you can go up to 10-12k polygons....6-7k is pretty good number imo

jwhittingham001

ok cool thanks man