Work in Progress AK47 need advise

DodgeAndBurn

Hiya I'm a 3D modeller that has been studying for 2 years, however the last year has been spent mostly doing Programming for a games engine.

Anyway to cut to the chase I would love advise on how to improve this weapon I have been making, where to source the best textures and any other little tips you can think of.

Any thing that is wrong with it feel free to point out because I really just want to improve. Thanks in advance.

timotronprime

The textures look like stone.

Your wood has too many small details and not enough large details so it looks too noisy now. The spec on the wood look extremely sharp. You can see from the reference image that it is mostly nice large details with a very broad spec.

Same for your metal, it's very noisy, like stone; you can see that there's barely any small detail in the reference. You got the specular pretty close but adding reflection helps with the metallic look. And try adding details for the spec map and not the diffuse.

Another thing is you seem to have unwrapped the body as one piece and just slapped an image on it as textures, hence the uniform stripes down across places which should have seams.

Should use photo reference, e.g.
http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/3410/img7629i.jpg

bcottage

It looks like you haven't spent time on the texturing at all. What texture size are you using? what purpose is it for?

DodgeAndBurn

Thanks timotronprime, the base metal texture I used to start from was fairly low res (around 400x400) so that's where the repartition comes in, would you suggest starting of with a much plainer, larger texture then adding the details in by hand on photoshop

And bcottage, the texturing and UVing was done in about 2 hours and was only really thrown on there for the purpose of uploading it here.

What do ether of you think of it from a modelling standpoint? as I really think I ought to get that fully finished before I continue texturing

Lew

I think the best way to improve this would be to remove those textures for the time being and model the rest of the details in.

Also you have alot of sharp edges, maybe think about doing a high poly with beveled edges and bake down?.

then do some research on UV spacing and then try and handpaint your own texture instead of using a stock photo (powers of 2 textures for game, 512*512, 1023*1024 ect ect..)

Most importantly keep looking at your reference for things you've missed ( I usually have my reference on open constantly a second screen, as well as a side view imported as a view plane).

Hope that helps

DodgeAndBurn

Lew wrote: »

I think the best way to improve this would be to remove those textures for the time being and model the rest of the details in.

Also you have alot of sharp edges, maybe think about doing a high poly with beveled edges and bake down?.

then do some research on UV spacing and then try and handpaint your own texture instead of using a stock photo (powers of 2 textures for game, 512*512, 1023*1024 ect ect..)

Most importantly keep looking at your reference for things you've missed ( I usually have my reference on open constantly a second screen, as well as a side view imported as a view plane).

Hope that helps

Thanks allot that's a great help I wasn't really aware that sculpting was required when modelling something as simple as this but Ill give it a go thanks, as for handpainting the textures I've took a look at some tutorials and I'll give it a go, again I wasn't even aware that people painted texture's, this whole thread has been a real eye opener on where I need to develop more skills thats

tyddynroger

some good advice from Lew, your model is a nice start but i would definitely look at baking some maps. theres a great tutorial here by Millenia:

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=100984

Also google Racer445 AK tutorial which will also be a great help.

good luck