Charlton!

Dim

Hello thar folks. I've had a pretty weak hard surface workflow an wanted to improve so I chose to do a Charlton Automatic Rifle. These are actually full auto conversions of bolt action Lee-Enfield and Lee Metford rifles intended to be serviced by New Zealand in their defense during WWII, hence their funny shapes and relative complexity.



So far I've gotten through the bakes.

HPs:









LP (16k tris, currently at non-reduced 4096 maps). The mesh was fully built for animation, so all movable parts can move. This was also built as a 1st person weapon, but in a game where the player is likely to see it from many angles as they reload, extend the bipod, clear jams, etc.:























Pretty new to guns and gun modeling, so comments are much appreciated. Now to work on the texture...

Edit: Should mention, so far this is Blender, xNormal, and Marmoset.

Lucas Annunziata

Bake looks flawless, gun looks sexy, and it is great to see something different than the billion guns that everyone does all the time. Have you tried down-rezzing the textures yet? My only concern is that you may not have enough space between uv islands.

Keep up the great work Brandon.

ShootandRun

dang that LP bake is soo nice! I had to double take to realize i was looking at the LP and not the HP model. So clean and sexy, can't wait to see it scratched and grudged!!
Nice pack job too, lookin pretty tight!

Dim

Thanks guys. Yeah, the UV pack is pretty tight, but I'll probably keep it at 2048 so it should hopefully be fine.

Erik Rönnblom

Woah, +1. this is top-notch stuff!

Dim

Thanks man! Your sci-fi corridor is fuckin' awesome. Should mention that part of this project is so that I can evaluate dDo, so I'll start on that soon enough.

MeshModeler

what did you use to bake? any special settings. bake looks hot

Dim

Just xNormal with no special settings. Prior to baking, the HP and LP are exploded like so:



I then built a cage in Maya that exactly matches the vertex order and count of the LP, and baked. Blender has no decent cage solution which is a pain in the ass.

Most of the cleanliness really just comes down to the unwrap, making sure seams are split on hard normals etc. It makes unwrapping a bitch, but it pays off.

Dim

1st shot with only dDo work. Still trying to get my head around a workflow with it, but my gameplan is to build the preset on lowres maps (since it's so sloooooow....) then apply it to my final bakes and start texturing from there. Maps are currently 1/4 res for this reason. I'll have to manually combine AO maps since so much is animated.

JacqueChoi

These are SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICKKK!!!!!

croll

Excellent work! Dim, how are you did that UV packing?:poly122:

Dim

Thanks man. Packing was just done manually. My process (once everything is unwrapped) is to pull them off the 0-1 grid, normalize the scale, adjust island scale for view distance (since this is an FPS weapon), then start placing them largest islands to smallest. It may be necessary to scale everything up or down a bit to make sure all islands fit appropriately and maximize space. From there I offset all mirrored or stacked UVs +1 off the 0-1 space so that they do not bake into the map.

Ootrick

Very nice! Supurb modeling, great form! Good job on the execution!
You seem to know what your doing with dDo, would you be able to give a rundown on how you are setting up the materials in the dDo package? I'm having quite the hard time.

J0NNYquid

Dim wrote: »

Thanks man. Packing was just done manually. My process (once everything is unwrapped) is to pull them off the 0-1 grid, normalize the scale, adjust island scale for view distance (since this is an FPS weapon), then start placing them largest islands to smallest. It may be necessary to scale everything up or down a bit to make sure all islands fit appropriately and maximize space. From there I offset all mirrored or stacked UVs +1 off the 0-1 space so that they do not bake into the map.

Sounds just like how I do it, why don't mine look this good lol. In all seriousness, this is really well done.

Dim

Thanks guys! Finally found the time to upres the texture (and do final bakes). Still working on it, but here is where it is. 2048s.







C&C would be super helpful before I get into the hand done details!

PhoenixWolf

soooo gooood

Bek

Looks really awesome so far. You seem to have an unfortunate seam along the top of the wooden stock though, but I suppose it's too late to change that. Really like the details on the iron sight too, very nice bake all around.

Dim

@Bek: I do indeed. I should have mentioned that this is straight out of dDo right now with no custom pieces (except the woodgrain), so I'm working on that. Not totally sure the best way to get rid of it though with dDo...

Bek

You might have to remove dDo's details from around the seam if they can't be lined up. Ideally the seam would be on the underside where it's less likely to be seen in-game. For hand painted details, You might want to slightly darken the wood around the metal clasp for example, or add some very specific noise/scrapes to the magazine. The just dDo pass is pretty damn awesome though, so I'm curious to see what will be changed by hand. Good luck!

Dim

Pretty much everything you described is what I ended up doing. Really wish there was an option to mask whole environment groups, rather than having to change all the individual masks in dDo.

Dim

Working on a presentation style (the render is a placeholder). Any thoughts?

Treboras

do not do the outline. It really distracts from the model. (at least for me ) I would go with a light-mid grey background and a well-lit weapon, so the detail is really good visible. Don't let the background distract you from the model.

I like the subtle glow on the metal pieces / highlights!

Although the wood seems kinda strange. Could be to "wide" specular settings or to high specs at all. I would tweak this a little bit more. The Metal looks very nice! I like your model a lot, really nice detail and a weapon you don't see that often!

Dim

Thanks Treboras. I got a lot of negative feedback on the outline.

Update:

JacqueChoi

Models look fantastic.

But with a background that dark, it really makes me wish there was a REALLY bright bluish back light on them.

djgardner

I'm in love with the normal map. Probably the best one I've seen for a weapon. Good job!

Dim

Thanks guys! Took a brief break, but finally got back to it. Eased up on the presentation. Here's the finals:

Sir Apple

Lovely work man, been following this

Oniram

looks great! only tiny detail id suggest wouldve been to make the backend of the bolt have more segments.

Dim

Thanks guys! Yeah, agreed on that Oniram. I'll give it a shot and hopefully it won't wreck the tangent basis on my normal map....

Treboras

Presentation is much better know and really brings out the best of the model. I like it a lot! Also the wood looks nice now (although it could use some more "use" in the texture)

mr_ace

good job on this, came out really nice, a really unique weapon choice

Dim

@Treboras: Thanks for the critique. What do you think might be added for additional use?

@mr_ace: Yeah, there's so many odd old weapons out there, it boggles my mind that people tend to do the same few over and over again.

Huot for ex is pretty neat looking. Would totally be my next project if I didn't hate doing guns so much now...



Thanks for the help guys.

Treboras

Maybe a splinter that came off the weapon or some deep cuts (open or painted over). Primarily for more contrast and variation to the wooden parts. Also the wood at the handle should have a lot use&wear. You suggest a heavy used weapon with the metal texture and scratches and use everywhere, so IMHO the wood should reflect that too.

Something like this maybe, if you like it:



or some more darker parts spread over the wooden areas:

Dim

Thanks for the help man! Would be cool to chip off some wood on the grip....

Also, forgot to mention this guy hidden under the bolt:

ShootandRun

definitely diggin the chips in the wooden parts of this gun and the wearing on the edges of the metal. Awesome job with the bake, its hard to tell the LP from the HP! I also like this angle

http://dim.blenderge.com/Images/Charlton/dDo_07.jpg

you should do a final render from it, nice overall of the gun

Dim

ShootandRun wrote: »

definitely diggin the chips in the wooden parts of this gun and the wearing on the edges of the metal. Awesome job with the bake, its hard to tell the LP from the HP! I also like this angle

http://dim.blenderge.com/Images/Charlton/dDo_07.jpg

you should do a final render from it, nice overall of the gun

Something like this good sir?