H&K MP5 WIP

artthoumadbrother

Hello everyone!
This is my first thread since making an account after a long time of lurking. A couple of weeks ago I started working on this piece on my spare time.
A Heckler & Koch MP5
The goal is to improve my modeling/texturing skills and make a great portfolio piece!

So I have almost finished the highpoly and I thought:"Hey! Wouldn't it be great to get some pointers from that awesome community I always hang around;)"
And now we are here! Below are two images of my MP5, and I would really appreciate it if you guys had a look at it before I continued onto the lowpoly and texture.

There are still some details I'd like to improve and after I rendered the images I noticed a couple of minor things I'd forgotten to add. They have been added now though.

The final thing I'm considering to add is a silencer. I mean, what would a Heckler & Koch MP5 be without it's trustworthy silencer?:)

Here are the images:





Thanks in advance for your time and have a great morning/day/night!

joeriv

Good start, but some small things here and there.
Just go over the model and carefully study your ref in those details.

Some things that catched my eye:

-Grip is way to blocky in the back view, and the shape seems a bit off (like stretched diagonally a bit)



1) Shape is off, wrong spacing on some parts, and just the curves and the straight parts aren't properly controlled.
Look for example on the half circle on the back how the spacing becomes larger towards the bottom.

The shape of the lever thingy also seems off.

2) Use more edge loops to control the rounding

3)Shape is off, the triangle seems to be pushed to much to the left

4) very very minor, but it seems like that curve isn't completely flowing into the grip perfectly

5)Seems a bit to high/stretched in the height

6)That is actually round not square, so that the little cylinder can rest in tehre

7) Maybe you modelled it from some other ref, but I haven't seen a mp5 before where there was that sort of stepped thing going on.
I have only see that just be normal inset.

artthoumadbrother

Thanks for the great feedback joeriv!

For number 7 i used the below image as reference, allthough now I kinda I feel I didn't nail it!:)

I new it was a good id

dissonance

Can we see some wireframe shots?

artthoumadbrother

Absolutely dissonance!

Here you go:


I'm off to bed now, as it is getting pretty late and I got work tomorrow!

Good night!

maxivz

You would want to soften those edges up, they wont bake down very good in the baked low poly

artthoumadbrother

@maxivz: I'll keep that in mind, thanks!

Minor update of today (no images)!
I have started dealing with the issues that joeriv was kind enough to point out!
And I must say, I'm much more satisfied with the results then I was before.

Unfortunately I have to leave for work, but I'll try and post some renders as soon as I've got something new that needs a look at!:)

dissonance

Looks like there's a lot more edge loops than there need to be, and a lot of them are orphaned.
Did you build this all as one single object?

Check this out:

Orange are loops that just don't seem like they belong, green is weird triangulation.


Just a shit paintover, but try breaking it off into parts, even if you're not animating. It helps to consider how the thing is built in the real world, and chop it up accordingly. Stock, mag release, trigger, receiver, barrel, irons, foregrip, etc.



Also the buttpad on the stock looks like it's a bit too wide, but that could just be the camera angle.

Aside from the above, you've done an awesome job! I can't see anything /wrong/ with it, just room for optimization. Good work, dude!

artthoumadbrother

@dissonance Thanks a lot! Glad you like it:) First image I got no comeback for, will get on that asap:)

On the second image I have used "floaters" (the green circle). that's why it might look a little weird on the wireframe. I chose to do it that way since I'm going to bake the whole thing to a lowpoly later and it would save me some time and trouble.

On the third image you almost nailed it:) The dark purple section is actually in a few more piece at the back other then that I have tried to model the thing as close to realistic as possible, if you know what I'm saying. However there may be some leftover edge loops from before extruding in the rail.

Other then that I do agree there is some cleanup that needs to be done, And as soon as weekend come I'll start crunching:)

dissonance

Sweet. It'll be interesting to see how the lowpoly turns out.
Are you just modeling this for practice or are you planning on importing it into something?

artthoumadbrother

@dissonance: Always practicing!:) But I want to import it into a engine, but it'll probably be for a still shot laying on a box or something like that since I haven't found any guides on how to add it as a playable weapon.
You don't happen to know any tutorial for that? Because that would be really fun to do:)

dissonance

Nah, I'm looking for the same thing myself.

sipher3325

There are a few vids on youtube on importing guns into udk.

artthoumadbrother

So over the weekend I have completed my highpoly model with reservation for some minor tweaks. So I decided to do the lowpoly model since any change on the highpoly wouldn't affect the shape of the low.

Here is a screenshot of the lowpoly. There probably is room for some optimizing but for now I'm pretty satisfied with the polycount.:



I'm currently working on the UV and after that I'm gonna do a final control sweep of the whole model and just see that everything is as good as it can be before baking.

Hopefully I'll have some baked goodness too show early this week.

Have a great day ya'll!:)

artthoumadbrother

So today I was hoping to share with you guys a render of my mp5 with normal map and AO, but... 30 minutes ago, Maya crashed during a save and now my file is corrupted.
2 afternoons of work down the drain and I have to start UV mapping all over again unless anyone of you know any magic tricks to restore a corrupted maya file?

I have checked my appdata folder for any last minute save by maya but nothing:/

Please someone help me, I don't want to start UV mapping all over again!:S

artthoumadbrother

Good news everyone!:)
When I got home from work I found a "ghost" save file (in lack of a better name i chose to call it "ghost", moving on...)
So I have spent the day finalizing the normal map and AO and finally imported it all into marmoset to start texturing this bad boy!

A little marmorset scrnshot of the thing "naked":


I have to pick this up tomorrow cause I'm getting sleepy.

G'night ya'll!

artthoumadbrother

So I've been bussy for the past couple of days but have finally gotten somewhere with the texture. It's not complete yet, far from it, but I'm going away for the holidays and I felt that I needed some feedback on the direction I'm taking with the texture.

The look I'm aiming for is a worn weapon that has taken some beating during the years, not rusty, but scratches and where&tear that shows through via the specular map.

So for now I've basically only worked on the specular map. The metal on the diffuse is only a dark slightly bluish color.

Here is the textured weapon so far:

Texture resolution while working is 4096x2048.
I don't know what size is acceptable for a first person shooter these days, but I'm sure I have to reduce it to at least half?

And since I havent posted any wireframes of the lowpoly version yet, here is it:

Tris count: 9750-ish.
Should be acceptable, but I guess There are some areas that could spare some tris.

Any feedback on either the texture or the wireframes are greatly appreciated as I want this to be as perfect as it can be!

Thanks in advance and have a great easter everyone!