First Weapon - Need advices

Particle

Hi,

I'm Samuel, 15 years old French 3D Artist. I'm currently working on a indie FPS project with a small team (Sealed Zone : Prologue) and I have to model various weapons.

The first weapon is a old carabine, with less than 1600 tris.
http://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2014/01/1388674910-screenshot000.png
http://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2014/01/1388674823-screenshot001.png
http://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2014/01/1388674819-screenshot002.png

I created the diffuse map on my own, no self made solutions like dDo
The normal map was baked with xNormal.
Diffuse map :

http://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2014/01/1388674828-rifle-diff.png

Hope I can improve my skills with some advices.

EDIT : Some problems with attachements, the first picture is ugly using NoelShack.us

GrungyStudios

Great weapon so far. You could call it finished, but i think some minor touches might make be nice. You could have some subtle metal scratches overlay on the metal on the gun, and then some nice deep scratches around the corners of the metal, where the gun would most likely scratch if it were dropped or banged on a corner or something. Because your gun seems pretty bare, as though it has no history and had just been bought out of a store, its so clean and crisp. But i can tell from the scratches on the wood stock that its not brand new. So some scratches would be nice and some grime wouldn't hurt. If you are using a specular (i cant tell because you havent included the spec map) then focus more on the scratches on your spec map than your diffuse..

Also on the pump of gun i think you are getting some minor waviness on the normal map, you could fix it with smudge tool. Also, you should copy the layer of your wood on your diffuse map, and paste it over the normal map then use Nvidia filter to turn it into a normal map. It would help the wood look grainy and pop out a bit more. Adding scratches on the corners of the gun and then turning pasting that layer on the normal and pulling the opacity down a bit gives good results, you will get subtle scratches that really do pop out

There you go, there is some friendly advice take it or leave it.
But this is a great model and for a 15 year old kid i know you got a future
good luck!

Shrike

It looks really cool, but only if you intended stylizing it
If it is supposed to be realistic then theres a lot to do

If you are so low on tris, then theres no reason to not use more on your handguard / pump. The flawed silhouette of the cylinder really hurts the model a lot, 4-6 more sides would be needed atleast, every of those indents reproduce the silhouette in a very visible fashion and this like 30 times.

Dont model too low on polycount, also dont forget youre in a small indie team, and im 90% sure they do not push the graphical limits of todays hardware, so you have even more freedom to make your first person (?) meshes as flawless as possible, also its better for your portfolio.

The cubemap / IBL setup makes it look nice now in your images, but if you havent got that in your game, your shading will look bad since your textures have nearly no information in it, so better backcheck if that actually works (looks) as you planned

Dagon

That is fantastic. But scratches/dirt would make it from fantastic to beautiful. But beware not to over do it.


Take a look at Arenovalis/Millenia's youtube tutorials on texturing weapons. it may help you.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Arenovalis/videos

CloDevious

Wish I had started modeling when I was 15.... Great work so far for being so young keep it up!

Particle

Thanks for feedback, really helpful.

I missed it, but this is still a WIP. I tried to create a history around the weapon, the scratches on the cross are an example. I'll improve it for sure.
And I missed it too, but I'm using a detail normal map, with a certain tiling on Marmoset. But the renders are too far away, I realize that.

Just, about the Polycount, the Lead Artist told me that I have to do the weapon very low poly because they're using the Blender Game Engine and he told me that this engine isn't very optimized. My first attempt was around 2500 tris and he told me that it was too much. So I deleted some resolution (the cylinder of the pump was 16 faces, he's now 10 or 12) to match the request.

I don't really understand why, when I see Battlefield 3's models, they are around 5000 tris and it was 2011. We're in 2014 and I'm stucked under 2000 tris. But the request is the request, I have to match it.

Do you think that joining this project is a good idea ? I mean this project is stucked in 2010 for the Polycount. So maybe I have to change...

Thanks again !

PS: Have a happy new year

RobeOmega

BGE is a bad engine do not worry I have experience with it and my verdict never use it.

Use Unity free you can use that commercially with no money to pay and is 10000% better than BGE

Particle

I'm not the Team's Leader. They say let's use the BGE, I accept. The project was started 6 months ago, just joined it, but I can't lead them to change our Game Engine. Although I do not understand why they don't use Unity or UDK...