Wildstar Fan Art - Fishing Cannon

JamesMeader

For a while now I've really been wanting to make a cool as fuck assault rifle, something that would stand out and also shine brightly on my portfolio. However recently it seems firearms and rifles have become more popular and I felt like whatever I did would be lost in the crowd.

That's why I chose the concept from Max Gon.

A few people have said I should adapt the concept slightly and add some extras like teeth for instance.

My approach will be making the high poly in 3ds Max and a bit of Zbrush. I'll also be implementing some new techniques to speed up the process.



I had the mouth open as I thought it didnt actually work to have it opening and closing. Once I investigated and stopped being dumb I got it sorted and can be seen in the next update.

At the moment I have more than half hardsurfaced so I may post that up later today.

Any crit or feedback would be greatly appreciated as always.

JamesMeader

Here is what I have so far.
I decided to use more floaters this time round which has saved so much time.

Any crit would be greatly appreciated.

Brian "Panda" Choi

Looking good to me!

JamesMeader

Thanks JadeEyePanda!

SaboR1996

Killing it as always, awesome work, always loved wildstar art.

JamesMeader

Aw too sweet SaboR1996, thanks.
The bad thing is I have never played the game but I have been watching loads of playthroughs on youtube.

Crazy_pixel

Cool process, are you making a projectile for the gun too?
Keep it up :thumbup:

JamesMeader

Thanks Crazy_pixel, yeah I am planning to do something similar to what Max Gon modeled for his version.

JamesMeader

So I think the 3ds max stage of stuff is done. I'm going to take old Sharky into ZBrush and see what I can do, maybe just bash it up and experimenting with the polish brushes.

Also if you go on my blog you can see a previous WIP.
Comments and Crit always appreciated, thanks.

LChamberlin

This is looking really cool so far. It kind of makes me want to go back and play some Wildstar. Keep up the awesome work, I look forward to seeing where you take it from here.

CougarJo

Looks nice! Really looking forward for the texturing

JamesMeader

Thanks CougarJo, yeah me too but that probably wont be until next year.

JamesMeader

Hey, so been busy with christmas holidays and getting back into the swing of things at work and with the Fishing Cannon.

Here is the lowpoly with bake.

Its just over 4k poly's, I decided not to use the typical Wildstar limitations and place the poly's i felt were needed and tried not to waste much. I think maybe i did a bit with the chimney bits on top.



I have a texture almost done but I may sit on it for a bit.

Any feedback is appreciated.

thanks.

JamesMeader

This is what I have so far as for texturing.

I ditched the normal map and opted for a 100% hand painted approach.



I am now going to sort out the background for the final render as well as adjust and change some bit for the texture.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Shendoo

It's low poly? How many polys?? It's very cool man!

JamesMeader

Shendoo- Thanks, it is a lowpoly and stands currently at 4250, which is high for a wildstar asset but not for today's engines. My priority was to make it look as good as possible and worry about the polycount an other time. I may go back and sort a few areas that could be optimized better.

pixelb

Your model's looking pro! The texture is hard to judge, though. It could be fine, it could not be, but your render setup isn't doing a good job of showing it off. There's too much light in the scene and it's causing your highlights to get blown out. You don't want to see whole patches of flat white (or black) on your model, it obscures the forms and burns my eyeeeees.



Also, it's looking very dry and flat right now. I can't tell if you've got a roughness or specular map going, but if you do it's not pulling its weight. The gun is a mix of glossy paint and reflective metal and both are coming across as rough and papery.



If you look at the Wildstar models there seems to be some custom shader action going on. Even non-metallic surfaces have (physically inaccurate) color-tinted highlights to them. I've tried emulating the setup in Unreal and Toolbag but the Max viewport renderer actually got me closest to what I saw in the beauty shots. May be worth checking out.

Hope this helps!

JamesMeader

pixelb Oh man, thanks again for the feedback! Its all purely the diffuse texture, nothing else, the over exposure and bleaching is partly down to the lighting and the texturing.

The polycount has been niggeling at me like an itch so im going through and changing things, as of now at the moment its like 3400 odd and the shape is still there. I will continue going through the model, re unwrap the bits i need too and then either salvage the texture or start from scratch.

I think maybe the problem is im following too much of the texture style of the original fishing cannon which does look different to the rest of the wildstar textured weapons.

thanks again

JamesMeader

So I've decided to call this done, any comments given will be considered and I may go back but I really want to move on to something else.




Thanks for all the feedback, hopefully with the next project I'll update a bit more frequently.

martinszeme

Saw it at WAYWO thread and love it! Great job! It has tons of character and looks nice and chunky. Only thing I'd consider it presenting on slightly different colour background. IMO it doesn't stand out on that blue. Maybe desaturate it? Just nit-picking really, it looks great!

CougarJo

Nice I like all the little light dot and not 100% merged color variations!

I have one criticism though : One the original concept there are two parts that stand more than the others : the metallic blue ones.

For your model you have used a lot more of saturated colors (other parts blue, yellow for the handle etc) , and I think it just blend the model and kill the point of interest that the concept have (blue shark head), I don't really know where too look!

I'll just make the blue a little more ''deep'', if it make sence, and desaturate a little the others parts

JamesMeader

martinszeme- Yeah i was worried about that, i did some research with what backgrounds Carbine use and they do use blue on blue. Maybe I just missed the bar

CougarJo-Thanks! Oh damn you're right, it started off dark blue and then after all the paint I added it just turned out wrong without me noticing. I guess this is what happens when you don't rest your eyes.

I'll consider the tweaks, maybe, I'm just eager to start something new.

K-O-S

This is great! Huge fan of the Wildstar art!

JamesMeader

Thanks K-O-S!

Joltya

I don't know much about Wildstar, but I am digging this model a lot. I think that the background you chose is hurting your model though. Having the subject and the background the same color usually does, and the fact that is really saturated is distracting.

Do you think you could upload it to sketchfab? I'd really like to get to turn it around and view it from a lot of angles.

JamesMeader

Joltya-Thanks for the comments,maybe at the weekend I will make the changes since so alot have mentioned the same problem.

I'll look into sketchfab this could be a cool idea.