Nagant Revolver PBR practice

martygalinskas3d

Just started working on this. Seems like guns are a good place to start working with PBR. just started modeling it today, so far what i got, nothing really. i'm a little further now, the trigger is down now as well. will upload more tomorrow, time for bed.

martygalinskas3d

almost done modeling, just the trigger, mag catch, and the ejector lever left. not sure yet if i will model all the bolts or just normal map them.

should i go higher poly on this?

martygalinskas3d

finished modeling the major parts, now all the little nuts and bolts, UV, and onto sculpting.

Brian "Panda" Choi

Are you making a high poly to bake from, or a low poly?

Colditz

Here are my references I used for my project, if you need them:
https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=52E6CEBB2E491331%21343

Beware that there are many versions of the 1895, depending on the year of production.

martygalinskas3d

i'm making a low poly, which i'll then sculpt and add details in zbrush and bake the normal map from that.

yes i know there's tons of different versions but i'm trying to stick to the original belgian m1895 i think? looks like the same one that you made. the non flip out one with the circular chipped front sight. thanks so much for the reference! this will really help me out with some problem areas i had to improvise on like the hammer hole and so on.

martygalinskas3d

UVs done, going into zbrush now.

Oniram

id refine those uvs a bit. for one it would really hellp you to straighten out some of those islands (especially the cylinder). overall they look kinda messy. and for what purpose are you taking this into to zbrush?

pmiller001

As it is now, I think those UVS are going to give you trouble if youdont take a second a second to make them a little straighter.

martygalinskas3d

yea the UVs i should work on some more, i wanna take it into zbrush to add small details, stamps and so on.

pizzamademedoit

It might be a good idea to make a proper high poly first, and then after baking you can just use nDo to add small details like stamps and text. Also, don't forget to apply hard edges where needed to avoid smoothing errors.

martygalinskas3d

i've never worked with nDo. the only way i was taught was to build a low poly > zbrush details > bake normals > then texture from there.

Oniram

ive seen people do that method, i dont know where people get that workflow from. to me it seems kind of silly because you're limiting yourself to your low poly geo.

as ive always done it, its been:
blockout
high poly
low poly
bake
texture

that way you make your high poly as good looking as can be, and then try and match your low poly to it as best as possible. the whole purpose baking a normal map is to make your low poly mimic your high. and tbh zbrush is kinda useless for an asset like this.

martygalinskas3d

yea i understand. i guess i'll take a look at nDo. how exactly does it work? is it basically like substance? how can you for example add details and stamps in nDo?

pizzamademedoit

It's just a plugin for PS. You can use xNormal for that too and it's free.

martygalinskas3d

yea i use xnormal. i've never done anything PBR either so everything is new. i guess my school was a little behind, or not because the industry moves so quick and it's a new concept.

Oniram

pbr isnt really a new concept.. nor is it really different from "traditional" methods of texturing in games. if youve textured anything before, then adapting something to be physically based is only a matter of tweaking base values in your texture maps.

that being said, what exactly is your goal with this piece? are you trying to make it look super realistic? if so id worry less and less about texture at this point and try and focus more on making a high poly. a physically based material slapped onto your low poly model without any highres info wont really make it look good.

martygalinskas3d

for something like this though, that's pretty simple and making it a high poly would basically mean adding a few more loops, does that workflow really work? what program do you make the highpoly in? just any program like maya or max im guessing? does that workflow work for every object or just some?

pizzamademedoit

Modeling package doesn't matter imo. In Maya just use smooth mesh preview (3) and subdivide your high poly (Mesh -> Smooth) before exporting it into xnormal.

martygalinskas3d

really? the whole time in school i was taught to never use hotkey 3 lol. what is happening?! my whole world is flipping!!!

martygalinskas3d

ok so i redid the UVs and made a high poly. time to start texturing, gonna try to use substance designer.

EarthQuake

UVs seam quite sloppy, especially the barrel area. All those lines that are straight in 3d should be straight in 2d as well. When you have a bunch of slightly angled edges in your uv layout, it won't hold detail nearly as well. It only takes one pixels to draw a straight line, however, you need 2 at minimum to draw an angled like. You've got a bunch of that going on here.

Judging from the UV layout, the lowpoly looks rather poorly optimized as well, with lots of edge loops that don't contribute to the silhouette.

martygalinskas3d

thanks for the critique, it seems i need to work on my UVing methods, know any good recent tutorials? should i not be using the unwrap button in maya? just unwrap using cylindrical mapping and leave the UVs exactly how they are projected?

martygalinskas3d

ok so here's the "final" renders. i'm not trying to make this absolutely amazing, this is just my first time doing anything PBR and also working with Substance designer, i think overall it turned ok, yes i really need to work on my UVing. but for now this is ok, maybe i'll revisit it. moving on to learning UE4 more now.