Star Citizen Fan Art - Laser Pistol

bigpunn71

Started a new project and wanted to share the progress. Finished the High poly, Low Poly, and bakes. The model is about 4,500 tris and the bakes are 2048x2048.

EdHanley

Nice job so far craig, I would say that most of the modelling looks pretty solid and the bake is pretty clean too. The thing that sticks out the most for me it the bottom of the grip, it looks like a really awkward shape with some really sharp edges. I think that if you took some time to change it and make it a nicer shape it would really help the gun a lot. Up to you though as it would require you to rebake, but worth it in the end.

Ed

maxivz

I feel like the handle is too fat to be confortable at all, in the concept it looks way slimmer and rounder.
Looking forward for more progress!

bigpunn71

Eddie10sixty6 - Yeah I noticed that really late in the process. I would go back to fix it, but I hard drive crash and the max file with the decimated mesh is the only thing I recovered. I'll add some geo around that area and round it out and see how that looks. I just wished I had caught it earlier. Also, I think for FPS's or 3rd person games the player would never see that. Thanks for the feedback

maxivz - I modeled off of the concept, so I don't know if it was intended it that way. I'll play around with it to see if it affects any other parts of the pistol. Thanks for the feedback

maxivz

Take a look at the perspective shoot in the concept, that will help you fix the bottom

bigpunn71

Just finished the first pass of texturing and fixed some things based off of feedback. I am using substance painter for texturing and using Toolbag2 for renders. Have to mess around with the levels in the Albedo and Roughness to get the look I had in Substance.

bigpunn71

Ok I think I am about done with this one. Think I may go back and keep tinkering with the Albedo and Roughness a little, but for the most part I feel it is pretty much done.









Can also check out the Toolbag2 viewer on my Artstation page from the link below.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/star-citizen-fan-art-laser-pistol

EdHanley

Looking better, the bottom of the grip looks less weird now that its rounder.

I've just looked at the Marmoset viewer on Artstation and the first thing i noticed is that you have mirrored the entire gun, and so the text is flipped on one side. One way to solve this is to cut out a polygon for where the text will be on both sides and have just them polys unique.

It might be ok for beauty renders from one side or even in a game if the other side is never seen, but these days when people can spin your model round in a web based viewer, it needs to be as perfect as possible.

Ed

bigpunn71

How would you go about it? I know you said cut it out, but will it be just a floating plane over the geo? Thanks for the feedback too!

EdHanley

OK so I was going to explain how I did my unique text on models with symmetry but then I thought it would be easier to make a quick tutorial for it, so here you go. This might not work in all cases but it should work in most. I hope this helps you



Ed

bigpunn71

Sweet man thanks for taking the time to do that! I am a very visual person so this helps out a lot. I will try this out and see if it works in my case. If it doesn't I might just use plans for text. Thanks again for this!

Dethling

I would go with a floater for the text (Simply small quad planes on both sides).
If you put it on an extra texture you could also allow the player/system to change the text without needing a complete new texture for the gun. This would be four additional verts for each text, and as you can mirror/re-use it, only a small amount of texture space.

I saw similar solution in the Evolve Art Dump post here on Polyount.
They basicly created a texture with all letters (A-Z), all number (0-9) and some special signs (like -, + , / etc.).
When they need a text on an object they simply added some floating planes (one per letter) and with it are very flexible with the text (as far as I understand).
For the polycount this would mean 4 additional verts per letter (if you use the letter-way).
And at the current engine level adding 100 verts for some text isn't that problem or?^^

EdHanley

Maybe decals are better if you want more customization, but I would say that having another set of draw calls plus alpha overdraw from using a second texture just for some text is not very optimal if its just going to be used once. Having unique props on one material is always going to be the best way in my opinion.

Ed