M2045 .300 Magnum Revolver Rifle - Fallout 4

The Rizzler

Final piece:



Additional shots here:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/mOJz1

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Have you ever been so hyped for a game that you started modding for it before it's even out?
Anyway here's the concept, by Caleb Cleveland, for I believe the cancelled Project V13 that I'm basing my model off (full concept here. I might do the gyrojet LMG later if this goes well );



I started about 2 weeks ago and currently the hipoly, the lowpoly and the UVs are done. I've been posting in another forum and taking suggestions/modifying the gun - here's a scrapbooky choppy look at the high poly;



As you can see I've taken some liberties with the design. The magazine is gone since you don't need one if you already have a cylinder to hold the bullets (I'm like 95% sure. I'm a Brit, so not the best knowledge on guns).
I added a hammer since you need one to make the gun shoot, and I curved it to make it easier to access via thumb. It's a break action, takes nine .300 magnum rounds and one 12 gauge shotgun shell, and has two barrels, one rifled and one smooth bore that it fires the different rounds out of. Took inspiration from the Lemat revolver. I added an ejector (pops the bullets out when the gun breaks) to the cylinder and modeled a speed loader for rapid reloads.
I think the philosophy behind the gun is that it would be used by someone in heavy power armour, so expect this thing to have some serious kick ingame (for balance. But also because the stock is low and far out of line with the barrel) Some details to be added post-bake with NDO.

There's three planned mods for the gun as well; an old style long (looooong) scope with some modern dials and controls, a synthetic stock and an 'optimised' mod which removes the chunky upper 'barrel'(?) and replaces it with a more compact rail to reduce weapon weight (many people complained about that part of the concept. Sorry Caleb)



I've gotten to the stage where I'm going to have to talk to some fallout 3/NV/Skyrim modders (any around?) to clear up certain things, as I've never modded for these games before. I'd like to know how best to organise my textures - I'm thinking a 2k map for the gun and another 2k for the mods (scope, synth stock and optimised top rail) as well as if I need to make a world model, whether I could make the scope compatible (move it downwards through code) with the optimised rail etc. Obviously we don't know how modding for FO4 will work yet but I'd like to get close.

The model is currently sitting at around 12,127 tris (6,457 polys) minus mods, I went quite overboard with the details; I honestly don't know if that's a good number. I opened the csgo SDK's model viewer earlier and the m4a1 has 18000 polys, not sure if that's a PC thing, but I'm mindful that

Spoiler:

some mods might make it to console. You can dream right?

No doubt this is ambitious and only the second weapon I've ever made, so my UV and low poly knowledge needs refreshing but I'll be absolutely up to scratch after finishing this thing. I'm planning to maybe use Zbrush to detail the wood a little but PBR textures will be achieved with NDO and Substance Painter.

edit: I should probably take an evening out to have a read through the creation kit wiki shouldn't I? That would help a lot I think

Shrike

You did some nice clean modeling there , but this is a terrible concept with horrible proportions

Make the bullets fill the cylinder like on a real revolver (currently its like 80% empty space)
The stock would need to have at least 2x the size to get any form of visual balance , so Id recommend increasing the trigger size , stock and having the whole thing about normal rifle proportions again , which would pretty much save it

The Rizzler

Thanks! I hear you on the proportions, but I don't think it's supposed to be a regular rifle. On the concept page the artist states - "Retro-futurist armaments - something appropriate for the wearer of the armor posted here --->[link]"

For that reason I think the stock is short so that it can be held closer to the user - elbows encased in armour will probably not be as flexible. I imagine the gun is quite 'tall' so that people wearing helmets can still get a good eye on the sights, but can also grab the grip with their big armoured hands. The cylinder I can't really explain, I think nine rounds is a good number for game balance. But in general everything is sized up to be used by someone in powered armour
The .300 rounds are scale accurate which is what I based the rest of the model off of, but I'll get a realistic scale gun in the scene, take a look at how it sizes up, then maybe redesign the cylinder to hold more rounds or shrink the entire gun to have the bullets fit the cylinder better. Both are quite difficult, but the latter will probably be easier.
Shame really, I just did a test bake and it went pretty well haha

C86G

No offense to the concept artist, but I think your solid modeling skills really deserve a better concept to work from. SHriek already said it, the proportions don´t make this gun very appealing.

Haftoof

I like revolving rifles... Reminds me of Warmachines Cygnar riflemen. I feel that for a post-apoc situation the weapon itself is to clean.

I feel like the weapon itself looks manufactured instead of a carbine built from a combination of a rifle and a revolver. Also... ummm what's the point of the secondary magazine under the revolver's chambers, kind of kills me, glad you didn't model that part of the concept. I have an intense love for crack-barrel revolvers so...

That said, the model you made itself is wonderful. Excellent high poly work. To be honest as cool as the concept is, push it farther, give it the dirt and grunge that comes with post apoc. Make it look like a modified revolver instead of a custom built weapon.

The Rizzler

Thanks guys, really glad you like my modeling. I've been thinking about the size of the gun and about Fallout's general design philosophy. I understand that the rifle might not look like the most practical, refined or wieldy weapon but I think that's always been the point of retro sci fi, plus the fact that the weapon was designed to be used by heavily armoured soldiers. I'd like to make sweeping changes to make the gun more logical but I fear that would weaken my porfolio as I wouldn't be staying true to the original artist's vision.

@Haftoof - I like revolvers in general, haha. I'll definitely be beating up the gun a lot; stains, dents, scratches, and scuffs, giving the impression that the weapon has been neglected and recently fished out of some rubble. I'll probably use Zbrush to rough up the high poly a little - putting dents in the metal probably wouldn't make sense seeing as the frame doesn't look that thin right? Most of the metal definition will probably be done in the texture.
I might make the wood stock a bit crappier so that the synthetic stock is like a visual upgrade as well as a stats one (lowers recoil slightly, but not too much as to invalidate the wood stock, which I'll probably use more often)

I didn't pick up on the weapon looking 'modified' in the concept - do you mean I should make it look more like it's cobbled together by some apocalyptic gunsmith rather than like it's fresh off a factory line? If so can you throw me some tips to achieve that, e.g. saw marks on the wood or lathe marks on the metal or something?

I've noticed some weird goings on in my normal map from that quick bake I did - they're only visible at particular angles, is this something to worry about? I chucked the gun and normal map in UE4 and they were hard to see, but still present. Does the low poly need modifying to shade better? My smoothing groups are set to whatever works best to be honest, I use a cage but every time I set a hard edge on a 90 degree angle change I get seams.

ComradeDispenser

Well, they could partly be because of tangent space mismatch. As for the cylinder, did you bake your normals on the triangulated model?

The Rizzler

-snip- (I should probably post in tech talk next time)

The Rizzler

-snip-

The Rizzler

Went back and re-evaluated every element of the low poly in order to smooth correctly. Did some sculpting on the stock to make it look worn also. Here's a quick gif, I'll deliver a more detailed presentation of the model once I've finished texturing 

Haftoof

In answer to your question rizzler, I'd say a few things.   A barrel change, perhaps some cloth wrapped around the butt of the gun.  A cheek rest on the rifle butt.  Makers marks are always good... 

You could do a kill count on the rifle itself (scratched into the butt or on the barrel of the gun... something simple like tick marks)

Anything else would require a heavy rebuild.   Rust and tarnishing will go a long way.    

The Rizzler

Couple shots from texturing the base gun so far;

Shame imgur compresses them so much. Once I make a presentation template I'll stick them on Artstation  
Tried to keep the texture quite sparse and subtle but with strong edge wear and rust in places like some of the guns I could make out in the trailers and footage. I feel like the wood is probably what I'm having the most trouble with at the moment. I'll move off this for now and work on getting the mods baked and textured

@Haftoof - right, the gun probably has quite a history and it would be good to show that through the details. I'm a bit too far along for changes like cloth wrap, different barrel or additional geometry, but I feel I've definitely put that thought into the texture and will keep those ideas in mind for my next weapon. I'll look into adding a kill count somewhere, sounds like it would fit

Haftoof

Dem Textures...  love the dark metal...   and the stock detail. 

The Rizzler

Haha cheers, went through many iterations on the metal alone, glad the wood looks good. Might change the wear on the sticker. I forgot to add a shot of the gun snapping open though! That's its best feature damnit

Dethling

Really nice texture work and you definitly get a lot our of the not perfect concept.

The Rizzler

Mods baked. Moving on to texturing them and making the overall texture cohesive



@Dethling Thanks! Really glad the texturing is being received well 

ComradeDispenser

I'm gonna go ahead and be "that guy", go against the flow and say that I don't like the texture a single bit. And here's why:

The entire texture, first of all, doesn't look interesting at all. From what I can see, you've got base textures, and not even good ones at that. They look cloudy and resemble stone at the moment. What I'd do is choose a base texture with lots of sharp detail, and *really* decontrast it in the specular. Keep the details in the gloss, contrast the base if you feel like it - I've found that keeping details in the gloss map and away from the spec gives an insanely dynamic result. Try it!

Moving on about the metal, I don't see any sharp details that would tell that this material is in fact metal whatsoever, aside from the scratches. I assume those are done in quixel suite, if that's the case: you have to redo 'em. Not exactly an expert with suite (I mostly use it for dirt overlays, that's all), how I do them is look for damaged metal textures and take the dmg from those. Edge scratches alone won't sell the material though; you need oil, some small scratches on planar surfaces (they get scratched as well), coloration, dirt, and such.

What you could also do with the metal is make it really reflective, reflective things are always interesting to look at, just don't go overboard with it

You also need to define your wood better. Get rid of all of the dmg in the specular and throw some strong scratches in all maps. Make it seem really bright in the diffuse, and obviously, dark in the specular and gloss. Darken the wood base in the diffuse and saturate it a bit; not sure what type of wood you're going for, but the wood right now doesn't exactly match with the metal. Might want to tweak around with it.

Have you watched Racer445's texturing tutorial? If not, click here - it's a great read and watch (check description for the text part). You might think it's obsolete since it was made in 2011 or something like that, but what it mostly goes about is how do you sell the materials as realistic. His texturing style still translates really well even in PBR.

The Rizzler

@ComradeDispenser Huge thanks for the lengthy post and being "that guy", honestly. I feel it's an artist's purpose to strive to always improve on reaching the highest quality art, but also to be receptive of feedback and flexible to not get too attached to the work they've done. Feedback like yours is exactly what I need to stay on track and practice that mentality, thanks again.

I think my propensity for sticking to relatively simple base textures is in part due to how texturing has never been as 'intuitive' to me as modelling has, as well as not being 100% confident on my knowledge of PBR. I've read a pile of documentation and understand what each map does functionally, but feel held back by the lack of information about the 'practical' applications of PBR, e.g. can I even use cgtextures for base textures anymore, how do I remove the lighting information from an albedo map I want to use if that's even a good idea, why do some PBR value charts have a hard-set microsurface roughness value? etc. I've been told charts and values are just guidelines and I should just swap lighting environments and see if the materials 'feel right', but where do guidelines and PBR-accurate values begin and end? You say I should use a high detail base texture for the metal, yet reading about the development of Remember Me for example, the art devs admitted that too much microdetail was added to the albedo, so for my rifle I was mostly sticking to the normals and roughness to create definition and keeping the albedo clean. I just get the feeling material definition can be much more subtle because PBR shading elevates the believability of a material and does more of the work, if that makes sense

I'm using Substance Painter, and I have seen Racer445's tutorial a while ago, he's the guy that uses almost exclusively photo sourced textures right? I'll give it another watch.

ComradeDispenser

Yep, pretty much. Those charts are nothing much more than just reference values for what pbr values certain materials use. It's up to you to texture according to them, personally I disregard those charts completely and just create my bases so that they look the best. Not too reflective, but not too dull either. PBR's mostly centered about the gloss, try disabling the specular map entirely, keeping the diff and gloss - the whole gun will appear... strange, but it'll appear much more dynamic - that's what I was talking about. I usually keep only edge scratches and dust in the specular and gloss, but the gloss also has oil, some other small dmg things, etc.

The Rizzler

Alright, I did another pass over all of the textures. I think I'm closer but it's evident to me that texturing is an area that needs refining in both speed and workflow (kind of the same thing really). I need to get more comfortable using photosources and I need to continue amassing a library of textures and materials (maybe start learning substance designer as well) to make texturing more smooth.
Before and After:


And a few various shots. I think I'll put this project aside for now until we're closer to the mod tools coming out. Feedback still appreciated!

The Rizzler

Alright, just bumping to say I've moved my work to Artstation, more convenient viewing and Marmoset Viewers here.
Crits always appreciated, I might even revisit the texture one more time before trying to get it ingame.

Andrew_Sovetkin

Very good