First attempt at low poly hardsurface object. Criticism Welcome

Joshua Godwin

Hi guys,
So I've been trying to get my foot in the 3D industry door. Realized I would probably have a much better chance if I transitioned from characters to environment/prop art. so I took one of my old models made it low poly and textured it in substance.



For more views check out:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/DW6dR

I would love to know your guys' thoughts. Specifically is this high enough quality for a next gen game. Is there anything about this model or how it's presented that would turn a recruiter away.

My firsts thoughts are that maybe the texturing needs a bit of work, but I'm not sure what more I could do considering most references are pretty clean and matte black. Maybe texture a sliver version?

Thanks,
-Josh

Larry

Just so you know, it is the wielders responsibility to keep the weapon clean at all times. It is really dangerous if the weapon has dirt,dust or powder because the weapon might block and not fire when you pull the trigger. So, weapons should not be painted with dirt. However uou can add some slight color variation tomake your surface more believable.

JordanN

There are guns made to survive under extreme conditions. Ak-47 comes to mind, where it has seen combat in every type of warzone.

Joshua Godwin

@Larry Yea, maybe a little bit of color variation or fading.

Tobbo

Joshua Godwin said:

Hi guys,
So I've been trying to get my foot in the 3D industry door. Realized I would probably have a much better chance if I transitioned from characters to environment/prop art. so I took one of my old models made it low poly and textured it in substance.

Dude, if you really want to do characters go for it! Your characters are not that bad and I believe you could get there if you pushed yourself - especially if you have the drive to do characters. One thing that stands out is that none of your characters are textured. 

In regards to your Beretta, your edges are pretty tight on your high poly. Having your edges exaggerated by a nice bevel in the high poly will give your normal map more information to work with. It will read better from far away and helps with aliasing as well. It also looks better and is more interesting to look at. Bevel highlights are sexy and free.

Your low poly could probably use a little more geometry in certain areas to remove the faceted edges (around the main grip and trigger guard). Generally, you want more geometry on bigger rounded forms.

The diamond pattern angle on the grip looks slightly off. 
  

Joe Wilson (Earthquake) started several nice threads in the Technical section, I'd take a look at them if you haven't already. These really helped me.

http://polycount.com/discussion/107196/youre-making-me-hard-making-sense-of-hard-edges-uvs-normal-maps-and-vertex-counts/p1

http://polycount.com/discussion/81154/understanding-averaged-normals-and-ray-projection-who-put-waviness-in-my-normal-map#latest


Hope this helps!

Joshua Godwin

@Tobbo Thanks. I found out about needing wider bevels a little after my high poly was finished . I think I'm going to take a few days to work on something else and then come back to this and fix up the bevels, fix some of the geometry on the low poly, improve textures, etc. plus whatever else jumps out at me once I look at it with fresh eyes.

I am wondering though what about the diamond pattern looks off? Is it where the edges meet with the rest of the grip? the angle itself? The shape? Something else super obvious that I'm not noticing?

Thanks this really does help me a lot. I knew some stuff was off but didn't always know exactly what.

P.S. I'm going to work on texturing some of my old characters and maybe working on a new one in the future. But I still think that it's going to be easier to get my foot in the door with environment/prop art. Plus I think I like doing both equally as well.

edit: If anyone is wondering, here is a reference of the gun.