S&W Model 686 Competitor Revolver .357 Modeling and baking study

Elukka

Hello,

This is my progression on trying to model a gun and bake from high to low. Modeling and sculpting high poly details is done with Maya and baking and texturing in Substance Designer.

I am working with the handle first, this is where I am after maybe 8 hours.
It´s at 2252 tris at the moment, the texture is 2048. I´m thinking the bumps are too strong, may turn them down a bit.
Tips and crits are welcome




Refrence

DanielPeres

Hey mate, this seems like a good project to study some baking. I am not sure if you are focused in the baking only or if you are also focused in making the gun as close to the reference as possible, so in that matter I would only point out these two things:



Also, I am not sure if you baked the noise in the handle from the High poly, but if you did I would say that nowadays with the Substance pipeline you don't need that kind of trouble. It is indeed a nice thing to train your HP modeling and Baking skills, but you can achieve the same result using Substance with the advantage that if you see something wrong  with the noise itself after moving on to texturing, you don't need to go back to baking, you just need to adjust some parameters in your substance file.

Hope I could help,
Cheers

Elukka

Thanks for the feedback. You are right, I need to adjust the shape a bit. The noise and texture is made with SD, just the bigger forms like the bumps and the logo are baked and then I combined the normals in SD. I could just make all of the texture with SD but I should maybe learn to do it the "old fashioned" way too. I kinda like using SD just like a combining things, adjusting and coloring tool.

DanielPeres

I think it is always a good thing to learn how it was made in the "old way" as you said, and after you have that knowledge definitely get the new tools like Substance Painter & Designer in your pipeline, because at the moment thay are the standards in the industry.

The thing with Substance pipeline is that at the moment you don't really need to model those kind of detail noises, bolts, etc in the High Poly and that makes it easier to move on to texturing because there is less to care about in the baking process, altough, you can still bake all of those from the High Poly, it really depends how used you are to both those pipelines.

Looking forward to see your project mate

Elukka

Trying to do good geometry, but it is hard work! It will get there just need time to work on the project. (Damn you Battlegrounds)

Elukka

Hello friends. Some some progression on the model. Low poly is almost done, needs some edge straightening, hammer and safety then moving to beveling and doing high poly detail, then UV and texturing. If you have some tips and critique, please tell and I will improve it!
It is at about 9000 polys.

Elukka

I was not happy how the smooth mesh on the right turned out, so I redid the whole cylinder. Not perfect but a lot better. 

Elukka

Right, so after my meshes exploding 100 times and Maya crashing about 10 times, I finally made it to painting stage. I took your advise and got myself Substance Painter. This is almost too easy now. This baking study just thought me that baking sucks and is not needed.

Doing the barrel part now.

Elukka

First version, done. Still needs some fine tuning, but it is getting there.

Marmoset render.

Elukka

Here are some final shots from Marmoset. Thanks for watching and have a nice day.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/B5Ael more pics.