Kriss Vector II Gen

Klawd

Hello fellow polycounters, 

not much work these past weeks, so I decided to make a quick piece for the portfolio in the hope of improving it a bit. Also needed to take my mind off a bigger personal project.

I decided for a real life weapon, since I have never done one and the complexity seems interesting and challenging. Huge quantity of reference images on the web, so that's great!

The choice fell on the Kriss USA Vector (second generation). Still not sure if I'll add any accessories like light, or holo. This is the weapon:

After spending a couple of hours gathering references I started modeling the Barrel Shroud (I thought it was a suppressor, but this instead is used to avoid burns from overheated barrels, the more you know...):

Part of the Frame and the Charge Handle:

The Cartridge, with Magazine, and the Bolt Latch/Release

Stay tuned for more

jaker3278

Hi , nice project i hope it goes well, I realize you have only just started but these areas need attention
1. needs beveling to make softer
2. Same needs some kind of bevel
3. is this a block out? if this is going to be low poly geo it looks ok, but if its going to be high poly again softer so the normal map gives you bevel info

Overall at the moment everything is to sharp. 

Klawd

Hi @jaker3278, thanks. I'm not following the common highpoly>retopo workflow but instead I'm modeling this in reverse order (I tend to have different approaches depending on the project). Anyway, at the end I'll just duplicate the lowpoly model, add bevels, and use the new highpoly for the bake. 

jaker3278

@Klawd Okay sounds like a plan, looking forward to it. are you working full time on it? 

jaker3278

and also i think you should add bevels at those places in your low poly aswell, if you have a look at modern real time weapons they will have bevels on the low poly.  The silhouette will be greatly improved. normal maps will work but will be greatly helped with bevels on low poly. 

Klawd

Yes, I agree with you, and this was already part of the plan, but for a later phase.

And this is where I stopped for today.
Added Top and Lower Rails, Side Rail Mount Points, Trigger, and Grip.
Current tricount is around 15k.

Klawd

Almost done with the modeling. Just finished adding the Magazine Eject Button, the Grips, the Ejection Port, and several Bolts and Screws. Did also some tweaks here and there. What's left to do is the Buttstock, and the levers for the Safe and the Firing Mode.
Current tricount is 27k

Polygoblin

no issue with modeling the lowpoly first, but you really don't need to have all those insets along the grips there. it's wasteful. I'd suggest you remove those at the very least, after doing the hp version, to optimize this lowpoly before unwrapping. 

Klawd

@Polygoblin
Indeed they added a lot of geometry (around 2.5k additional tris), there are few more insets on the backside of the grip that can't be seen from the screenshots I posted.
I'm considering whether to remove them and just bake them from the highpoly but I'm not sure the normal alone would do it justice, especially if rendered in engine without pom or tessellation.
I mean I could leave them modeled for quality purpose since this is not going to be a production piece and hence it doesn't have stringent polycount limits but I guess I'll decide later on.
Thanks for the feedback

Polygoblin

It'll bake just fine without them in the low. keep in mind you personal assets show your decision making process to potential employers. Bottom line is those specific insets will not contribute anything to the silhouette or bake quality at all. It's a waste, and any potential employer who sees them in your lowpoly will feel the same way.  /2cents

Klawd

Two cents much appreciated. I guess I'll try without the insets in the lowpoly

Klawd

Had little time these past two days but I'm almost done with modeling. 

The stock connector and the top piece of the stock itself were the most complex parts to model, and I resorted doing them with modo mesh fusion (subd+bools). Still got to retopo them though.


Also have decided to go with iron sights for the accessories. The most common used with the Kriss Vector Gen II are apparently the Magpul MBUS gen2 which I find very sexy in design, so I'm currently finishing modeling these, then retopo the few pieces that need it, then highpoly, and so on.

These are the bad boys going on the top rail:

Deforges

If you don't want to render out WIPs you could put some AA onto your viewport captures so it looks a little better

http://community.foundry.com/discuss/topic/94400

Klawd

Deforges said:

If you don't want to render out WIPs you could put some AA onto your viewport captures so it looks a little better

http://community.foundry.com/discuss/topic/94400

Eheh you are right! Just updated the pictures in the last post. Didn't really think about the aliasing, and also found a handy option directly into modo (v10):

Klawd

So, I've finished modeling the ironsights and retopologizing the two bastard stock pieces that I needed to do with meshfusion (the stock>body connector and the top piece of the stock itself):





Also halfway with the highpoly:




I'm enjoying this project so much, can't wait to start texturing it.

jaker3278

Looks like you need to make your bevels bigger on the high poly so the normal map has more slope information. 

Klawd

@jaker3278 I was kinda worrying about that, especially for the grip area, and the front just after the barrel shroud. In the case of the grips though there just isn't enough space there to increase them, the others I'll see to bump them a bit more. (luckily you made me pay attention to this soon enough).
Anyway I just did a test bake of the barrel shroud keeping its size in uv space small as it would be in the end, and I think the bevels might even be a little too much on some edges.

Klawd

First of all, I'm learning so much with this piece. Just wanted to put it out there.

So, been very busy lately but I have managed to clean the lowpoly a bit. It's roughly 30k tris for the main weapon, 40k with full accessories.
As it's evident, I have been very generous with curves and cylinders to get as much quality as possible remaining within AAA games requirements (I think modern fps have 40-50k tris weapons?).

I'm now working to add the final touches to the highpoly and then I have to finish the UVs and get to the baking. Still not sure if I'm going to be able to squeeze it all in a 4k map or if I'll need two, but we'll see!

Here's the lowpoly current form (between the various changes I also removed the grips insets as @Polygoblin recommended). Also I hope I have not been making too many errors given this is my first project of the sort (you guys are so mean jk)

Polygoblin

the tri count is still a tad high, simply because of the shape of the gun and you could bake many of those screws and other insets. but those are less egregious than what I was pointing out earlier. mesh looks good to go. looking forward to seeing the bakes

there's not too many errors, this is how you become a stronger artist. I've been roasted here plenty. the direct crits are normally just because of limited time

Thanez

I'mma give it to you straight. This is a good model that you've done. Well job'd! I'm enjoying the entirety of it except the m4 stock adapter piece. It looks blobby and lacks definition in it's shape as if you didn't have good references for it, #sorry.

Mspaint is the shit, yo.

The weakest part of this is the optimization. I'm no fan of cutting down so much that it looks like it belongs in 2003 unless that's your budget, and I have no issue with a 50k poly FPS weapon as long as you're gaining visual fidelity from every poly used.
That said, you've got some areas that are so geometrically dense that the edges render into eachother on screen(red). These polys won't render at more than 1px on screen, so I have to ask if they are necessary.
You've also got some edge loops still in there that don't add anything to the shape or help with the shading at all (blue).
You've got some many-sided planes inset into your model that can be detatched and replaced by a simple quad that covers that same hole (orange).
There are bits that honestly should be floaters. There's no gain in having these (yellow) bits modeled into the lowpoly. Highpoly, yes. Lowpoly, no.
There's also some bad triangulation on the pistolgrip that will mess with your smoothing that can be ezily fixed (purple)
I would also remove the green bits as they won't be seen in first person view, and don't add to the silhouette. (greenygreen)

And lastly every one of those bolt lips can be detatched from the main body, so you can optimize the flat side of the gun that has a bunch of 32sided holes cut into it without it affecting the holes going through it. See below.
On your current setup you've got a bunch of 32 sided cylinders modeled into a quad face on the side of your weapon. This generates 36 triangles on the quad per bolt hole. If you split the edges going around the cylinder and optimize the 32sided hole into a hexagon, it'll generate 10 triangles instead of 36. This will also smooth and work better with the normal map as you've got fewer and shorter/fatter triangles. 
On the conical shapes that don't feature a hole through the model you can split and collapse the hole, then remove the vertex in the middle.

If you end up doing all this, saving 10k triangles and decide to respend them on chamfered up-close-details or spending an extra 10k on an optic to make it look smooth af, I'll be the first to applaud the optimization. 
Good luck and good hunting, or ignore me completely. That's your prerogative

Klawd

@Polygoblin  Thanks! I was of course joking, I learned that criticism and feedback are of paramount importance to grow and get better, and I don't mind harsh and blunt ones either, since even the worst ones always contain useful information.

@Thanez Wow! Thanks for the thorough feeback!
100% agree with red and blue. I'll see to optimize it.
Orange, it would not save more than a few dozen triangles, and the front oval insets aren't flat, they have nice a curved bevel in the inner face too, so it would only apply to the stock circle piece.
Purple, I don't get any smoothing problem on the grip (it's a completely flat ngon), and doing this would add more triangles instead of saving.
Green, I was tempted to remove those too when I removed the main grips ones, but from the reference images I noticed that those insets contribute to the stock profile, hence I decided to leave them in sacrificing a bit of geometry. (reference image below)
Regarding the bolt lips, I totally disagree, I made them like they are now not just to avoid interfering with the holes, but because they are one piece with the main body, they even have a nice bevel near the connection that would be lost if I were to make them like you suggest. (reference image below)

 

Thanez

You won't lose that purdy edge if you're wanting to bake normals.
Check the lip below the slide release here, it's a floater on the LP but modeled in on the HP.

Klawd

@Thanez Oh, nice! Didn't know that! Thanks. It makes sense the bake would add information on the body too! So, doing this I can optimize both the inner area of the oval insets, and the bolt lips, right? 

Klawd

I did some tests and I'm getting a dark seam on the floater. I tried both snapping the float on the surface, and intersecting it a little, and the seam always remains.

Thanez

I'd do a duplicate of my mesh and just go to town on it. If you do any mistakes, you'll learn from it and can redo it.

You're getting that error because you're capturing the entire edge with both the sphere's and the flat's cage.
On the first example i've split up the wall's cage and sphere's cage. Notice how they both encompass the highpoly's edge completely. When bakey this will give you the entire edge on both the wall and the sphere lowpoly, making it render twice on the lowpoly and leaving you with that pinchy effect on the seam.
For optimal results, try manipulating your cage so that you're capturing half the highpoly's edge with the wall's cage, and half the edge with the sphere's cage.

Edit: clarification.

Klawd

Thanez said:

I'd do a duplicate of my mesh and just go to town on it. If you do any mistakes, you'll learn from it and can redo it.

You're getting that error because you're capturing the entire edge with both the sphere's and the flat's cage.
On the first example i've split up the wall's cage and sphere's cage. Notice how they both encompass the highpoly's edge completely. When bakey this will give you the entire edge on both the wall and the sphere lowpoly, making it render twice on the lowpoly and leaving you with that pinchy effect on the seam.
For optimal results, try manipulating your cage so that you're capturing half the highpoly's edge with the wall's cage, and half the edge with the sphere's cage.
[...]

Ok, I understand. Thanks for the explanation! In my experiments I always used the automatic cage that the Substance Painter's baker uses, I'll make sure to try it again as soon as I have a moment.

Anyway, I just finished uving and did the first test bake, and apart from some small errors it seems successful!

Thanez

Looks good, man. I'd detatch the fire selector and rebake the AO of the main body again, as it will possibly rotate ingame leaving a shadow where there shouldn't be one.

Klawd

This model won't see any engine (sadly for him), but I'll keep this in mind for future projects

Klawd

Today marks the 10th day I'm working on this weapon. A few more than I thought were needed for such a model (yes, I now know I was naive but this is my first model of the sort so I didn't know any better). Now I realize that I could have done things more relaxedly, and better, earlier on, saving me some of the trouble later.
I have learned a ton already and I think there's still more before it's done.

Here's the first passage I did this morning in Substance Painter. I can see many problems that have to be addressed. Some are even caused by things you guys mentioned earlier on, so I might be going back to the geometry before going for another texture pass.

Gazu

Try to lower down the Field Of View for Weapon Renders.
I like 25-45.
So you weapon doesnt look so long on the renders.

Klawd

Thanks for the tip @Gazu

And here's a quick render of where I left things today. Still lot to do.

Gazu

And? Do you think its better?
I think it is

Klawd

Gazu said:

And? Do you think its better?
I think it is

I have to agree Renders are much more functional this way.

Klawd

Fixed the geometry here and there, rebaked, and did a second pass in substance painter:




Also have been playing with different liveries, which one would you guys put first?

gfelton

I really hope you're planning on pushing the textures even more. You've got a solid base going, time to go to town and start adding some cool details and good spots of roughness/color variation. I'd also try adding some colors to your metal so that when light begins to hit it, the colors will read and it'll look sexy as fuck. Also give some of your polymer more color variety so that it doesn't look so flat in certain areas. I really like the edge chipping you added as that adds a lot of character and just looks pretty sweet. And finally, I'd use Thanez glock that he posted not too long ago as it has a lot of really good material breakup and exaggeration where it's appropraite and it's also a good bar to shoot for. Hope this helps! : )

gfelton

OoOoHHHhhh i also wanted to add that the chipping on the suppressor looks good as well and you should add a little bit more of it in areas where the suppressor is gonna bump into shit, it adds a lot of character and looks zesty

Klawd

Thanks @gfelton! Really appreciate the suggestions you have given me, and yes I'm not satisfied with the current state either so another texture pass is in order before calling it!

Klawd

Managed another texture pass. Still not entirely satisfied, but I have to consider this done. It already took way longer than I originally anticipated and I gotta urgently give my attention to other projects. Learned so very much, especially thanks to all of you guys that have given me feedback here during these two weeks! So much appreciated!

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/ZV13m

Klawd

Few more renders (I wish I had a better GPU so I wouldn't have to wait 45 minutes for such simple renders  )

Klawd

Resurrected this model to try make a few better renders in Marmoset.

Klawd

Reopened this old model and redone great part of it, I wanted to add everything I have learned in the past 8-9 months.
Fixed a few errors, remade/retopo'd some pieces, made a cleaner bake, and redone textures from scratch.
Total tricount went down to 37k (from the original 42k).

Klawd

Couple more renders

More here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/88E9R