SV-98 Sniper Rifle - I need some feedback

SamIndeed

Hey, Sam here, new to the site.

I am really passionate about weapon modeling, this is my most recent one. I want to improve more but most times I just don't exactly know how. I appreciate any feedback.

The mesh isn't as low poly as I would like (36,1K tris) and I made several UV sets to get some texture resolution despite my not so great UV packing skills (Scope, Bipod, Attachments and two sets for the rifle itself). I tried to replicate the real life shapes as well as I could, but in some areas I couldn't exactly make the part as seen on the reference photos.

There are more pictures here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/1nYJbe

CybranM

Its hard to give feedback on the geo since you havent uploaded a wireframe. As for the textures I think theyre alright, IMHO the green doesnt work for the (fake?) wood body. The scratches feel a bit too random, I dont think the scratches marked in green make much sense.
The height change marked in red looks pretty weird as well, if you wanted it to look like a layer of paint that had been work away I think you need to add a better colour contrast between the two layers.
I dont know what the reference grip looks like but the bumps (blue) look weird to me.

With a bit of tweaking I think you could improve the model a lot

SamIndeed

Thanks @CybranM for your feedback. The rifle in real life comes with green painted wooden body, although the exact color, contrast and pattern varies from rifle to rifle I still don't think I did a great job with the texture. The grip bumps are indeed weird, first I tried to replicate the pattern from real life photos, but it seemed too uniform and clean so I tried to make it more random, obviously didn't end up very well.

The grip:

Also a wireframe of the model if you wish to take a look:


Thanks again for your time, I truly appreciate it. I will keep your advice in mind

CybranM

I see what you were going for with the green material and the grip, it looks pretty weird on the reference image as well so I understand why it was tough to do in 3d

I think most of your geo is good (not that I'm an expert or anything) but some areas could use some optimization, unless the ridges on the inside of the scope eyepiece (blue) is noticeable when in FPS view that could be removed. I dont know if you have a reason for adding the rings on the flat glass but I think you could remove those without any drawbacks. The bolt grip (also blue) could be optimized if you really wanted to but I dont think its worth spending time on.

You could easily remove the red edges, there might be more but I just marked the ones I saw. You have a few Ngons as well which you should remove, marked in green. When you export it triangulates them but its best practice to do that manually so youre sure the triangles dont change if you re-export.

The springs on the tripod are polyhogs but I dont know what the industry way to deal with that is, you could probably reduce them to 4 sided cylinders to save polys. You could also bake them down to normals on a single large cylinder but I'm not sure whats best.