M249 - Light Machine Gun

musashidan

I've been messing about in Blender, off and on, for the last year and finally decided it was time to take a relatively complex asset through the full pipe without resorting back to Max. The last personal weapon I modeled(tactical shotgun) I used to get the basics of Blender 2.80, but I ended up getting frustrated and went back to my comfort zone in Max. This time around I had more experience in Blender so it's 100% done there: modeling/unwrapping/baking/final renders - texturing done in Substance Painter. Target was around 100K on-card verts or triangles. I wanted close up folio shots so I went 4K maps with around 7 texture sheets. 

I'll post a breakdown and more renders over the next few days as I haven't done one for a while and I'd like to share my thoughts on the process in Blender, particularly, as I baked the bevel shader with no high polys involved at all. I still have some tweaks to do on the texturing(don't we always ), but I also set a 3 week time limit so I still have a few days left for final tweaks.



With Ammo

e_manual

Looking amazing! as a Max user myself I often ponder if I should take the leap to Blender. Was the cloth also done in Blender?

musashidan

Haha! Thanks. I just posted this second on your weapon.

Cloth was done in Painter. After 15 years modeling in Max I'm really enjoying Blender's workflow.

e_manual

Haha 
nice texturing with the cloth, thought it was sculpted!

musashidan

Hehe. I do all my detailing in Painter. Haven't gone to Zbrush for hard-surface stuff for bakes in quite a while.

Here's a WIP from a weapon I did a while back. All the wood damage is 'sculpted' by hand in Painter.

e_manual

Haha Nice stuff, Painter FTW!

musashidan

musashidan

Lighting variants.

musashidan

Zi0

Nice work!

musashidan

musashidan

@Zi0 Thanks mate.

musashidan

tynew

Nice work! This was all done with the bevel shader? Most impressive, would be keen for your process/breakdowns! I can't fathom working entirely on the final mesh, I'm curious how much time would have been saved compared to regular hp workflow. 

Alex_J

Do you got one of these in your closet? All details are perfect. Looks like a photo.

kanga

Woo hoo! Nice one

sacboi

This is *badass* like I can hear the thing burp a belt down range, already

Also looking forward too seeing that breakdown...nearly peeing myself in anticipation

musashidan

@tynew Thanks mate. Yes, all done with the bevel shader. No high polys harmed in the making. Working on the in-game from the start isn't much different from the high/low simultaneous workflow I'd been using for years. Silhouette drives everything and N-gons are my best friend. Lay down minimal strategically placed edges where needed to control shading/triangulation. Triangulate modifier non-destructively at the end before bake, making it easy to iterate/edit. It saves time all round for me. No high polys to deal with and you're baking from a single mesh so no high/low pair matching/exploding/naming/etc. Works great for me.

@Alex Javor No 2nd amendments rights over in Ireland so I'm afraid not. I had to resort to boring old ref images.    Thanks mate, very good of you to say. Appreciate it.

@Kanga Cheers mate.

@sacboi Haha! I'll try and put a few thoughts and images together in a breakdown when time permits. Probably nothing too special, but hopefully some of it might be of interest. I'd like to do it for myself too as this is my first Blender project.

musashidan

shogunato

impressive work i love it

would love to know more with your bevel shader baking workflow

very nice work !

musashidan

@shogunato Thanks mate, appreciate it. Hoping to do a breakdown when I get time. 

Frigus

wooow omg. that's crazy thing I ever seen. super cool. Texturing and rendering quality excellent.

musashidan

@Frigus Thanks mate. 

f1r3w4rr10r

Are those knurled surfaces and welds done purely in Painter or was there some preparation work done in Blender?

musashidan

@f1r3w4rr10r Blender baking was solely used to derive rounded corners. All other normal detailing done in Painter.

Udjani

I have been testing the bevel shader lately, and i am wondering how did you went about baking that much individual pieces that are close together without having any intersection problems. Best thing i can think of would be to join objects that are not close so you don't have to hit back 100 times.