How to interpret and make sense of hard to read Concept Art?

Eedle

Hello!

I've been attempting to model a lasgun from the Dune series for the past couple of days, however to no avail. I am relatively new to modelling and I have never been too interested in modelling guns up until now, however the Concept Art for this particular one attracted my attention. I must've restarted the entire process for 20 times by now, but alas, I feel like I am running around in circles. 



This is the Concept Art (credit to Wojtek Kolacinski on Artstation). 


 This is what I've managed to get so far, most of which is either incorrect or too low fidelity with respect to the Concept Art.

I have absolutely no clue as to how I'm supposed to connect these disjointed pieces together. Also struggling to model the individual parts properly as all of them have some strange rotations that make editing impossible once they are in place.


One of the pieces that confused me most was the following:



I have started the right side with a simple plane whereas for the left side I've used a box instanced and rotated into place so that I can edit it in the XY space. To connect the two I've bridged the edgeloops.



However, how in order to close the model up and not have visible backfaces, I ultimately had to extrude the rims towards the center of the mirror, which feels like a bit of a cheap trick, especially since I don't think that's what's happening in the CA. 



All this said, I do realize that I've probably bitten way more than I can currently chew with this model, so I'm not looking for ways to model this specific asset, I'm just curious to hear how experienced users deal with insufficient information from the Concept Art. Especially in cases where one only has one perspective of the asset. Also some tips for modelling stuff that is not aligned to the axis is more than welcome (stuff like the handle in this case for example.)

Thank you!

Ghogiel

Don't trust concept art perspective to be true all the time. It may lie to you.

Anyway, I think what's important is breaking things down. Dumb advise but it's just true.

On this asset I don't think it curves on this plane 

Your's droops and curves, I think it's way more planar. I also don't think it sticks out from the side of the gun as far as you have it. Sorry don't have much advise, imo it's just a case of trying to understand some planes and relationships with other parts and then developing from there.

gnoop

The concept art clearly has kind of  reference to some 17 century pistol with its smooth bend  and flint mechanism  masked as some fancy "pellet"  .   Kind of a design idea my guess.

And that idea is somewhat watered down in the model  with  less prominent  "flint " details  and exaggerated crocodile tooth like thing on the bottom making silhuette more complicated than necessary  + a bit exaggerated  weird wings .   

How that 'croc" is going to slide into holster  or behind a belt?

Alex_J

i dont model from concept art a lot but the times i have, i realized half the time the lighting doesn't even make sense. So you have to go with your own intuition to, not just try to match pixel for pixel. Go with what you think will look cool and capture the feel of the concept. 

birb

I'm afraid the answer to the general question about interpreting concepts is to cultivate your inner concept artist. Probably not what you want to hear, but due the issues highlighted in this thread you'll be forced to take design decisions and to do so you need a design visual library.

Concepts lie indeed—and how could they not when they're pretty much mental raytracing? The perspective not only will be off but will vary in a same piece (very common in character art where torso up is in perspective but legs are close to ortho), lighting will be inconsistent, etc. I feel the best approach is to identify the key features of whatever you're modelling, the possible planes in the object using not only silhouette but the perspective of elements on surfaces, then try those planes when blocking out your model to figure what looks better. In time, with a solid visual library, you'll need to try things less and less because you'll already know what works.



That area you highlighted is not only fairly plane but it likely comes very close to touching the body of the gun (dark blue). We can infer this from the nooks on the inner face, which exist to make room for one or maybe two elements on the body: the venting system (green) and possibly the round part with the energy ball (pink).

How closely to the body you'll want those depends on what they look like in 3D. Try and find out. Maybe it'll look good with the green section of the wing glued to the venting system + the pink grazing on the spherical recess (?) under the energy ball, maybe a round but flat on the sides energy recess and a visible gap between the pink part and the body will work better. (It'll be likely the later!)

In any case you identify the possible paths you can take and pick the best. Another example:



The Z axis V is there for sure. The V on the X axis (supper exaggerated here) is there... maybe. Will applying both look good? Well, there's only a way to find out.

Good luck!