FPS Weapon Challenge

Jesse Moody

With Memorial weekend here and a break from other contests I figured it's time to launch the new challenge.

This time a focus on the non-character side of things.

The topic: First Person Weapon

Polycount: Max of 7k tris.

Texture Budget: 1024x1024 Diffuse, Spec, Normal, Glow, Gloss, Etc

Due Date: June 22nd 9:00pm Central Standard Time Extended 1 Week from Original Date


For the final presentation

Beauty Shot: This should be the fully textured game mesh in all it's glory.

First Person View Shot: This is a must have. This is what it all comes down to so make that model look great and show us how it would look from the players POV.

High Poly Shot: Nice render of your final high poly model.

Construction Sheet: Show us your wireframe and textures.


Style is left open for you to decide. Fantasy, sci fi, steam punk, etc. Have fun with this and see what we can come up with for kick ass weapons.

Questions just ask here.

Admin note: This contest was OK'd by myself (Adam). Not everyone can just up and make a contest. If you have contest ideas, its suggested that you gauge public interest first then ask either Hawken (Contest forum moderator), myself, rogue or bearkub before posting new challenges/contests. Have fun with this one! :P

adam

1. Does this have to be shown in its first-person perspective?
2. Does this have to be shown from an actual game/engine?
3. Can we work with someone on this? (I model, they texture? Or vice-versa?)
4. Do I need to show concepts or can I just post my final shot(s)?

Lee3dee

5. can we pay an someone to model, texture it for us. then submit it? ^^

Jesse Moody

1. Does this have to be shown in its first-person perspective?
   
   YES
   
   
2. Does this have to be shown from an actual game/engine?
   
   While it would be ideal to get this into a game and running in it's fps glory I don't want things to get too technical or that to hang people up. You can render it in max, maya, or in your game engine of choice.
   
   For the high poly model it would be nice to get some nice renders of that as well so we can see how well it transitioned to the game mesh.
   
   
3. Can we work with someone on this? (I model, they texture? Or vice-versa?)
   
   Sure why not? A lot of studios have guys that just do the modeling these days and others that will handle the textures. If you feel like working as a team on this would be better for your final results then go ahead with it.
   
4. Do I need to show concepts or can I just post my final shot(s)?
   
   It might be interesting to see concepts for the weapons but I know that everyone here isn't a great concept artist and if you do show it will not be counted against you since most of the time we all have dedicated concept guys pumping out cool art for us to work from.

Hope that helps clear things up a bit.

Jesse Moody

Lee3dee wrote: »

5. can we pay an someone to model, texture it for us. then submit it? ^^

Outsourcing work... Hmm, well since I can't rightfully pay someone to take my wife out to a crappy movie she wants to see, so I can do something more enjoyable, no. Sorry Lee.

Mtg_kirin

6.) does it have to be our concept?

vahl

what is that beauty/render restriction BS ? why is the size so weird too ? isn't that a bit constraining? I know GA.org/DW do that since they have automated galleries but it's not necessarily a good thing,

edit: thanks ^^

Jesse Moody

*edited for you Vahl

Pedro Amorim

nice. i think im gonna take crack at this.
i hope EQ doesnt enter or else hep'll win. ^^;

commador

sounds like fun! I figure I'll try this out to break in the summer, and it would also be the first challenge I have ever entered so huzzah!

Cybroxide

7) Since it's first person should we cull backfaces that would not be seen in first person perspective
8) Can it be a Melee weapon
9) Should we model hands and if we do are these part of the specs.

Chai

bitmap wrote: »

nice. i think im gonna take crack at this.
i hope EQ doesnt enter or else hep'll win. ^^;

nah no way EQ enters, if he enters I'll have to enter to take his crown

cool comp Jesse Moody, too bad I've done shitload of those on same spec this year - need to work on my other skills

ImSlightlyBored

Cybroxide wrote: »

7) Since it's first person should we cull backfaces that would not be seen in first person perspective
8) Can it be a Melee weapon
9) Should we model hands and if we do are these part of the specs.

As far as I can interpret it from the rules, it could be any weapon which left me wondering about melee weapons too.
The rest, (7&9) are good points that I'd like to know as well.

Does this have to be rendered in an engine for the final, or are all manner of fancy renderers allowed? Sorry if I missed that part.

Pedro Amorim

some inspiration for you guys.
http://www.2kgames.com/cultofrapture/shotgunart.html

Pedro Amorim

also: dont forget
http://www.2kgames.com/cultofrapture/artbook.html

EarthQuake

I think you should have to provide a FPS shot, i mean thats what the contest is, model a FPS gun. I think it will also help challenge people to actually create guns that look best in first person view, something it seems a lot of people and a lot of games struggle doing.

EarthQuake

Heres some reference/insp

http://bonez18b.deviantart.com/gallery/
http://world.guns.ru/

EarthQuake

Cybroxide wrote: »

7) Since it's first person should we cull backfaces that would not be seen in first person perspective
8) Can it be a Melee weapon
9) Should we model hands and if we do are these part of the specs.

7) Do people still actually do this in games? Like saving 500 tris and limiting what you can do with animations for a game that hass 500,000 tris onscreen, i dont think anyone really does this sort of thing anymore...

8) Melee, i guess thats fine. I personally wouldnt just model a sword or something, but i guess thats up to you.

9) Making hands is not required, and i would just say no to this all together, lets focus on the weapon itself.

Cybroxide

EarthQuake wrote: »

7) Do people still actually do this in games? Like saving 500 tris and limiting what you can do with animations for a game that hass 500,000 tris onscreen, i dont think anyone really does this sort of thing anymore...

I understand where you're coming from, it seems kinda silly however I have been asked by clients to remove backfaces not just because of poly budget but because it removes certain details from the texture leaving more space to focus on the more visible side of the gun.

EarthQuake

Yeah i think that is pretty flawed logic on thier part, because we just simply reuse the same textures for our lower detail world meshes, but in thier case they need to have 2 sets of textures, which pretty much negates what you save in chopping up the fpv model. Not to mention now you have to create 2 textures etc, that being a bit of a time-sink. What i do is just make sure i give more UV space to the areas that will be up close in your face in FPV, and less to areas that are out of view(buttstock) and areas far away like the barrel.

Cybroxide

yeah, I totally agree with your logic on that.

Sage

EQ Isn't the idea to put all the tris in the view and get rid of anything that is not in fps view. So you go in a model anything that that is close to the player and make those have more tris. For the texture the first and third person weapon would use the same one, similar to making LODs, you model things in such a way that the UVs can be reused.

Alex

Pedro Amorim

yeah. but eq also made a strong point when he mentioned animation. if you delete faces then you cant show the gun on that side so it limits the animation.

Chai

Cybroxide wrote: »

I understand where you're coming from, it seems kinda silly however I have been asked by clients to remove backfaces not just because of poly budget but because it removes certain details from the texture leaving more space to focus on the more visible side of the gun.

I'd say that 90% of the parts you'd remove would have duplicate uv coordinates, like EQ said you only save about 500tris, nothing more.

If those 500tris help you to push a better looking gun, by all means go for it - I personally never used 7000tris on one gun, I get the results I require with less then 4000 tris.

bitmap wrote: »

yeah. but eq also made a strong point when he mentioned animation. if you delete faces then you cant show the gun on that side so it limits the animation.

Ya, I've seen that happen even in commercial games, I'd say that if a studio really wants to save those 500tris, they should model and texture a finished gun with no deleted faces - then write an algo to check which faces don't show on screen during animation and delete those from the final gun.

EarthQuake

Sage wrote: »

EQ Isn't the idea to put all the tris in the view and get rid of anything that is not in fps view. So you go in a model anything that that is close to the player and make those have more tris. For the texture the first and third person weapon would use the same one, similar to making LODs, you model things in such a way that the UVs can be reused.

Alex

Yes definately, i do this the same as giving extra uv space to closer objects, more polies where you'll notice. But unless its some insanely detailed and complicated model, you're not going to notice the performance gain you get by saving the few hundred, or even a thousand tris from deleting. I've yet to create a weapon model that exceeds 7000 tris. Hell UT3 has weapon models up to 14k, its really just not a factor at all, because its one single mesh thats taking up a large portion of the screen, and only being rendered once. If you think the weapon takes up even... 1/6th or 1/8th of the screen, and its on average about 5k tris, and the rest of your scene may be 250-500k, thats nothing at all, really nothing, you would likely see more of a hit say if your weapon had 4 material calls instead of one, than you would from the difference between 5,000 or 10,000 polys for an inview weapon.

Jesse Moody

OK don't worry about deleting back faces. I didn't know people still did that these days.


Added an update to the reqs. for this contest. The FPS shot is a must have since that is what this whole thing depends on.

EarthQuake

Heres a couple great examples of designing for first person view from hawkprey:

Sage

Yeah, lol, I totally wasn't thinking about the 7000 tri budget. That makes it pretty pointless to delete faces in itself.

Alex

Japhir

question: does it have to be something that shoots? or can it be something like a simple knife/samurai sword or something like that?

Ghostscape

Japhir wrote: »

question: does it have to be something that shoots? or can it be something like a simple knife/samurai sword or something like that?

Ignition

i'm using 3ds max to render the gun, and i would like to know what are some good render setting for the high res pics. i usually use maya

Sage

Hey EQ where is your entry This won't be a Polycount FPS weapon challenge if you don't join. Looking forward to see what you are going to make.
Alex

hawken

remember guns are only cool if you are on the trigger end. Lets see some humor.

TelekineticFrog

Guns are not funny and humorous...what they do to their targets can be.

dejawolf

for those less blessed with the world of guns, this page got it all:
http://world.guns.ru/smg/smg96-e.htm
big guns, small guns, shotguns.. its all there, and its all explained.

Armanguy

@ghostscape: hahahahah thats is the coolest thing ever created by man and then some :P

EarthQuake

Sage wrote: »

Hey EQ where is your entry This won't be a Polycount FPS weapon challenge if you don't join. Looking forward to see what you are going to make.
Alex

We'll see if i can muster up some time to do this, i'm a little busy on my freetime with some people visiting etc. But i hope to at least start something.

EarthQuake

heres some more reference
http://www.pixagogo.com/DeicideNBF

dfacto

Is it alright if I put up a 2d thread and draw concepts people can use if they want? I'm not really up for modelling, but drawing weapons is always good.

Jesse Moody

dfacto...don't see why not. If someone does use your design then props will be given to you as well.

People are using other designs now anyways with using real world weapons so feel free.

edwardE

I'd definitely like to join this if I have time.

Holi

hello gentlemans , i have no time to join, but I definitly would like to share some inspiration for (truly) crazy guns:

http://www.aceteam.cl/zenoclash/wep_dual_fishgun.jpg
http://www.aceteam.cl/zenoclash/wep_crossbow.jpg
http://www.aceteam.cl/zenoclash/wep_grenade_gun.jpg
http://www.aceteam.cl/zenoclash/wep_musket.jpg
http://www.aceteam.cl/zenoclash/wep_skull_bombs.jpg
http://www.aceteam.cl/zenoclash/wep_hammer.jpg
http://www.aceteam.cl/zenoclash/wep_boneclub.jpg

All from "Zeno Clash" http://www.aceteam.cl/zenoclash/

EarthQuake

So we're about halfway in it seems and most people are just starting to model/still working on thier concepts, does anyone have a problem with the deadline at this point? I know a couple people that also just started as well, so i wouldnt be apposed to strechting the deadline back a week or so if people see the need.

bounchfx

I've been very busy lately, and I'm just starting it tonight. I just decided to go with a real world gun since 1. never did a hp real gun before and 2. wasn't happy with any of my concepts - if I'm going to spend time modeling something hardcore I want it to look sweet and not suffer from bad design choices.

I wouldn't mind a deadline extension, but to me it makes no difference I guess

Jesse Moody

EarthQuake wrote: »

So we're about halfway in it seems and most people are just starting to model/still working on thier concepts, does anyone have a problem with the deadline at this point? I know a couple people that also just started as well, so i wouldnt be apposed to strechting the deadline back a week or so if people see the need.

Done.

Deadline extended to June 22nd

Sage

Thanks for that. Real cool.

Alex

Dante1217

soon ill upload my m4a1 i hope its not too late to join the contest >.<

EarthQuake

The deadline is june 22nd, you can join at any time up to that point As long as your model was created for this contest and not before may 23rd.

EarthQuake

How does everyone feel about adding in the ability to have reasonable effects for your FPV shot? I know reasonable is kind of vague, but basically anything that you would see in a game would be ok. If anyone has questions specifically about a certain effect feel free.

Some examples would be:
Adding a crosshair in post
Adding muzzle flash/smoke/etc effects
Having a special reflective material for a scope/sight, etc

Things of that nature, i don't think we really need to put any hard limits on these, as long as nobody is doing anything real crazy.

W1LLDAB3AST

EarthQuake wrote: »

How does everyone feel about adding in the ability to have reasonable effects for your FPV shot? I know reasonable is kind of vague, but basically anything that you would see in a game would be ok. If anyone has questions specifically about a certain effect feel free.

Some examples would be:
Adding a crosshair in post
Adding muzzle flash/smoke/etc effects
Having a special reflective material for a scope/sight, etc

Things of that nature, i don't think we really need to put any hard limits on these, as long as nobody is doing anything real crazy.

What about first-person hands? Just the gun mocked up in an idle pose. But that would have be totally optional because not everyone has first-person hands.

bluekangaroo

EarthQuake wrote: »

Heres a couple great examples of designing for first person view from hawkprey:

nice. James Hawkins is the man. I absolutely love his concept work...if i already hadn't started my weapon, Id love to model that stinger...such a beaut'