C6k Assault Rifle

Zack Fowler

For about a week now I've been working on an assault rifle design. My general goals for it are to be from a near-future setting and have a kind of weighty feeling to it, like it could work as good club when you run out of ammo. I wanted to make it seem convincingly realistic, though, like something that you would expect a soldier to know how to disassemble and reassemble and carry around daily.

The final goal is to import and show it off in UE3. Right now I've just about finished up the high-poly model, although I still need to add the detailing differences on the right side (replace cocking mechanism with case ejection etc) and other small details.

I've never worked on a firearm before, or used one, and although I did a decent amount of research there's probably some common sense stuff I'm missing. One issue I'm aware of is that the slit for the cocking mechanism seems like it would clip through the back of the gun when it's pulled back. Still brainstorming a fix to that, any suggestions are welcome.

Blah blah blah, time for pictures!

Current high-poly mesh:


Some stuff showing the process:


And the top design here:


Paintover concept based on a mockup 3D model:


3DS MAX 2008, 160k triangles on working mesh

ae.

not sure why noone has commented but i gotta say that high-poly looks ACE! im not a big gun junkie so i dont know what to tell you about the design.

Jarod1872

The high poly looks pretty good right now man. As far as design stuff, the only thing that really jumps out at me is I would add a little more detail into the grip, maybe insetting the ridged part slightly, or bring it out. Just something so you could see it a little more clearly in the 'in game' view. Nice work though, man.

Andreas

Looks cool. If I had to do a sandbag though, I'd say that the angle of the bottom of the clip would make it not-so user friendly. Even reversing the angle might help...dunno. Nice hp though.

rollin

hey, like the look of this gun very much.. very heavy and robust
and it looks good from the player-view too..

only the pullback grip is a bit big imo

HAL

Like I said on deviantart, some edges seem to be to vertical :P

Hope you dont mind the paintover :P

Zack Fowler

ae: Thanks man.

Jarod: Thanks! Yeah, good point. I was thinking of making an "island" of rough surface along the sides, but that'll be way way easier to do in the texture so I haven't messed with it yet.

Blenderhead: True, but I think that the harshness of the clip is one of the few style-establishing quirks of the design.

rollin: I'm not too familiar with firearm terminology, but I'm guessing "pullback" refers to the knob on the side for the cocking mechanism?

Hal: Hey, thanks for going through the trouble of a paintover! The indentions in the front grip are actually quite rounded so I'm not worried about those. You may be right about the rest of it though. I'll wait to get the first bake before I start tweaking anything just yet.

mLichy

Looks very nice, I agree with the paintover. Did you make alot of those details part of one mesh? If so, you should try splitting things up, making parts floating geo.

It will save alot of time and look the same, but the highpoly might not look as clean. But who cares about the highpoly, its the ingame what you care about. Unless its for a film.

Zack Fowler

Thanks! Yeah, right now it's actually 4 editable poly objects with numerous elements. The splitting into multiple objects is just to speed up Max because I noticed it chugging a bit with any geometry additions/deletions later on. Pretty much anything that visually looks like it would be made as a separate piece in real life was split into its own element. That made hiding parts of the mesh while I was poking around close up a lot easier, among other things. I'll be able to get an easy jump start on texturing by masking out the different kinds of materials on the high poly per element. I can put up some wires if you guys are interested.

BeatKitano

"I can put up some wires if you guys are interested."

i woud love to see it, i still can't get my head around this kind of modeling, its always interesting to se how peope handle these structures.

Zack Fowler

Sure thing, here ya go. Some parts got a bit nasty because I was trying to make myself work quickly and not sweat the small stuff.

Pedro Amorim

nice rifle i like!
you made it in what program?

dolemite

man good work! Love the high poly.

Helixx

Sweet rifle, I'm working on a percussion revolver right now and your wireframes gave me some ideas on how to fix a couple of my problems.
Cheers!

Zack Fowler

Thanks guys! bitmap, I'm currently working in Max 2008. Helixx, glad my wires were helpful, looking forward to seeing your revolver if you can post it up.

Zack Fowler

Hey guys, finally about wrapped up the low-poly cinematic/FPV model for this gun. I set my limit at 11k triangles after checking out the weapons in UT3, and managed to come in at just under that with 10,801. The UVs and normals are pretty much good to go barring a few minor tweaks. I can't tell you how pumped I am to finally get to working on textures for this, it's my favorite part of the whole process.

So here are some simple renders of the ~11k mesh with a 1024x1024 normal map applied:

Shogun3d

Loving it, fantastic design. Personally I think the charging handle knob looks like its one of those plastic knobs that break off easily, if it looked more like a charging handle from an M16 or the like, it would read better but overall you have a great high poly. Round off those edges for a nice bake and you're in for win. Great job.

Zack Fowler

Here's a quick update with rough WIP texture laying out the general materials and color scheme. I haven't gotten to a proper spec map yet so I'm just duping the diffuse for now. Hoping to get the textures to around 80-90% completion by the end of the day.



kaburan: Thanks man! I see what you mean about the knob. For now I'll try giving it a metallic texture and see if that's enough to make it look more sturdy. There are a few edges here and there that baked out a bit sharp but it might be enough to carefully soften up the normal map at this point.

P442

looks good. The black areas, like on the muzzle are a bit too black and I would play with the spec map in those areas too, cause the spec on the body is looking nice. Also, the grip in front of the clip isn't reading well. I can't tell if its metal or plastic or what. Maybe also you could add some writing, like model # or manufacturer that most firearms have.

Zack Fowler

Thanks for the crits P442. Yeah, geesh looking back that was a really dark render. To be honest I haven't quite nailed down what is plastic or metal or rubber yet, which I should do pronto. I'll definitely get some text in there soon too. Here's an update, now with proper spec map.

P442

looks way better, man

Narodnik

Throw down a few indivudual larger signs of wear/damage. For instance some large marks of wear from the bolt handle. Some wear that's larger than your atm overall wear will make your rifle appear more rifle size and not that oversized, thus more "real life"

I'd also suggest upping the spec and lowering the texture of polymer/synth on the exposed edges areas. Seeing how the serrated surface texture would be worn down, leaving a more shinier smooth surface. Really helps defining that sort of material.

breakneck

have you thought about using an engine to render your gun? the Marmoset Toolbag is a polycount fav.
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=61346

Zack Fowler

P442: Cool, thanks

Narodnik: Good call, I'll take a pass to think about all the areas that would most commonly be brushed against and put in some larger scale scratches. I'll play around with that polymer material too. Thanks!

breakneck: I'm actually planning to use UE3 at the moment since I got very familiar with it at my last gig. Seen some sweet renders out of Marmoset though so I'll probably give it the ol' lookie-loo at some point.

Zack Fowler

Finally! Calling it done for now. The plastic things near the back are kinda boring and should be roughed up a bit more, but I really need to move on to other stuff. I'll probably revisit it for some tweaking eventually.

edit: Forgot to mention these are screencaps from UE3.

G3L

Somewhat off topic (guns looking good man, I like!) but I have a question for the weapon modellers...

The high poly seems to have been modelled out entirely by Zack using chamfers and what not.

Is it possible he could've also made the high poly through use of Sub-D modelling and if that's the case, this is usually the route to go when going high poly with stuff anyways isn't it?

Regardless, I think Zack's high poly looks good!

Acid_

Really nice work. Get it into marmoset, I reckon it will look sick. The texturing is good but it could use a little bit more work. I think the specular could have some adjustments.
Great work anyway.

Harry

G3L wrote: »

Somewhat off topic (guns looking good man, I like!) but I have a question for the weapon modellers...

The high poly seems to have been modelled out entirely by Zack using chamfers and what not.

Is it possible he could've also made the high poly through use of Sub-D modelling and if that's the case, this is usually the route to go when going high poly with stuff anyways isn't it?

Regardless, I think Zack's high poly looks good!

Nah I think usually people subdivide anyway? Most people I know do at least, unless maybe theres areas which simply dont need it.
Did i misunderstand?

Zack Fowler

G3L - Thanks. I actually did use a 1-iteration meshsmooth on my high poly model, but it was disabled on the wires I put up. A few of the pieces (such as the grip) have a meshsmooth that was applied and collapsed so that I could have a bit more control over the subsequent subdivision, like adding loops to harden the finger slots in the grip. Generally I put in a lot of extra loops here and there to help flat things stay quite flat. I did learn a lot from working on this though, and I think that for my next asset I won't need to model in quite as much.

Acid: Thanks, what in particular do you think could be improved? Is the spec too strong, too weak, too uneven, etc?

Harry: Yep, the whole model had one iteration of meshsmooth applied for renders and baking.

Narodnik

Nice work, man.