Thompson SMG

tanka

Not exactly original, but I'm working on a Thompson. I'm currently texturing it, but here are some pics so far..

High Poly




Low Poly + Normals




I'm really working hard on these textures. I'll post them when they're worthy.

Thoughts?

Zwebbie

Good work so far. Three things:

I think you should have modeled the fire selector and safety switch in the low poly. If you look at the gun in FPS view (Link), they're very prominent and definitely worth the few extra polygons. I also think the magazine is a bit thinner laterally than you've depicted it as. Lastly, the front of the body on the real thing has very smooth edges - and yes, I know that's a pain to model .

dolemite

good work!

I think the handle looks a bit sharp.



this one might be a replica, so i don't know.

tanka

Yeah, there's alot of things I probably should of done with the model. The silhouette from first person view is probably really lacking because the switches are baked down, the same with that part near the magazine. I also have alot of trouble with edges and smoothing, I always seem to make things too sharp, although on the reference I looked at the smoothness of the handle seemed to be somewhere in between mine and the picture you've posted dolemite.

It's funny, modelling guns is actually quite challenging for me as I have nfi how they work outside of what I've seen in film and games. I had to gather alot of reference and research to understand how guns are constructed.

@Zwebbie, what's the smooth part on the body you're referring to? The part between the magazine and barrel? That was a bitch to model.. lol

tanka

I've pretty much textured the whole gun now. I feel it could be pushed a little further, but already it's alot better than any other texture I've ever done.

Crits?

BradMyers82

Are you trying to keep this under a certain polycount?
The reason I ask is everything in the low poly looks over simplified and boxy. I can't tell if its a matter of smoothing groups, the model itself or both. Also, I'm not sure if the normals are even really helping here.
Basically the sharp corners on everything are making this look really cg (which isn't a good thing). The diffuse looks pretty nice though, but the wood is too saturated and bright.
Keep tweaking stuff, and you might want to consider another normal map bake.
Don't call this done yet man, with a little more work, this could be really good!

HAL

I agree with Brad.

In addition it looks like you really got problems with your smoothing groups.

Can you show us your uv layout?

Maybe you need to break up the uv's

Ghostscape

this is incredibly boxy. You need to look at more than just a side reference when modeling guns. I know there are some bad tutorials out there that walk you through tracing the side view of a gun but that is a terrible way to go about modeling these things. Especially if you're doing it for a first person shooter where you're looking down the barrel.

tanka

Thanks guys, I see theres a common problem here. :P

I'll be honest and say I barely know anything about smoothing groups, so I have a feeling that's where my main problem lies with the boxiness. I'm sure the model takes some of the blame aswell, but I'll work on the smoothing groups first. Is there anywhere in particular that is looking boxy? I think the wood is probably the main offender, and maybe the magazine. There were a few bad choices that I made when working on the low poly.

@Ghostscape, I really went out of my way to make sure that I gathered lots of reference before I started. I also regularly checked my gun in first person view to ensure everything was shaping up correctly. The edges are sharp because of my modelling, not because of the reference.

@HAL

Here's my UV's:

HAL

Ok exactly what I thought.
Your smoothing groups are the problem, you need do split the uv up at the smoothing group's edge to the next one.

Otherwise you get overlapping vectors for your normal map which will then interpolate and result in a black edge while rendering it in marmoset/similar.

Take a look at this:

http://www.svartberg.com/tutorials/article_normalmaps/normalmaps.html