Help with too-square models

n88tr

Like my Battle Rifle spin off, I find the grip to be too square, obviously. A lot of my models are like this. What can I do to make it more fluid looking, model it from a cylinder instead of a box...??



Thanks guys

Ghostscape

Model from more than just a side reference? It looks like you're modeling from a side ortho only, so you're keeping everything on one plane, which makes it look very boxy.

The covenant guns in Halo (that is a halo gun right?) are pretty curvy, try modeling those.

it doesn't matter if you start from a box or a cylinder or what, but get a perspective and/or front view of the gun so you can find which planes of the gun do not run vertically, etc.

here's a 3/4ths view of that gun:
http://xbox360media.ign.com/xbox360/image/article/800/800896/halo-3-20070701114740905.jpg

Notice how the top has that triangular cross-section running along it, etc. You've modeled from a side view only and its skewing your perception of the shape.

brandoom

Show us a wire frame image so we can see the poly flow

n88tr

Wires








I'm using control edges at the moment, getting it ready for smoothing... maybe I jumped the gun a bit there with it being blocky and all

Rang3r1

This might help. I started off with a box, illustrated by the selected faces, then I extruded outwards and did a Select and Uniform scale on them to achieve a rounded shape.

n88tr

Select and Uniform, I'll look those up. Thanks Rang3r1

brandoom

From what I can see, you've got your control edge way too tight with the edge of the model. Try create some distance between the control edge and the actual edge and you should see some results.

n88tr

Yeah I was thinking about that.

Stupid me but the magazine housing and the grip are all one model.... time to redo it

n88tr

I redid a lot of the gun... the upper receiver had tons of smoothing errors, the lower was partly hidden by the foregrip so I deleted the hidden parts. I added a charging handle, new grip [but now it looks like a pipe! Maybe 3rd time's the charm?? I'll redo again hopefully for the last time], and then took the rear of the upper receiver and pulled it down to the barrel so it sort of looks like the Halo3 battle rifle. The top receiver [with the grooves] is more like the Halo 1 rifle so it's a mix really of different Halo rifles and my own personal style.









To do:

[*]Grips for grenade launcher, lower barrel
[*]Stock details, maybe more tribal work, I'm not sure yet
[*]Smooth out tribals a bit so they're not so blocky
[*]various scopes
[*]flashlight or something for the side rail

It's getting there!!

makecg

that detail must of been a pain to make not sure if it will read well at long distance though kinda looks like hairs at long distance maybe you should have just textured those on the gun

n88tr

If I knew how to texture lawl

I modeled it for fun... that's basically why I model these days, to do things to see IF I CAN do them or at least muck around and get it decent enough

leslievdb

oke first of let me say that i know nothing about guns
i never modeled one or tried to design one (maybe i should try that some time)

anyway judging from your models i kind of see whats going wrong
your gundesigns lack a lot of subtle transitions.

also the details looks good but they shouldn`t be in there yet, a detail should compliment the overall shape and usually its best to wait when adding it( in any kind of 3d work) it`s all about the overall structure and believability of the thing you are modeling/designing.

the key to really getting it right is to have a shitload of reference and doing some blocking at first to see if something is working or not

did some quick and nasty painting to try and make it look more interesting, but actually it wasn`t a good move on my part either trying to edit a gun without looking up some reference first.



i do hope it helps you in some way, just keep it up ^^

makecg

Yeah man modeling is fun..

your doing a good job on this model I do suggest looking at some other gun concepts and getting ideas where to fill in the detail.

not looking bad tho

n88tr

I've put the Halo rifle on hold at the moment. My redo sort of screwed up my entire concept!

Anyways I'm working on a concept large-caliber revolver.





My question is: what would be the best way, in Maya, to make a revolver cylinder?

Any suggestions would be most appreciated. Thanks so much guys.

throttlekitty

Ghetto water bottle silencer ftw! Seriously though, who puts one on a revolver?

As for the cylinder, check the 'how u model dem shapes' thread for a rundown, there's a good pic or two in there.

Steve Schulze

I knocked out a quick tutorial. In retrospect just pointing you to the Subdiv tutorial thread "how u model dem shapes" as Throttle Kitty suggested might have been easier.

Anyway, should be pretty straight forward I think.

n88tr

In your pic there I don't see how you got from the first one to the second one?? Is that chamfering? I've been googling that in maya it seems sort of tricky to do I've not figured it out quite yet but I get the impression it would be useful skill.

mLink

I don't know how much this will help, but I recently modeled one:



If this is for a high poly model, don't be afraid to use cylinders with a lot of sides.
Before starting a piece, take a little bit of time to think about how you might model it, and how much geometry you might need.

I started off with a cylinder with 48 sides around, and grabbed every sixth edge, and scaled down in only 2 axis. If you're in maya, search for a script called SelectEveryNEdge, it's awesome. If you're in max 2010, it should already be built in.

Disco Stu

select every 2nd edge up there then bevel or chamfer or waht its called in all those softwares

n88tr

Ok thank you!!!

You guys have given me a lot to think about.

That .mel script, I have no idea how to use it but I'll look into that later. I already found the script, CGTalk, it's near the bottom. Implementation no clue, will figure out later I hope.

EarthQuake

Sweet its the post ur cylinders thread!

n88tr

You guys make it look too easy.

n88tr

mLink I modeled my own but it looks identical to yours haha.

n88tr

I have a small question... I have these strange shadow things that show up when i smooth preview... I had flattened some faces to make the muzzle brake there but could that be why they are weird? I flattened them, extruded and then deleted faces and merged verts to make that brake.

Steve Schulze

How do the wires look? Me thinks you've got some funny geometry going on around that inset