Well with contracts expiring and a very long gap between employment opportunities for future projects its time to start adding more to the folio and finding a new and exciting job opportunity.
Wanted to do something fun and after watching the SC2 cinematic like a million times, playing the beta and never having done a gun before I deiced to the C-14 Impaler Gauss Rife (or that's the name according to the SC Wiki). I based it off cinematic, a few pics I found of the small Marine statue and a pic of a papercraft version someone made so if you see some inaccuracy's let me know as I didnt have a ton of good refs to go off of.
As this is the first gun I am doing would love to hear from people who have done guns before on things I might want to change/add to make it cooler/a better gun. I am fine with deviating from the original design a little if it helps it make it a better gun in the end.
Updates might be a little on the slow side as we are coming off a crunch headed into a mini crunch followed by more crunch but I will try to update as much as possible.
Thanks everyone
FINAL:
Replies
So yeah I'd suggest at least rounding out the boxy shapes that are right in your face from the FPS view. Anything to break that up is good, though if you want to stay true to the concept it looks very well executed.
Now when you guys say "round out the shapes" do you litterly mean make them more rounded/curved? Or making those large blocky shappes more of a flat area with having smaller cut in details like the front?
@ZakD - the odd shading thing is due to the gun having a small tapper inward where those odd shadings are. I guess I should either change it or make it very pronounced.
@haiddasalami - The foregrip is a bit smaller then one should be on a gun this size because according to the cinematic the Marines dont hold that they actually just rest the back of there hand up against it while holding the horizontal part. Strange I know but thats how it is I guess. Also mine has that angle on it, just not evident in the pics.
Finally is there a good way to put things in correct FPS views? I just kinda winged it.
Again thanks for all the feedback Hopefully I can try out some redesigns tomorrow.
Someone previously finished one of these a while ago. I tried finding it on game artisan but apparently the guy who did it took it down...woulda' been good reference or at least a base for quality to reach if you were going with a game res version.
I think the part that seems kinda bland is the barrel top. If anything add some type of aiming device on the top, even if its not on the real thing.
Just anything to break up those boxy shapes though round plastic stuff often helps push the sci fi look I find.
*gun nerding start* The way they hold it is actually how a lot of shooters started holding their rifles. When you use a vertical foregrip you're holding it with a closed fist which results in worse blood flow thus fatiguing the shooter. The "thumb break grip" shown here allows for a more open hand and a more sturdy grip. *gun nerding out over*
Just add a camera with the target pointed straight ahead, then set the FOV to the desired level (54 or 75 is usually decent) and move into the FPS position. It's not proper but it's fast and fairly true to a real FPS view.
So I want to get back into some HP modeling and Max and decided to use this old gun I started forever ago as a good jumping off point. Started noodling around with this guy trying to get a more interesting FPS view as the original wasn't designed for that. Tried to bring in some elements seen on the actual Marine to try and tie it in better with him while giving some much needed FPS detail. Open to suggestions if anyone has any stellar ones as concepting weapons is not my thing ha.
Figure if I post in here again it will hopefully force me to take things thing all the way to making a LP and Texture.
Racer445
Two great weapon tutorials, both go from Highpoly/Lowpoly/Texture.
I am really digging the look in FPS view, would be great to see this in a game.
12k tris
No but i love this man! I really hope you take this as far as you plan to.
You should do turntable render
As for the unneeded tris in some places that was due to the fact that since I build things at work all day using tiling textures I dont rely on normal maps to fix smoothing issues. I have to add in extra cuts to fix smoothing and just forgot when doing this guy so I will go back in and remove some of them that are not needed. Since I dont do 1 to 1 mapped things at work, I guess I got stuck in the "ok fix these smoothing issues with geo!" mindset. So thanks for catching that
And for some of the stuff relying on just normals near the readout part, I had those actually modeled out in my LP and cant for the life of me remember why I removed them. I guess thats what happens when you take a break for the holidays in the middle of building your LP ha
You should give ddo a shot, just for shits and giggles ya know, you can have a lot of fun with it, specially with mechanical models such as these.
WIP of the texture. Right now I have my overall grunge on everything set, wanted to go with getting the big overall detail/grunge in there first and then move onto adding scratches/unique specific grunge. Then more details/decals to wrap it up.
In Marmoset atm.
Bit hard to critique the texturing atm, but give it a bit more work with separating the materials, like lower the gloss on the plastic a bit, cause it looks a bit too uniform.
I wish you spent some more polygons to bevel some of the edges, that are close to the viewer in fps view.
Great job
Just wondering, are you using 3dsmax with 3 point shader for those shots?
@riklopes - I made the gun in Max and using Marmoset Toolbag for the shots.
Just a little update, working on the texture.
btw, what is your texturing pipeline? do you use mudbox at all? or just photoshop.
Few things still left to edit on the metal, then a decal pass and then get it lit well. In Toolbag 2, need to find a way to get the lights/highlights to pop more, pretty flat. Some strong added lights should help I think, just the default sky settings atm.
The mesh looks good anyway, but the texture is a bit boring ^^.
I will agree things are a bit boring in that last image, I was just using my diffuse as my spec and the lighting is terrible so things come across very boring. Here is an update. Just started to add some decals that will give bits more color here and there.