achmedthesnake:
Honestly, I'm not too worried about a reloading mechanism. I certainly gave it some thought when I was considering using a drum magazine, but decided that I shouldn't bother considering the official weapons don't have any sort of reloading mechanism either.
I threw together a quick 3D blockout of the needlegun. I had to adjust the size of the handle a bit to conform to the other needleguns' handle sizes and positions, but I think it looks fine. I'm not so crazy about that thing going over the syringe cylinder, so I may have to rethink it.
Looking good! I was going to say something about that piece over the barrel too. Check how Valve has their drums and just replicate that in my opinion. That way it'd be able to use current animations which is something Valve is expecting to be able to do according to the rules.
Its looking good, yes, but without having the other syringe guns in front of me, I would honestly confuse this model for the official ones. Thats how similar they are.
you might want to explore those earlier needlegun concepts of yours, specifically the one pointing at the picture of that (ww1?) gun.
I agree, the syringe gun is fairly similar to the originals. A barrel alteration (maybe one of the watercooled ones) and possibly a stock would make a huge difference.
DKK:
That sounds like an amazing idea for an item. However, it seems like it'd be kind of tough to implement. I'd definitely suggest posting on the Steam forums about it, though.
You guys are right that it looks way too similar to the original needleguns. Add to that Svdl's suggestions (which I think were pretty spot-on) and we get this. I dunno about you guys, but I think it looks pretty cool. It still needs some love, obviously, but that's not too important since I'm just blocking things in at the moment.
Honestly, (and this is probably just me) but the shape of the front is bothering me a tiny bit. With the added bit at the back (I'm totally not a gun person, so I'm not gonna guess at its name), it seems a little... blocky? Someone mentioned the Mauser C96, and, after googling it (because, like I said, I don't know guns at all :-P) I think that maybe the thing that's bothering me is the lack of an apprecable barrel? Both the Luger P08 (because I googled that one too ) and Mauser have almost comically skinny barrels, imho, so maybe try to incorporate more of that feel? On the flipside, that might make the gun TOO long... rawr... I dunno... All I know is that I feel like the front is too block-shaped...
I don't like the stock. It seems really out of place. Your design before was fine in my opinion. It was like the current needle guns but shaped more like a Magnum which fits it's purpose of the larger needles. Maybe if you try out some more designs I'd like it but right now it looks like you just stuck a wooden stock on the plastic/metal needle gun design.
I really like the stock, the only problems I can see with it that it does look a bit "unbalanced" without some sort of a longer barrel in front of the gun, and it might cause some clipping in the medic's animations.
And again you guys are right. That stock looks out of place. I think my head was going in the right direction, but I didn't think things through well enough.
However.
I've futzed around with the stock and a few other things. I think this stock is more in line with the rest of the design. I'm not above just getting rid of the stock altogether, though. Neither of the other needleguns have a stock and they look fine without. The only real reason I added a stock was to make the silhouette significantly different from existing weapons.
I've also been thinking about the third item I'm going to make. I like the idea of a new medigun variant like the Kritzkrieg, so I'm focusing on that for now. Other ideas include a new/modified backpack and hat or miscellaneous item of some sort or another.
The design of the syringe gun is coming along nicely, Swizzle, but I don't remember you mentioning what effects it would have or how it would actually differ from the other two exisisting syringe guns, so I thought I'd share an idea that I had whilst looking at your concepts.
I was thinking a slow down effect on any enemy hit by a needle, like Natascha's but with a lasting effect that doesn't require you to keep shooting the target to slow it. The rate of fire would probably have to be slowed down a lot to avoid it being overpowered. The needle could stay stuck in the target like a Huntsman arrow.
An anesthetist's syringe gun would fit in quite well with your bone saw concept (perhaps your theme could be surgery?)
Feel free to take or ignore my idea as you see fit, I won't have a chance to implement it myself anyway. Keep up the good work.
dickless:
While I appreciate the suggestions, keep in mind that adam has already stated that we don't need to worry about, and indeed shouldn't even bother thinking about, the effects the weapons should have because that's entirely up to Valve. I'm trying to make items that could be used for a wide variety of effects in the game and I'm going to leave it up to Valve and how the interpret the visual cues I give them with the items.
I did a few 3D mockups of possible medigun changes. I really, really like the idea of adding a piece onto the end to change the silhouette, so I'm probably going to stick with the idea.
Man, these designs are lookin' pretty kickass. The needlegun looks like it means serious business, and I'm really liking the new silhouettes of the medigun.
Particularly 2, but maybe something more extreme added to the silhouette. My 2 cents!
Karkasmolenklok:
I'd considered doing more to the medigun, but nobody's really going to see the handle very much because the medic is holding it all the time. Making all the changes very obvious at a glance is the main thing I'm going for here I really want to stick with the idea that the silhouette should be instantly identifiable, so playing with the handle (unless I made big changes) probably wouldn't do much to that end.
I'm really, really digging 8. I kinda agree with Corpsey about the handle part though, the player does see enough of it for it to be interesting to at least take a shot at it.
I'd just like to chime in on the needlegun. I really liked the mockups with all the little tubes and such. Some people said they looked to much like air brush guns, but honestly if they're textured right they would probably look nothing like that. Adding a small (not full size like the mockups) canister to the bottom of the design and removing that large block would probably make it look cool. Plus, you can incorporate the canister into your design by saying it's filled with poison or something.
Hey Swizzle. Loving the amount of silhouettes and variations you have going. Awesome job with those so far. I really dig the saw and the needlegun.
One thing though, this medigun, is very similar to the current medic's medigun. Well, you even did a paintover of it to get an idea for how it will look. What else are you planning to do to differentiate it from the current gun? You did a lot more exploration with the designs of the other items.
There's a lot of room to change the silhouette of the gun even more. Make it thicker, sumpier, longer, etc. You could even make it less straight. I would really like to see you come up with something that's a more radical change to the medigun. A simple change that could alter the design would be making the handle a one handed type like in this image, for instance.
Moosey_G:
I'm not completely sold on the idea of altering the handle, but I'll definitely give it some thought at least.
youngoli:
I like some of the airbrush-like designs as well, but I'm trying to keep the same blocky styling that the other needle guns have. I've been thinking about adding something like one of those canisters, though, so we'll see what happens.
Frump:
The main reason I haven't done anything really crazy with the medigun is because I wanted to keep it in the same vein as the Kritzkrieg; an attachment for the original medigun. I'm definitely not ruling out the possibility of building something from scratch, but that's just the sort of place my head is at right now. I still have a lot of time left and I'm making good progress with things, so I may yet go a little nuts with the medigun design.
I've started building the final model for the needlegun. It's currently at 5620 tris, so I still have a ton of wiggle room. It'll probably be about 6000-ish tris by the time everything's finalized, though I'm sure I could shave that down a bit.
Looking great so far Swizzle! I really enjoy the amount of time you spend developing each concept before moving onto the real deal. I am looking forward to see what you come up with if you continue to work on the bone saw weapon.
Looking really nice! Is that subdivided? The low poly smoothed definitely wouldn't give those kinds of shading results I wouldn't think... Especially if those chamfers only have one iteration.
Anyway now that you've modeled out the barrel I understand how it's going to shoot!
Japhir:
I'm still trying to decide between the backpack and the medigun. I know I want to do a new saw kind of like those concepts at the beginning of the thread, but at the moment it's a toss-up between new backpack and new medigun. I saw some of the stuff that Y_M is doing over in his thread and it's got me interested in seeing if I can match that kind of quality. That guy's crazy-good.
Y_M:
You're right! The stock's now shorter and should present less scary clipping issues.
Karkasmolenklok:
I guess I haven't really spelled it out very well, but it's a sort of immediately post-WWII German battle medic sort of thing. I still need to come up with a catchy name.
Buck:
That's a good suggestion. Done!
Zipfinator:
Straight poly modeling, son! I've been paying careful attention to how it's triangulated so I don't get a bunch of smoothing errors, so it's a good thing it actually looks decent even in renders with wacky lighting settings.
Okey doke. I think I'm about ready to call the model done. I shortened the stock, elongated the barrel, finished the needly bits, did all the beveling and such I felt was necessary and now I think I'm on to the UVs and texturing. I'll throw some more concepts for the saw up here later today after I've finished unwrapping this sucker.
It's at 5286 triangles, by the way. Got it down below the tri count in the previous screens. Booyah!
Great work, Skittles. You sure get a lot done in a short time that's for sure.
I'm digging the needlegun, but it occurs to me that the design really isn't all that much different from the existing guns.
Have you considered modifying the loading mechanism so it's no longer the big drum but more along the lines of a magazine style such as the FN P90
or the German (I think) Sten Gun
All that said, I'm glad you went with that design vs some of your earlier silhouettes which looked much to strongly like the unused Nailgun model and the original Quake 1 nailgun.
I thought it might be useful to have a side-by-side comparison with the old needlegun and my model, so I whipped this up really quick.
There are a few reasons I'm really glad I did this.
First, it lets me see how different or similar the silhouettes are to one another. If you look at this image, you can see that they're quite similar in several ways. They're both basically big rectangles with a handle. Considering how important a silhouette is in determining which weapon somebody is holding in the game, I'm kind of worried that this would be a problem. I'm hoping that the larger amount of material differentiation can offset the similarity of the silhouettes.
Second, it helps me figure out how much wear and tear I should paint into the texture. You'll notice that the Valve texture has very little wear and tear visible in this image. Mostly it's just scratches on the red parts and highlighting painted on the edges. This tells me that the amount of wear I've painted into my texture is too much. I should take out some of those details so it fits the aesthetics of the game better.
In addition, they don't put very much detail into the large planes of the gun, even large parts like the front grip area. Those areas which could have painted details like grooves or scratches are intentionally left pretty much blank except for some minor color variation. Where I might've painted a screw or some scratches, I now realize I can just leave it fairly plain and it can still look good.
About the similar profiles though, maybe if you took a few chunks out of the front of your needlegun's frame? Something like a large chamfer or even an extra plate added on to it.
Model &texture work is top-notch, hats-off congratulatory stuff, and i'm going to borrow some pointers from your red & green image >:-}
Having said that, i'm going to agree with the side that says it's too similar to the default syringe gun. Which may not be a bad thing, but currently, the first-person view of the two weapons would be similar making it even more difficult for your average person (who would eventually get is) to distinguish it from the normal syringe gun.
Try putting a wooden shotgun-esque support on the bottom of the gun to give it a more wooden feel you've got going with the handle?
in anycase, it needs to stand out from default syringe gun more. IMO.
Replies
Honestly, I'm not too worried about a reloading mechanism. I certainly gave it some thought when I was considering using a drum magazine, but decided that I shouldn't bother considering the official weapons don't have any sort of reloading mechanism either.
I threw together a quick 3D blockout of the needlegun. I had to adjust the size of the handle a bit to conform to the other needleguns' handle sizes and positions, but I think it looks fine. I'm not so crazy about that thing going over the syringe cylinder, so I may have to rethink it.
you might want to explore those earlier needlegun concepts of yours, specifically the one pointing at the picture of that (ww1?) gun.
That sounds like an amazing idea for an item. However, it seems like it'd be kind of tough to implement. I'd definitely suggest posting on the Steam forums about it, though.
You guys are right that it looks way too similar to the original needleguns. Add to that Svdl's suggestions (which I think were pretty spot-on) and we get this. I dunno about you guys, but I think it looks pretty cool. It still needs some love, obviously, but that's not too important since I'm just blocking things in at the moment.
so far i like.
However.
I've futzed around with the stock and a few other things. I think this stock is more in line with the rest of the design. I'm not above just getting rid of the stock altogether, though. Neither of the other needleguns have a stock and they look fine without. The only real reason I added a stock was to make the silhouette significantly different from existing weapons.
I've also been thinking about the third item I'm going to make. I like the idea of a new medigun variant like the Kritzkrieg, so I'm focusing on that for now. Other ideas include a new/modified backpack and hat or miscellaneous item of some sort or another.
I was thinking a slow down effect on any enemy hit by a needle, like Natascha's but with a lasting effect that doesn't require you to keep shooting the target to slow it. The rate of fire would probably have to be slowed down a lot to avoid it being overpowered. The needle could stay stuck in the target like a Huntsman arrow.
An anesthetist's syringe gun would fit in quite well with your bone saw concept (perhaps your theme could be surgery?)
Feel free to take or ignore my idea as you see fit, I won't have a chance to implement it myself anyway. Keep up the good work.
While I appreciate the suggestions, keep in mind that adam has already stated that we don't need to worry about, and indeed shouldn't even bother thinking about, the effects the weapons should have because that's entirely up to Valve. I'm trying to make items that could be used for a wide variety of effects in the game and I'm going to leave it up to Valve and how the interpret the visual cues I give them with the items.
I did a few 3D mockups of possible medigun changes. I really, really like the idea of adding a piece onto the end to change the silhouette, so I'm probably going to stick with the idea.
Particularly 2, but maybe something more extreme added to the silhouette. My 2 cents!
I'd considered doing more to the medigun, but nobody's really going to see the handle very much because the medic is holding it all the time. Making all the changes very obvious at a glance is the main thing I'm going for here I really want to stick with the idea that the silhouette should be instantly identifiable, so playing with the handle (unless I made big changes) probably wouldn't do much to that end.
Here are a few more variations.
Not to trivialize, it though - these all look great!
One thing though, this medigun, is very similar to the current medic's medigun. Well, you even did a paintover of it to get an idea for how it will look. What else are you planning to do to differentiate it from the current gun? You did a lot more exploration with the designs of the other items.
There's a lot of room to change the silhouette of the gun even more. Make it thicker, sumpier, longer, etc. You could even make it less straight. I would really like to see you come up with something that's a more radical change to the medigun. A simple change that could alter the design would be making the handle a one handed type like in this image, for instance.
I'm not completely sold on the idea of altering the handle, but I'll definitely give it some thought at least.
youngoli:
I like some of the airbrush-like designs as well, but I'm trying to keep the same blocky styling that the other needle guns have. I've been thinking about adding something like one of those canisters, though, so we'll see what happens.
Frump:
The main reason I haven't done anything really crazy with the medigun is because I wanted to keep it in the same vein as the Kritzkrieg; an attachment for the original medigun. I'm definitely not ruling out the possibility of building something from scratch, but that's just the sort of place my head is at right now. I still have a lot of time left and I'm making good progress with things, so I may yet go a little nuts with the medigun design.
I've started building the final model for the needlegun. It's currently at 5620 tris, so I still have a ton of wiggle room. It'll probably be about 6000-ish tris by the time everything's finalized, though I'm sure I could shave that down a bit.
and I wonder what the 3rd weapon will be
Anyway now that you've modeled out the barrel I understand how it's going to shoot!
Thanks!
Japhir:
I'm still trying to decide between the backpack and the medigun. I know I want to do a new saw kind of like those concepts at the beginning of the thread, but at the moment it's a toss-up between new backpack and new medigun. I saw some of the stuff that Y_M is doing over in his thread and it's got me interested in seeing if I can match that kind of quality. That guy's crazy-good.
Y_M:
You're right! The stock's now shorter and should present less scary clipping issues.
Karkasmolenklok:
I guess I haven't really spelled it out very well, but it's a sort of immediately post-WWII German battle medic sort of thing. I still need to come up with a catchy name.
Buck:
That's a good suggestion. Done!
Zipfinator:
Straight poly modeling, son! I've been paying careful attention to how it's triangulated so I don't get a bunch of smoothing errors, so it's a good thing it actually looks decent even in renders with wacky lighting settings.
Okey doke. I think I'm about ready to call the model done. I shortened the stock, elongated the barrel, finished the needly bits, did all the beveling and such I felt was necessary and now I think I'm on to the UVs and texturing. I'll throw some more concepts for the saw up here later today after I've finished unwrapping this sucker.
It's at 5286 triangles, by the way. Got it down below the tri count in the previous screens. Booyah!
I'm digging the needlegun, but it occurs to me that the design really isn't all that much different from the existing guns.
Have you considered modifying the loading mechanism so it's no longer the big drum but more along the lines of a magazine style such as the FN P90
or the German (I think) Sten Gun
All that said, I'm glad you went with that design vs some of your earlier silhouettes which looked much to strongly like the unused Nailgun model and the original Quake 1 nailgun.
I got the UVs done and some base colors laid down. Progress!
Can't wait to see it with the finished texture!
I thought it might be useful to have a side-by-side comparison with the old needlegun and my model, so I whipped this up really quick.
There are a few reasons I'm really glad I did this.
First, it lets me see how different or similar the silhouettes are to one another. If you look at this image, you can see that they're quite similar in several ways. They're both basically big rectangles with a handle. Considering how important a silhouette is in determining which weapon somebody is holding in the game, I'm kind of worried that this would be a problem. I'm hoping that the larger amount of material differentiation can offset the similarity of the silhouettes.
Second, it helps me figure out how much wear and tear I should paint into the texture. You'll notice that the Valve texture has very little wear and tear visible in this image. Mostly it's just scratches on the red parts and highlighting painted on the edges. This tells me that the amount of wear I've painted into my texture is too much. I should take out some of those details so it fits the aesthetics of the game better.
In addition, they don't put very much detail into the large planes of the gun, even large parts like the front grip area. Those areas which could have painted details like grooves or scratches are intentionally left pretty much blank except for some minor color variation. Where I might've painted a screw or some scratches, I now realize I can just leave it fairly plain and it can still look good.
About the similar profiles though, maybe if you took a few chunks out of the front of your needlegun's frame? Something like a large chamfer or even an extra plate added on to it.
Having said that, i'm going to agree with the side that says it's too similar to the default syringe gun. Which may not be a bad thing, but currently, the first-person view of the two weapons would be similar making it even more difficult for your average person (who would eventually get is) to distinguish it from the normal syringe gun.
Try putting a wooden shotgun-esque support on the bottom of the gun to give it a more wooden feel you've got going with the handle?
in anycase, it needs to stand out from default syringe gun more. IMO.