Sig P226

CapN

Here are a few renders of a Sig P226 I modeled for fun a few months ago. I built this to have a working slide, trigger, hammer, magazine, and bullet. It is around 10k tri's with all the parts. Disclaimer alert - the model has a number of extra edge loops left in and has not been fully optimized, it was not really intended to be a low poly game model just something fun to build so don't burn me too bad for that Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated.

BradMyers82

Great work man! I feel that the lighting in your render is letting you down a little though. Do you have any texture flats you can show?

JoshuaC

Your breech face is way too narrow, and as a result, the extractor serves no purpose,

Racer445

Just gonna comment on the texture here; it has some cool areas, but the materials are very lacking.

First up, what's with the color? Generally very saturated colors don't fit well on guns, and instead you could try a less saturated diffuse (maybe a blue tone instead?) and replacing it with a more saturated spec. Making certain parts different colors on the spec can really help separate different materials, especially when a product is made with pretty much all metal like this. I also noticed your barrel and guide rod (the thing under the barrel) look rather stony, whereas the real barrels are polished, shiny, and wear differently. Try making the diffuse for that much lower contrast.

Play around with the brightness of the diffuse too. As evidenced by most photos, the real 226 is a very dark gun. Dark diffuse + bright specular = shiny, active metal! Which brings me to...

Your specular isn't doing anything, as evidenced by the very flat sides. Metal is 99% about the specular, so it's important that it's doing its job. Try upping the level (metal looks nice when shiny!) and adding some color and unique detail. There is a lot of wear to materials in the real world that you can't see unless a light is shining on it, particularly scrapes that wear away the coating or create a small indent. You can also add some color to your spec as I mentioned above.

The wear does look cool in certain spots, but just remember when doing wear (or anything, really) you should always be striving to mimic real world effects, not just look cool. This will help sell anything you make as a real item and not CG!

Rumkugel

What racer said.

generally speaking the spec is the main thing to work on guns.
remember that guns get oiled and greased alot.
so think of the parts you would to keep it working.
also theres lots of residue on that thing, keep that in mind.

the dirt on the slide looks ok, liking the scratches.
maybe a bit too harsh at some places.

the black parts should be.. well.. black.. or at least darker

CapN

Hey thanks for all the feedback this has been very helpful, after reading all the comments I can definitely see the points that everyone made, the diffuse/spec/lighting could really use some more lovin.

BradMeyers82 - The lighting could use some work, I will tweak the setup a bit for a better 3 point and post up the textures tomorrow evening

JoshuaC - You caught me on that one, the extractor was an after thought as I somehow forgot to add it and had to edit it in after I had my low poly built and unwrapped. Only an issue when the slide is back though

Racer445 - Thanks for the in depth explanations, I will address all these points as I rework the diffuse/spec. As for the color, lol originally I was going to go with the standard black that the 226 is but it did not seem as interesting as this green color. I suppose I was stretching what colors and metal types would be believable on this gun but it was kind of fun I started on a variant that will be more true to the actual gun color, I will post up some screens when I get a little further on it.

Rumkugel - Points taken, I will work on making the details pop a little more.

Av7xrocker97

How did you do the noisy grip patterns? Is it just a plane with some sort of noise modifier laid ontop of the grip or something else?

n88tr

probably normal map

CapN

Yup it was a noise applied in photoshop onto the normals. If I remember right I made it using black/white difference clouds, then added gaussian monochromatic noise at about 50%, then apply the sponge filter and played with the settings to get a small pattern. After that I scaled down the pattern to the right size for my grip texture and painted a little extra with the clone brush. After that I just converted it to a normal map with the xnormal plugin and painted a mask for my grip.

CapN

Here is the progress so far on the setup with new textures/lighting/materials. I was surprised how dark I had to make the diffuse to achieve a "black" look to the gun, go figure :P Let me know if this is getting in the ballpark





And here are the textures I am working with - Diffuse,Spec,Normals.

CapN

Well I am going to call this project complete and take everything I have learned and move on to the next project :P I could probably keep poking at this model for months to dial in every detail but I am satisfied with the outcome. Thanks again for everyone's feedback, without it I would not have gone back and reworked the textures and learned so much about specular maps

n88tr

I don't think the scratches would be white...

Also i think there would be be more damage around the magwell or hammer than at the front end of the slide.