Weapon: Styer AUG. Need HP help!
polycounter lvl 9
Polycount posting virginity broken!
Hey everyone, this is my first post.
I'm working on my second realistic weapon and it seems that I cant get a few things right..and it's bugging the hell out of me.
I have some general knowledge of high poly modeling with edge control but there are some things I cant get right.
I've been searching the web for good edge control techniques and found tuts from racer445 (racer445.com) which helped me the most and just things on youtube or general google stuffs.
Here's some renders of the aug: some parts are blocked out and the floaters are very floaty lookin'.
FYI: the gun is still very WIP, I don't have much knowledge of guns and I would love you guys to critique this to death to fix me up to be a better modeler.
Here's some shots to show progress on the whole thing so you guys dont ask for it later (I browse the forums alot and there are always comments saying "post wires, reference, textures, etc.." so lets save some time.)
Reference w/ wires overlapped:
http://www.pixagogo.com/3709284139
Wires screen grab: (as you can see, the topology from the LP looks weird on the butt of the gun)
Question 1:
below there is some weird pinching and ive tried so many ways to fix the edge control and cant get rid of those pinches.
So I was wondering if it's smarter to just leave it there and paint it out in photoshop?
And are those edges on the right red circles ok to leave in, or is that just bad modeling?
Question 2:
below is weird topology that I made to get this square hump to work.
Is it wrong to have edge control like that? is there another way to do it?
Or my biggest question...is it ok as long as the results in the HP look good?
Question 3:
How the hell do i keep it a smooth cylinder without deleting the supporting edges? Im trying to keep the ledges square while keeping the rest smooth..I just don't get it sometimes.
the third pic is the results of deleting the support edge. FFFFFFFF
Question 4:
The nozzle was the biggest bitch of em' all for me..especially that damn cube with cylindrical faces. but I did it somehow haha!
For this picture, I'm just asking for correct ways to keep good edge control flow on the nozzle..every edge I try to connect to hopefully make it work just fails so hard.
I'm really looking forward to what you guy's have to say and improving my model to meet your standards.
Thanks for taking the time to read all of this and for helping me out!!
Hey everyone, this is my first post.
I'm working on my second realistic weapon and it seems that I cant get a few things right..and it's bugging the hell out of me.
I have some general knowledge of high poly modeling with edge control but there are some things I cant get right.
I've been searching the web for good edge control techniques and found tuts from racer445 (racer445.com) which helped me the most and just things on youtube or general google stuffs.
Here's some renders of the aug: some parts are blocked out and the floaters are very floaty lookin'.
FYI: the gun is still very WIP, I don't have much knowledge of guns and I would love you guys to critique this to death to fix me up to be a better modeler.
Here's some shots to show progress on the whole thing so you guys dont ask for it later (I browse the forums alot and there are always comments saying "post wires, reference, textures, etc.." so lets save some time.)
Reference w/ wires overlapped:
http://www.pixagogo.com/3709284139
Wires screen grab: (as you can see, the topology from the LP looks weird on the butt of the gun)
Question 1:
below there is some weird pinching and ive tried so many ways to fix the edge control and cant get rid of those pinches.
So I was wondering if it's smarter to just leave it there and paint it out in photoshop?
And are those edges on the right red circles ok to leave in, or is that just bad modeling?
Question 2:
below is weird topology that I made to get this square hump to work.
Is it wrong to have edge control like that? is there another way to do it?
Or my biggest question...is it ok as long as the results in the HP look good?
Question 3:
How the hell do i keep it a smooth cylinder without deleting the supporting edges? Im trying to keep the ledges square while keeping the rest smooth..I just don't get it sometimes.
the third pic is the results of deleting the support edge. FFFFFFFF
Question 4:
The nozzle was the biggest bitch of em' all for me..especially that damn cube with cylindrical faces. but I did it somehow haha!
For this picture, I'm just asking for correct ways to keep good edge control flow on the nozzle..every edge I try to connect to hopefully make it work just fails so hard.
I'm really looking forward to what you guy's have to say and improving my model to meet your standards.
Thanks for taking the time to read all of this and for helping me out!!
Replies
Im not sure about the rules of highpoly edgeloop modeling, since i think i tend to break them alot.
on Q4:
For the nozzle, you could try adding an extra edge on the inside/sides of the 4 nozzle tips, and not let it follow throughout the cylinder, this way you can get the sharpend edge on them, without sacrificing the smootheness of the cylinder shape.
Same goes for Q3, play around with adding edgeloops that dont follow the entire loop , this will give you slightly more control of where your smoothe and hard edges will be, on the backside, it can create artifacts and wierd seams/shapes in cornes of these places.
Its hard to explain without showing on the model, i can post some pictures later
I think I got what you said, and it totally worked!
Got the results I wanted for the nozzle now.
edoran89:
some parts I do model seperatly, but i've learned that it's better to keep most of it together (like the bumps on the handle of the gun).
For some of the large pieces, I like to have it as one element.
There are ways to have complicated geometry as one piece, it's the correct edge flow that make it look nice.
I wish the the outer parts were still cylindrical instead of flat but thats ok I guess now.
You have a lot of pinching going on that looks bad and will show up if you do a low poly of this. You might want to edit your topo to reduce pinching and break your model apart into more pieces to help with this.
For example on the real gun there is a visible seam between the tan portions and the black metal, but your model seems to have them as the same piece. It should be broken apart where the actual gun is in segments.
the mag release is separate geometry.
I_R_Hopo:
That could work I guess, but im going high to low poly so the turbo smoothed cylinder is actually 12 sides. If it were 32 sides, wouldnt that mean that my low poly one would have to be like in the 20's still just to keep the shape or silhouette?
SouthpawSid:
Hola's Brad. I thought it doesnt really matter if the high poly has n-gons? seems to be working with my model at least, maybe im wrong though.
madmuffin:
I'm trying to keep whatever elements as one object compared to the real AUG.
The part you talk about, I'm going to break up with the diffuse texture.
I'm not sure I follow. This is a high poly so it's not like you need to worry about poly limits, and the real AUG it is many separate pieces, so why don't you want break it up like the real thing?
While you can try to paint in details like this in the difuse after, it won't look nearly as good as if it was modeled in originally to be accurate. I can't see any reason not to break it up, is there a reason you want it keep it one element instead of following how it's really built?
I am keeping the parts separate from where they actually are on the real gun.
only part is were the metal separates from the handle, but ya..i could separate it with a seam like you said.
some parts like the scope that are one piece I did do separately..although i did try to keep the scope as one piece at first but that just got too complicated so i did it in pieces.
I'm almost done with the model now, just some of the small details need to be added. I'll post some new renders soon.
You -could- but does that mean you're going to? :poly124: Trust me, you won't get very far in high poly trying to keep everything one solid mesh, you're going to have to break it up a lot the more complex models you get. The Aug's body relatively simple compared to other guns though so it's not so bad here.
On a technical side, I'm seeing a lot of strange pulling at your cylinders. You should cut quads into the faces like so to help relieve the tension:
Yes, im going to
I seperated alot of the things i had as 1 element..like around the metal part where the scope is attached, made things alot easier and cleaner!
I made the seam that separates the metal from the plastic and that look sweet now.
and thanks for the tip, quaded up the cylinders.
And the mag is just being worked on.
Other then that you might not have just gotten to it yet but there are some details missing on the barrel and the scope, not sure what they are but they're not there on your model. Looks like clamps or something.
It won't make a difference. With turbosmooth on, your high-poly will look the same with lower or higher geometry. With higher geometry you just have more polys to work with, so the pinching is avoided. You can still do twelve sides on the low if you want. The result will be the same on that.
Would still love some critiques before I move onto the LP, everyone at school just says it looks good and has nothing wrong to say about it.
Now is the time for those gun nuts to tear this apart, cause i dont have much weapon knowledge!
you modeled it with 4 prongs, but it has 3, which has the cuts alligned like an inverted T.
the military flashhider looks like this:
as you can see the, the so called check nut is hexagonal, yours only has 4 sides.
other than that, i dont see any mistakes.
the light is very unusual. check austrian commando´s steyers.
I learned alot from this weapon!
I watched a couple of racer445's tutorials from his site which helped enormously...so thank you racer445!
please comment and critique
also i think the gun could be a little bit more saturated/scratch details etc. play around with ur spec map!
As stated, I hope the tri-count isn't too high...especially with the coil there. In order for it to be that smoothly rounded, it must be quite dense atm...
I think that for now, the only other critique I have to offer, is for that piece of tape on the recoil handle (if that's even what it's called)...it seems a bit TOO shiny...even though I know it's supposed to replicate the light bouncing off of duck tape or something, it looks a bit too intense. That may just be marmoset overdoing it's job though. Your call!
the body should have more saturation and the gunmetal could be a bit darker.
spec isnt quite cool either, did it should fall into baby oil?
srsly. tone down the spec on the body alot. in rl, the body is a polymere composite, and has very little spec due obvious reasons...
as for the tape.. use some MILITARY colored tape... eg british sniper tape, which basically the same material used by medical patches only that it is a light/pale green.
Heres the wires for the LP:
It's running at 4546 polys/8989 tris.
The coiled wire took up 1326 polys from that amount.. but it needed it, i tried with a 3,4, and 5 sided cylinder and it just didnt look right on any of them. so i went with 6
I dont think that matters anyways, some guns in unreal are almost 10k polys as stated here: http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=4346&page=1
Early on in the process we were fairly conservative with the polygon count of the first person models at about 3500 polygons, we soon figured that we could push a lot more so later weapons were designed with more moving parts and complex shapes leading to polygon counts of 10,000,
I'll re-work the spec more to get it looking right(it does look like its been dipped in baby oil), and ill try going with that military style tape that Rumkugel is talking about instead of the duct tape.
Im the weapons/prop/environment artist
I messed around with a object space normal for awhile and learned that UDK just flat out doesnt support it..tangent space does the job though!
Frell: Ya I agree on the topology for the HP, i asked questions on if that was ok but no one answered...i figured i could just paint out those mistakes on the normal in photoshop (which i did) and it worked out fine!
btw I know not to have bad topology in the HP now, i figured out alot of my own questions through trial and error. My next weapon will be flawless!