[WIP] P90 For Project Nevada

Zealotlee

Hey guys, first time poster here. I've made some weapon mods for Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas, and recently I was invited to join the team for a big mod

Project Nevada:
http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=40040
ZL Armaments (contains all the weapons I've made for Fallout):
http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=39883

Anyhow, I'm currently working on a P90 for this mod. In many of my weapon mods previously I would just create the normal map from using the nVidia plugin, but I know I'd never get a job as a modeler if I just did that. So I read up a bit on high poly modeling, watched a few videos, and now here I sit with a mostly completed high poly model!



Right now I'm mainly looking for some critique and constructive criticism. It's kinda hard to see with the way I rendered it but there are little rivets on the lower base of the gun. I mainly came here because some of the people in the Fallout modding community see me as some kind of modding god (their words not mine lol), and I figured this would be a better place for some constructive criticism. If you have any criticism on my other work (the ZL Armaments stuff) then feel free to chime in on that too, as it may help the development of this and future projects.

EarthQuake

Well first off, the model you have as it is looks more like a slightly higher resolution version of a lowpoly model, not really a "high poly" model persay.

You're going to want to look into sub-d modeling, what most people use for mechanical/hard surface highpoly models.

This is a very good thread to start reading through: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=56014

Then, you're going to need to get a good understanding of how normal map projection works. I would start here: http://wiki.polycount.com/NormalMap?action=show&redirect=Normal+Map

This thread is a good read in that most of the common normal-baking mistakes were made on the initial model, and then later corrected; http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=80532

Ben Garnell(Kimono) has a couple really good examples of slick high res weapons, and good bakes up at: http://www.b-cog.net/

A couple quick points:

Hard edges; many of your edges right now are simply too hard, and will not pick up well in the bake.

Holes; whenever you make holes in your highpoly mesh, you'll need to also have holes in your lowpoly, so if do not plan on modeling these into the low poly geometry, you should create capped "fake" holes in the highpoly mesh or else you will get errors in your bake. The barrel is a good example of this.

Floaters/small details/screws/bolts/etc; right now those little rivets you have do not read at all, I would never have noticed them if you had not pointed them out. It is very important that all of your details read well from a normal distance, as this is how the raytracer is going to see them when baking. Do not zoom way in and do super hard edges and super fine detail, as it simply will not read well/you will not have the texture resolution to represent it.

This is an image I made to show how tweaking the highpoly shape of floater details can have a huge impact on the bake, even just by softening the shapes a bit; http://dl.dropbox.com/u/499159/normaltweak02.jpg


Lastly, avoid complex "radiosity" renders for wip shots, its simply counter productive, dont spend time doing fancy renders, instead, do more modeling! Especially in this case as the lighting is counter intuative to critique, a simple screengrab with basic lighting would be a much better choice.

PS: Dont do the "these other guys think i'm awesome!" thing, it just comes off as douchy, its like saying "My mom said I make models real good", let your work speak for itself.

Zealotlee

Thanks for the crique and help, I'll take a look at all that stuff when I get a chance. I didn't mean to come across as douchy, I'm just repeating what some of these people have said about me lol. Their words, not mine.

Looks like I've still got a lot of work to do. About how long on average does it take someone to do a high poly model anyhow?

EarthQuake

At the stage you're at now, I wouldn't worry too much about speed. I can create a high res model for a FPV weapon in 2-4(depending on complexity, 2 for a very simple pistol, 4 for a complex assualt rifle/machine gun/etc) days, but i do primarily hard surface weapon/prop/etc modeling and i've been doing highres weapons for normal map bakes for 5 years. If you can do high+low+uvs+bakes+textures in two weeks(10-14 8 hour days) that would be a decent time considering you're just starting the high/bake workflow.

Zealotlee

I've taken into account some of the things you said regarding the sharpness on floating objects and other parts. I don't think it's done yet but I would much appreciate some advice as to where problem areas may be specifically. The floaters look much better now thanks to your help though . Here's some screengrabs from the perspective window, no fancy renders this time.





I just wanted to show the detail on the magazine since it wasn't visible before.

HAL

The same what earthquake said about the gun itself applies to the mag.

You got too sharp edges there, which wont render to your normal map and you wont get that nice round edge look everybody wants from a normal map bake

The same applies for the optic system and some other parts.

Also you might want to check how those floaters are aligned to the grip's surface.

I dont know how that works for max exactly, maybe someone can help me out here, but the principle should be the same:

Select the outer ring of the floater, assign a vertex group and let a modifer bend that vertex group along the surface of the mesh it should be aligned to.

EarthQuake

Can you post your references in this thread? Just to make crits easier.

Zealotlee

HAL are you the same HAL9000 on the Bethsoft forums? Your work to the fallout community is priceless

Also I'm not sure exactly what vertex groups are or how they work. As of now I have them floating a bit above the surface. From a tutorial I watched on CGTuts one guy said that as long as they fit into the projection cage on the low poly (not the model, the other extended part the name escapes me) that it should be fine.

Anywho, I got a bunch of reference photos but I'll link some of the main ones I used.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/FN-P90.JPG (too big to post here)

http://rpmedia.ask.com/ts?u=/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e5/P90_Cyprus.jpg/185px-P90_Cyprus.jpg (also too big)

EarthQuake

Yeah the thing that jumps out instantly here is still the rivets/screws. Even from that small side view there you can clearly see the detail and shape of the screws, but in your model i can still barely tell they are there, scale those guys up!

I'll try to find some time to get a bit more detailed crit later.

Zealotlee

Well I had some time to make some adjustments. I made those holes into "fake" holes for benefit of the low poly model. I also increased the size of the rivets and added some more floaters to give it some detail. The only details I'm concerned about are those small border lines which I'm afraid might end up being too small and won't bake properly. They are a very small detail though and I can live without them if I have to.





Are there still any areas that need adjustment/are too sharp? I've also started doing the low poly so hopefully I'll have it baked soon enough.

WillMac

coming along now...

Maybe don't bake... You got the proportions off, i think they could be fixed quick if you got your loops nice... just looking at perspective view.

- Take the front face, above the barrel. See how it angles out and you have it rectangular? It makes the gun seem different and i am sure that is important as that whole shape "flows" through that part of the gun.

- It should be a little bit wider at places, it "feels" thin (why not set up a camera in FPV so that you can "feel" how it looks).

Hope it helps. :poly121:

Zealotlee

I widened it up a bit and gave that front part some more shape per your suggestion. At this point I'm pretty confident that the high poly is complete unless anyone else feels the need to chime in and suggest any further critiques or changes.

Alberto Rdrgz

your loosing the shape of the handle, yours is fatter. and you changed the design completely of it.

Drew++

Looks like you've got some pinching on the main body. Mind to show some wires? I thought about something like this:

Zealotlee

Well I've completed the low poly model today. And after a bit of a headache I successfully baked the normal maps for the magazine! The maps themselves need a bit of adjustment in photoshop to fix a few things but it's working good so far. The actual low poly model sits around 2500 polys. I'd appreciate it if you saw any problem areas in the mesh before I start unwrapping this.

HAL

hmm can you post pics of that magazine without the gun itself? That makes it easier to spot baking errors if there are any.

Also I would remove that middle loop the gun has, even if you want to mirror it you would get mirrored stuff in first person view which would look quite bad I guess... maybe just mirror the sites and map the middle area uniquely?

Zealotlee

Well I managed to bake the whole gun!





However as you can see it's not without faults. This is after me fixing a lot of issues with the cage and fixing the map itself in photoshop. The main problem I have so far which I can't seem to diagnose is the weird shading on the upper part (it's more prominent in the first picture). The cage seems to be encasing everything in that area and the normal map itself is flat there, yet the shading is all off and odd. Any possible explanation?

WillMac

More control edges on low poly needed if you not split the UVs?

SkyGround

Something bad with projection cage I gues... cuz there are enough polys.
Low res version, about 500 tris


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Zealotlee

Well here's the final result in game. Unfortunately the Gamebryo engine (Bethesda's version specifically) isn't very nice when it comes to custom animations and such, so the gun is one-handed. In game terms though it's small enough to get away with it and looks pretty cool. I'm calling this done now since I need to move on with other pieces for Project Nevada. I'd still appreciate any crits you have to offer though as my texturing skills aren't the best. I wanted it to look dirty and worn as much as I could without overdoing it, and I hope I managed to pull that off well .

elitewolverine

looking good, although the fire select looks abit funny to me...

i own a ps90 and i guess the p90 doesnt have a circle fire select like the ps90 does...

also dont forget that there is numbers to show how much ammo you have on the magazine...

as well on the underside of the magazine, it has a circle and a image of the 5.7x28mm bullet...

unessecary details, but hell if your gonna go highpoly might as well right...

one more thing, your texture shows wear and tear, which is good, but....only the barrel tip and the upper mount are actually any form of metal the rest is plastic polymer, your texture makes the gun look like the entire thing is metal...