[WIP] M24 Sniper Rifle

Polygoblin

M24 Sniper Rifle
Modeled in Maya, Baked in xNormal, Textured in Photoshop, & Rendered in UDK



Thank you for viewing my work

Oniram

Lookin good so far. just some minor tweaks.

EDIT: well then...

Polygoblin

Thanks Oniram, (but the picture link is broken) :poly136:

Oniram

odd. here is a direct link

https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/Misc/m24PO.jpg?w=c61b1f3b

and if that doesnt work..well ill just attach it anyway.

Polygoblin

Ahhh, great stuff! Thanks. I'll get those things addressed in a jiffy and post an update when I finish the scope. I didn't see many fluted barrels for the M24 out there, but I came across one, so I figured I could use it to add some spice to the dangerous end

Polygoblin

I believe I finished the High res model (w/ the scope). Anything I need to address before the bake?

Again, I plan to do all the remaining textures, engravings, and logos in Photoshop via the nDo tool.

Racer445

Top rail is much too thin.





Otherwise seems OK. Grip and stock topology is a little blobby, and some of the edges are much too thin, but those are fairly easy to fix.

Polygoblin

@Racer445- Cool, thanks for the diagram I'll address those areas and post again when I get my low res and bakes ready. Thanks for the tutorials, btw

Polygoblin

Finally got the time to finish my low poly off:

fluffay

awesome stuff man!

Polygoblin

Fixed the rail, I hope:

...

Polygoblin

Came back to this project after several other ones. There's not much else on my plate at the moment so I'm going to finish it up. Cleaned up the Normals, occlusion, and fixed some things. Ready to rock the texture.

Need to figure out how I'm going to give it originality. Maybe with a crapload of duct tape...

Donavonyoung

Looking really good so far. I cant wait for the textured version. I think that is where you can add a lot of uniqueness to it. Check out the weapons from brink. Amazing textures there

Polygoblin

Thanks Don!

Texturing WIP. I'm just going to start over with the bolt-action, so that's why it looks weird. Still wanted to post an update anyway.

Still wondering how I can add originality. I've decided against duct tape or heavy camo, but I'm open to suggestions.

Racer445

you know, it's entirely possible (and often more impressive) to make a very nice looking weapon without gimmicks...

Polygoblin

@Racer- Well that's just crazy talk Thanks, I'll focus less on adding gimmicks to this one.

Slow going. Some areas are giving me real trouble. The bolt action and magazine do not seem to respond well to the specular detail I give it, no matter what I try. I'm rendering in Marmoset, and it seems to want to make the areas (outlined in red) translucent. The bolt action needs to be a polished silver look, but it looks like it's made of gelatin, with light pouring through it (no matter the light's angle).

I've tried numerous things to fix the problem (re-baking, brightness adjustments, checking the mesh for errors, more contrasty spec, etc) but I haven't been able to get it to respond. For this photograph, I literally copied other metal areas that ARE working right and moved them over the trouble-area to check, yet they still don't look right. They should look EXCATLY like the barrel's metal...

Anybody have any ideas??? I'm pulling my hair out here

percydaman

maybe double check their normals? maybe they're inverted.

Polygoblin

@percydaman - Thanks for the lead. I flipped the channels, but it was a no-go. Luckily...

Fixed it

It was the alpha channel mugging things up!

Polygoblin

Last update before I call it complete...

Green or black??? (I already have an AWSM rifle that is green)

C&C is welcome and much appreciated

Racer445

black for sure, it reacts with the specular better.

my biggest problem lies with the metal though. it looks like you just added some random cloudy grunge to it without thinking about the real materials first. the real M24 is actually quite flat like many guns, and even with the most intense damage, it wouldn't wear like you currently have it. materials like this generally have an outer coating which is very strong, and wears away to create a strong glossiness change but generally nothing more.



to make this kind of material attractive a gloss map is really required to get the nice little gloss "scratches" that makes this work. strong ambient lighting and a blurred cubemap also help. of course, attractive colors and shapes will help the most.

here's a very simple example. it's so important that you think about the individual materials rather than just "does this gun look like the gun?"

Polygoblin

Great stuff, Racer445! Makes so much sense to me now. I'll revisit the materials with all that in mind. I suppose I was winging it without staying close enough to the reference. Thanks a bunch for the help

Polygoblin

I rebuilt all the materials trying to get a more realistic look. Took a while to figure out some things in UDK (the previous renders were in Marmoset). I'm still having some trouble getting the scope's black metal to look right and I still have yet to do the labeling its dials. Getting there though

Sorry for the crap AA. I haven't figured out how to get better renders in UDK yet.

Polygoblin

Quick update w/ better renders. Some touch-ups and some material work today. I'll finish up the scope tmrw

JoshC

Looking great, keep it up.

A couple of quick notes though, from someone who has used this type of rifle in particular (and most other military hardware) is that rifles and their parts usually have a VERY flat or Matt finish on them. Shiny weapons are bad joo joo on the battlefield. Unless the weapon has a heavy coat of gun oil (such as CLP) it has almost no shine or sheen to it (save for the action on some unpainted rifles like a new M24).

Also the rail system still looks like it isn't wide enough still. The rail at it's furthest points should be about one inch wide.

I would pay close attention to the details in Racers references earlier as well as looking up any M24 or Remington 700 custom series rifles in all kind of light settings to get a solid feel for how the weapon should look.

Polygoblin

Thanks Josh! I made the entire gun more of a matte finish. It looks a bit flat now but its all good.

I'm working to get this to look good in UDK. I like Marmo, but I don't want to use it as a crutch anymore, so I'm really trying to learn the ins and outs of UDK. Still looks washed out. Also can't see any difference when I use the lightmass properties to give the spec and normal maps a boost either. This stuff is tricky, but I think I'm starting to get it.

Not sure what else I can do to improve it besides continue to work for a better render, but I'm always open to suggestions

Polygoblin

Made some changes. I think my metal is looking better now. I was having trouble with the relationship between the gloss map, the cube map, and the spec map. I feel they are working in better harmony now.

I'm still getting all kinds of errors, though. First, you may notice big horizontal lines running through my side view renders. No idea how to fix that yet :mad: Second, when I bake the lighting, all the edges that connect symmetrical areas (places where UVs are mirrored) become hard and stand out like a sore thumb. I managed to hide it somewhat in the 1st person render, but it's a pain in the arse and I haven't been able to figure that out yet either.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

TrevorJ

does it have a second UV channel with non overlapping islands for lightmaps? sorry no idea what the line could be. Also not sure if your already doing this, but make sure the LODGroup on the texture is set to something like Weapon, that'll make the max ingame res higher. Great work though!

Polygoblin

Those are both great ideas! Thanks for the advice Luckily, Eat3D released a free tutorial today on UDK lightmaps that should help out.

Xoliul

Man, don't bother with baking lighting on a weapon... just go dynamic.

TrevorJ

Xoliul wrote: »

Man, don't bother with baking lighting on a weapon... just go dynamic.

derp! he's totally right. nm what i said about the lightmaps, wasn't thinking

Polygoblin

Genius! Thanks guys Getting much better lighting results now. The baked lights washed the renders out.

Polygoblin

Pretty much finished. I'll create a better scene for my final shots, but I wanted to post an update here beforehand, in case anyone has any critiques. Lots of great help on this rifle project. Thanks everyone

ES_139

looks good, hard to tell though showing it on a black background. These final renders your talking about should have enough contrast that ppl can see all your hard work!!

Polygoblin

M24 Sniper Rifle
Modeled in Maya, Baked in xNormal, Textured in Photoshop, & Rendered in UDK



Thank you for viewing my work

Cooljay

Looks Amazing here. Nice work on it

ES_139

Good work here. The first thing that strikes me though is a lack of contrast between the scope and frame. This should be a bit more as currently it looks too dull and similar to the frame spec. If you are using a spec and gloss map really push them to get the most out of them. here is what I mean:


also the glass on the scope looks a bit like an old school tac light texture rather than transparent and reflective. Those are the things that jump out at a glance, other than that looks solid.

Polygoblin

Thanks Cooljay!

Thanks ES_139, and I totally agree on both points. It was a bitch to get black metal to shine like that since the metal color would rise as the spec did. Alot of my time went into getting that damn scope metal to look right, and to be honest, I'm still not completely satisfied. Alas, I have to move onto other projects I may end up fixing the glass though when I make playable screenies... thx again

WEe

Sweet work. Keep it up! No crits from me. I think it's perfect as it is.