Space gun thing - wip
--edit-- I placed the high poly shot in the first post so new comers wouldn't have to dig for it..
Hey guys,
It's not too often I get the chance to kick back and do some good old hard surface modeling. For that matter, it's not too often I get to kick back and make art outside of work, so this venture has been fun :P
Wow... a gun... this is the base mesh, all ready to send to ZBrush for details: seams, grip, screws, wear, etc...
I'll post the ZBrush shots after I get through it... should look neat with all the details introduced. :poly142:
Original concept by a friend of mine.
Just some screengrabs:
Hey guys,
It's not too often I get the chance to kick back and do some good old hard surface modeling. For that matter, it's not too often I get to kick back and make art outside of work, so this venture has been fun :P
Wow... a gun... this is the base mesh, all ready to send to ZBrush for details: seams, grip, screws, wear, etc...
I'll post the ZBrush shots after I get through it... should look neat with all the details introduced. :poly142:
Original concept by a friend of mine.
Just some screengrabs:
Replies
Mind if we get some wires?
actually wait, whooooa you know what this reminds me of?
I love Tribes
lol sorry, anyway this is looking really good man. Your sub-d looks solid, I wish I could wrap my head around sub-d, I'm just not there yet
Looks like a really nice base to sculpt on.. looking forward to seeing where you take it.
This concept was done by a friend of mine. As you can see, lots of fun stuff to add in ZBrush:
With something like this, is it jus the engravings on the gold parts that you'd use Zbrush for?
Look forward to seeing more of this!
My buddy made a great concept - has been fun to create.
For ZBrush, I'm going to be using hand-made alphas for some of the details, carving in all of the additional seams shown in the concept, but not currently on my model, the engravings on the top cover things, radial symmetry for the insets on the round thing (bottlecap looking things on side and on the handle top), grip on the handle, inner business, and general surface tactility.
Haha, maybe I posted a bit early! Seems I still have a lot to do :P
You could always just float the additional details above top of the model, works well for a bake.
love that deadspace color scheme on the gun.
Goat - The top pieces with the sculpty design stuff. Easy enough to remesh, reproject, and sculpt that stuff in.. going to attempt a solution with MatchMaker first.
Quick update - just a few minutes to spare tonight. Details added on the handle (grips, panel, screw things. More to come:
One thing only - perhaps a bit more "shape" on the handle? To me, it look a tad under-dimensioned to the (assumed) weight of the gun. Try bending it a bit on the back side, just to make it look a wee more grip-friendly.
//Akula - who is a newbie and therefore probably wrong. About everyting. :-D
I got side tracked for a while - more focused on in-office work.
Anyhow, I finished off the high poly... going to get cracking on the low poly next.
how do you make it so geometrically perfect? You work on small pieces at a time? what's your workflow?
I also think the end of the barrel should have harder edges, but it might be too late to go over. I mean, if you really cared that much.
That is all. Get on with it
Cheers
Going to bang out the low poly first, and then jump back to that.
Dogzer - this isn't 100% ZBrush. It's a 50/50 split between Max and Z. But yeah, lots and lots of pieces
Going to harden crease on the front as well, and tone down the nicks that make it look soft...
Oniram - awesome seeing your SWTOR inspired work on your page. Very cool
very much.
Oniram - Awesome - KOTOR was definitely a cool game. We're all having a blast on SWTOR... seeing how it's evolved since inception is very exciting. Can't wait to get it out there. Mind if I pass some of your work on to our concept guys? I'm sure they'd love to see it...
--edit-- Do you have the lightsabers up anywhere?
I simplified that top guard thing (the rear most piece with the decor). I think this should work better. Too much geo in the first post.
Took the count down to 5800 as well. Definitely wasn't worth the polys...
A couple high poly fixes, and then on to bakes...
Those are great suggestions! On the cylindrical piece, I have the middle vert pressed in a little ways to fake dimensionality. If I didn't need that middle vert, I could clean it up as you've shown. It only ends up being a difference of 2 tris (4, counting both sides).
For the handle, I'm a little leery of how looong triangles shade. I'm going to give it a try though, and make two bakes. If it works, it's a better solution- significant savings.
Thanks!
Would you mind posting your UV layout? would be nice to see how you packed this one.
Thanks guys!
Some notes on optimization as well, adding some detail back in for consistent geometry usage is the most important thing here, the optimizing less so, but you can probably afford to add geo in all the right places if you optimize some of the other places where it is less important, and end up around the same tricount.
Oh its a bit hard to tell, you may have an excessive amount of mesh chunks here, too many intersecting mesh chunks = poor uv usage, as you'll end up with large sections of your uv layout that are occluded. In addition to that, every separate mesh chunk is one more nasty aliased seam your model has, the more you can merge bits together, the less seams you will have and the more aliased and "highpoly" the mesh will look.
Generally, if its going to animate, or if its going to cause major intersection problems when baking it should be a separate mesh, otherwise merge that stuff!
Oh one last note, before you do your packing you should do some quick test bakes! Doing test bakes is always essential to see if you need extra geometry somewhere or if you got some messy stuff that isn't going to bake well etc. Test bake, test bake, test bake!
I'm also not really thinking of this strictly as a FPS weapon, but your FPS points are certainly valid. My thoughts on the part in the upper back is that it's mostly covered by the metal cover/overhang, so not that noticeable. I think if it stood out more I would go in and match up the geo to the rear-most piece as you suggested.
I made some bakes. Here are a couple shots with just the normals applied over a flat gray diffuse, and general specular. The normals map still needs a bit of cleaning up, but other than that I think it turned out ok.
--edit--
And I need to add some backfaces...
A trick you may want to experiment with, if your mesh density is high enough on your sculpt(a near 1:1 pixel to poly ratio) try hardening all of the normals(making the mesh faceted) on your sculpt and baking again, I've found this can help for sharpening up sculpted detail. It may look terrible though too, but maybe worth a try.
Some quickie bakes - AO, DISP, and a couple different CAV maps. Haven't really adjusted anything yet - just throwing them in real quick.
--edit--
Ugh - normals error on the butt of the gun, near the bottom round thingee. Will fix...
For materials, probably just going off of the original concept. Some bronze metal up on the decorated guards. A rougher metal for most of the other gun... perhaps try and get a couple different tones of this... more of a polished metal for the some of the little details, and perhaps some sort of rubber for that knob thing on the top of the handle?
Just going off the concept: