[WIP] Rain Cannon
Earlier this week I started working on a new weapon for Project Nevada: A rail cannon! NOT a rain cannon, stupid typo :poly142: (can a mod fix that if possible?). It's meant to be an over-the-shoulder heavy energy weapon.
I based most of the model off of http://cghub.com/files/Image/080001-081000/80422/885_realsize.jpg. I did take some liberties with the design though as to turn it into an over-the-shoulder weapon and make it compatible with the Tesla Cannon animations from Fallout New Vegas, hence most of the rear section. The magazine on the side is just for show just like on the Gauss Rifle in game. That rectangular scope will be used for aiming and will resemble a monitor of sorts.
My main issue is that I feel like the rear body is lacking something. Maybe I'm missing detail in some other places too. I'm pretty happy with the result so far otherwise. If you have any comments/critiques I'd love to hear them!
I based most of the model off of http://cghub.com/files/Image/080001-081000/80422/885_realsize.jpg. I did take some liberties with the design though as to turn it into an over-the-shoulder weapon and make it compatible with the Tesla Cannon animations from Fallout New Vegas, hence most of the rear section. The magazine on the side is just for show just like on the Gauss Rifle in game. That rectangular scope will be used for aiming and will resemble a monitor of sorts.
My main issue is that I feel like the rear body is lacking something. Maybe I'm missing detail in some other places too. I'm pretty happy with the result so far otherwise. If you have any comments/critiques I'd love to hear them!
Replies
I know you said you modified the design, but I think you should have kept a few elements like that canister up top and the bent handle, they basically broke up the linear look of the gun, and for you if you look at the silhouette as it is now it actually looks pretty boring. As a test make a quick render in max from a side view, and look at your alpha so u just look at the silhouette, does it have an interesting outline? can you tell its a gun? The model itself looks solid though
Any further comments/critique are welcome. Still not sure if I should move on to the low poly yet.
I don't know how to fix the viewport problem though.
Anyway before I start modeling the low poly I wanted some advice. I want to know the best possible way to model the cylinders that come out of the side and the indented areas of the upper rail.
I would just keep the entire side flat but those small cylinders do stick out of the side and contribute to part of the silhouette. I'm concerned about how the projection modifier will view this area if I just made it flat and then surrounded the extended parts with a basic 6 or 8-sided cylinder. Should it be okay?
Here's some nice renders of the high poly finalized too for reference.
And here's the normal map and the UV map so you can see that there are actual parts missing. (UVs aren't actual size)
If you spot any other weird errors let me know. Needless to say I've got a lot to figure out here.
So its possible to get decent results, but it'll never look as good as marmoset. I don't own marmoset myself yet, I'm still on the demo, but will be buying it here soon. The way I see it, if prospective employers will look at the assets on my webpage, then the 50 bucks or whatever marmoset cost, is well worth the investment.
The stuff on my website, I used UDK, because I always assumed that showing how it looks in a real game ready engine, would be preferable to an employer, but I think I'm going to redo them for marmoset.
Sorry to hijack the thread.
Also don't appoligize for hijacking the thread. You're hijacking it with useful information
A few other questions too. What should I do regarding smoothing groups? Should I only smooth areas that are at 90 degree edges or make the object one smoothing group. What about the cage for xNormal? Should I use their method of just making an actual cage mesh (not using the projection modifier) and exporting that?
I'm also making some adjustments to the UV map to better utilize the space after seeing some areas a bit too low res for my tastes.
Nice model by the way! Can't wait to see how the normal map looks applied. :P
This is the biggest issue so far with the bake and I don't think it's a photoshop fix either:
What's going on there?
EDIT: Nevermind I fixed it. A lot has to do with how the wires are set up I've noticed.
Comments/critiques on the texture so far? I haven't completed the specular yet but it's partially done.
Hey, i'm hijacking this thread further just to let you know - marmoset is a game engine, it's just part of a game engine used for presentation purposes only. It came from the Darkest of Days game that some of the well known members here worked on, it was sort of an offshoot that they realized was a useful tool to others
As for you Zealot, sweet gun man, for hard edged objects I have a lot of troubles from xNormal, it works great for soft/organic forms, but I just use maya for my hard edged bakes, if it's not picking up certain areas make sure your cage envelopes those areas, then if it's still not then I am pretty clueless.
For comments on your tex, your color scheme to me seems a little torn - where you have the glowing blue it looks very nice, but then it clashes hard with the intense reds. Personally I would try to keep it more themed with a very limited color palette, perhaps make the glow red or make the trigger and screen blue. Either way if you keep the red I think it could be toned down a bit especially on the screen - seems very harsh to me.
Yeah, I'm aware of what marmoset is and how it came about. The point I was making is that UDK, while I like it alot, it doesn't have some of the neato technology that marmoset has for showing off models. What I love about marmoset is how they tightly focused its capabilities and build some great stuff into it to achieve that. Like the hdr lighting/shadowing/reflections.
@Duckworth: I'll look into giving it more of a blue color scheme and going with some cool colors. Maybe some yellow accents to offset it a bit like on the caution panel but you're right about the red being too intense in some areas. After all even the beam it fires and the resulting explosion is blue colored. The red trigger though is from the concept art and kind of implies "Don't touch this button unless you're absolutely sure you want to unleash hell"
@percy: As far as modeling anything new goes I'm past that point already unfortunately. However I was thinking that the bottom did need something and some kind of padding would work with the existing geometry I think. I'd just have to rebake the normals in that area and overlay the new ones. I've got to have this done by the end of this week plus other stuff for Project Nevada. I don't want to do anything that would add a lot more production time.
What is it doing to my model there? Playing around I turned on the world-space normal view and those circled areas were completely black. What does that mean exactly and why is it messing with those faces in particular? I tried exporting it both in OBJ and FBX, and the OBJ looked even worse. Also how do I get it to export to a non 32-bit format so that when I convert it, it doesn't look all pixelated and gross?
It looks kind of flat right now.
You should also consider adding a normal map that adds nicks, scratches, small details that would be expected on certain parts of the weapon, like corner pieces.