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Heavily Modified P90 "Savage Hunter"

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bigsavage.jpg The p90 savage hunter is actually an airsoft gun that has been fitted with extra rails and an m4 mag. It looks interesting and challenging, and I have not modeled many guns so I figured I would give this a go.

Second subD model. First time to create a LP, bake, unwrap, or texture.

Here is a WIP so far of the handle. I tried to keep most of it one mesh, since thats the way it is in real life, but it made the wires crazy pretty quickly, perhaps that wasnt the best approach. On the handle the text on my model is actually extruded outward, but it actually needs to be extruded inward. I dont know how to cut that into the model without making the topology completely nuts. I guess it needs to be done as a texture?

WIP
p90_handle-1.jpg

Wires
wires-2.png
Wires are very hectic, id like to condense it somehow but at the moment every loop I checked over is needed, for holding a shape, or adding hardness to an edge. A friend was telling me to leave some ngons on flat surfaces or collapse 3 edges into 1, not quite sure how to do that.

Reference
handle_board.jpg

Showing the handles relationship to the overall gun
bigrefhandle.png

Replies

  • EarthQuake
    No need to worry about your wires. There wont be a "wire cleanliness pop quiz". =) Besides, your wires look fine, there is never a need to "optimize" your high unless its getting in the way of modeling, and it looks like that section of the gun is essentially done, so why worry about it?

    To do the text you would do it "floating" you model a shape with an outline and then an indent, and just place that near the mesh.
  • Perfectblue
    EarthQuake wrote: »
    No need to worry about your wires. There wont be a "wire cleanliness pop quiz". =) Besides, your wires look fine, there is never a need to "optimize" your high unless its getting in the way of modeling, and it looks like that section of the gun is essentially done, so why worry about it?

    To do the text you would do it "floating" you model a shape with an outline and then an indent, and just place that near the mesh.

    Thanks for stopping by EQ. I like that mentality, because once the HP is baked on the LP what difference does it make what the wires on the HP looked like as long as it smoothed correctly? My only concern with disregarding the wires on the HP completely is for portfolio needs though. Wont companies want to see the wires on your HP?

    Also regarding your text suggestion, is this what you mean? Here I have a blue box representing the gun, and a plan resting in front of it with some text extruded into it, or having the plane float over the box. Is this what you were talking about?

    example-7.png
  • maxivz
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    maxivz interpolator
    Awsome start man.
    And about the topology you shouldnt worry to much about it in your high poly, the only rule is making it look good and saving the topology part for the low poly where it actually plays an important role
  • tigg
    Yup, floating geometry is just like that. Because when you bake it, it's done from straight on, the edges dont show up and it looks like one surface in the normal map.

    http://img691.imageshack.us/img691/8463/pcak.jpg

    That shows basically how it works.
  • Perfectblue
    @Maxivz, thanks for the encouragement and tips
    @Tigg, thanks for the tips and image!

    Update, silencer WIP silencerWIP2.png

    Its a mixture of two silencer types from different P90 savage hunters I found. Namely the cap end from the left reference, and the holes from the right reference.
    silencerref.png
  • Raider
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    Raider polycounter lvl 9
    that gun looks fkn crazy with all the mods on it
  • chrisradsby
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    chrisradsby polycounter lvl 15
    would have been so much fun if this was a longbow or something. xD Ehm oh well.

    Good work so far, looking forward to more :)
  • Sean VanGorder
    That's such a sick weapon. Nice to see something somewhat different for a change.
  • Perfectblue
    @chrisradsby, thanks for the encouragement. Hopefully I will have this done by the end of the week.

    @SeanEG, yah it definitely looks unique, in a good way. It looks like something that could be in Crysis to me.


    NITRO Rail module sytem WIP
    savagehunterwip5.jpg

    reference
    NITRO-P90-RAIL_1_mark.jpg

    It seems there are a couple different versions of this rail system, the one I used for my reference mainly is longer horizontally, but I kept it shorter more like the one on some of the original pictures I posted. I may lengthen it, but I am uncertain yet. Also the capsule shaped cutouts on the bottom of the cylinder for the module are way too long, I need to fix that for sure.

    wires
    nitrowires.png
  • Mr. Brightside
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    Mr. Brightside polycounter lvl 8
    By the looks of the ref pic the holes on the bottom are slanted...
  • Perfectblue
    By the looks of the ref pic the holes on the bottom are slanted...

    Yah Initially they were slanted during blockout, I dont know what happened to it. I will have to fix it, thanks. Frustrating.
  • Mr. Brightside
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    Mr. Brightside polycounter lvl 8
    Looks good anyways :)
  • Perfectblue
    Looks good anyways :)

    Thanks.

    Yah 2 major problems with it, I will have to cap those holes back up and delete some topology and remake the holes. I will revisit that later, in the mean time I will move on to other parts.

    Crits
    nitrotaccrits-1.png
  • Perfectblue
    I think this is an improvement.

    newtac.png
  • EarthQuake
    Good progress, one thing you need to keep in mind if you're baking this to low is: you'll need to have matching geometry for all of the cutouts you're making in your low(except the ones around the silencer, those will be ok) if you have holes in your high and flat planes in your low, you're going to get bake errors. Its better in that case to "cap" it, and just do a beveled inset shape instead.
  • Perfectblue
    EarthQuake wrote: »
    Good progress, one thing you need to keep in mind if you're baking this to low is: you'll need to have matching geometry for all of the cutouts you're making in your low(except the ones around the silencer, those will be ok) if you have holes in your high and flat planes in your low, you're going to get bake errors. Its better in that case to "cap" it, and just do a beveled inset shape instead.

    Thanks! If I do a beveled inset shape for the holes in the rail module how will they be see through once baked in? Playing with the alpha channels on that part when texturing? I am still very new to UVW unwrapping, creating the LP, baking, and texturing.
  • EarthQuake
    Generally I would just make the area black, you can do alpha, but it doesn't really look good, and you'd be better off just modeling the holes in the low if you really need to see through it, but this will eat up geometry.

    In general for this shape I would have modeled it in a lot more "solid" manner, because where it is on the model, you likely wont notice all the inner detail from a first person perspective(most of it will be occluded).
  • Sean VanGorder
    EQ - Could you explain why you would get bake errors when baking a high poly hole on to a plane that you were planning on using alphas for? I'm currently working on something that involves this and it'd be nice to understand before I go and noob it up. :)
  • EarthQuake
    If you're planing on using alpha, it shouldn't be a problem. If you're not planing on using alpha, it is a problem, this is one of those common noob(not saying OP is a noob) baking things, someone models a hole in their model and wonders why they have weird errors there, you know.

    But there is one thing to consider when doing alpha stuff. To get the correct alpha shape baked from a high with a hole in it, you need to disable pixel padding, otherwise the edges get "spread" into the hole.

    So you can do two bakes, one with padding disabled and one with it enabled if you need it for another part of the mesh.

    You can paint the alpha by hand, but this is time consuming and not recommended.

    Or you can not actually do a real hole, but just a "fake" indent hole, and apply colors to the "hole" part and render an RGB mask. This also allows you to really quickly use floaters to create holes, even if you need alpha.

    [edit]Fake hole floater:
    fakeholefloater.jpg

    I would do this if I was using alpha or not, so I get a nice mask to make sure the "hole" is entirely black in both diffuse and spec. I would use RGB colors generally, because on a more complex mesh I would have more material types. For something simple like this b/w is fine.
  • Sean VanGorder
    Ah, that makes perfect sense. The floater and RGB mask method seems like it would be the best way to go about it. Thanks for taking the time to explain.
  • Perfectblue
    P90 body update. This part was pretty tough to do, I think I did two quick approaches first that failed, and finally got it right on the third time. I think the problem with the first 2 attempts was that I didnt keep it basic enough to begin with, their are alot of complicated curves and shapes on the body and if you have too much going on to early its easy to break things and become overwhelmed harder to get the relationship between parts correct.


    The funny part is If I were just doing a p90 regular, I would be about done right now but I still have alot to do!


    p90bodywip2-1.png



    Reference, my own airsoft P90 from 5 years ago, too bad all that remains of it is this picture :(
    106_0615.jpg
  • EarthQuake
    soften up those lines on the grip! its a nice cylindrical shape that has a smooth transition into the planar base, but you've got a hard edge and an angled thing going on.

    Like A, not B.

    p90thing.jpg

    This is just a small chunk and not accurate to the ref, but the concept applies to most of the shapes here.

    Also, keep in mind that this cylindrical shape is uniform and even throughout the entire front/rear grip area, only changing in the couple spots where there are cut-outs. In your mesh it has a lot of variance.
  • Perfectblue
    @EQ, Thanks for the crit! Check my image below, but I am guessing the one that needs the softening is what I have labeled as grip B. Correct? grip.png
  • EarthQuake
    No, both A and B. The bottom of A is actually mostly ok, but it still looks a little uneven and sloppy.

    p90thing2.jpg

    The curves here in red are all the same uniform, smooth shape. Its basically just a simple half cylinder extruded to create this shape, and then 1 supporting edge(like in the first image I posted) to retain the edge there.
  • Perfectblue
    Awesome, thanks for the crits EQ. Only problem is the mesh is a bit busy now and it wont be easy to go in and adjust some of those issues.

    Here are some additional crits I made myself. Feel free to agree/disagree, or point out other problem areas.

    p90crits.png

    also a user on next gen hard surface was generous enough to crit my actual .max file and optimize the topology so it wasn't so dense.
    knipselh.jpg
  • EarthQuake
    Moreso than going over in painstaking detail and giving you crits, as I feel that you can do that on your own by studying your ref, I'de like to give you a few bits of advice.

    1. Block out your shapes with simple, clean geometry before getting too heavy with your supporting loops and such. I know this can be difficult to do as it isn't as fun, but it will make your life a lot easier.

    2. Look into floaters for you small screw type details. Right now you're cutting in a lot of excess loops, when you can just float these details and keep your base mesh lean.

    3. Really study your refs, pay attention to every bevel, every curve and try to nail those forms.

    4. Watch out with that last image, its "optimized" but now lacking crucial loops in some areas and looking too soft/melty. There is no need to optimize a high like this really, especially when it looks worse than before. You should only worry about how dense your cage is when it becomes troublesome to edit. But if you pay attention to the first 2 points here, this should be less of an issue.
  • MainManiac
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    MainManiac polycounter lvl 11
    Looks great, has lots of little neat stuff Id never notice in FPV but looks awesome ;)
  • roosterMAP
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    roosterMAP polycounter lvl 14
    Nice work! cant wait to see it all come together.
  • Perfectblue
    @EQ, thanks for the tips. I really appreciate it. However, I do fear it will be a pain to edit the grips since the mesh is already dense. I am still using the "dense" version I created, not the "optimized" version created by a user on next gen hard surface. Will fix the body soonish, its the most problematic area of the gun im sure.

    @Frell, thanks appreciate it!

    @RoosterMAP, thanks, will be done shortly hopefully.

    p90x.png
  • EarthQuake
    What I would do is this: Do not worry about tweaking your existing geometry, but just delete the grip shapes, and the recreate starting from a basic half cylinder, extrude those shapes to sort of line up with your geometry, and then bridge them together, this should be really fast to do.
  • Perfectblue
    Still tweaking it and very much a WIP but id figure id drop it by here to see if im heading in the right direction. I deleted everything but the border on the old inner parts of the grip and bridge a rounded cylinder.
    p90bodyredo.png
  • EarthQuake
    Thats quite a bit better, you could even stand to soften the edge a bit more too.
  • sltrOlsson
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    sltrOlsson polycounter lvl 14
    +1 to loosen up a tad more.

    You got some wonkyness here and there that you should look over. And as my paintover shows you have modeled a part a bit wrong, easy fix (:

    COLOR="DeepSkyBlue"]/////[/COLOR should be flat.

    Paintoverp90.jpg
  • Perfectblue
    sltrOlsson wrote: »
    +1 to loosen up a tad more.

    You got some wonkyness here and there that you should look over. And as my paintover shows you have modeled a part a bit wrong, easy fix (:

    COLOR="DeepSkyBlue"]/////[/COLOR should be flat.

    Paintoverp90.jpg

    I agree with the screw comment, hell all these screws need to be floaters, as for the blue diagonal lines towards the stock of the gun you are saying its flat? I am not sure I agree with that, all the references I have it rounding back there, and thats how the actual P90 I used to own was shaped as well. Or am I misinterpreting you? Or are you talking about how the extruded part is slanted a little bit, if thats the case I did that for the bake to pick it up better.
  • Perfectblue
    Softened the edges some more on the grip. I think its pretty much done besides a some tweaking. Good job/ bad job/ etc let me know, again thanks for all the crits, they are very valued and I thank you all for taking the time to stop by and help me improve. Also chose not to model the battery under the handle because I want it to look like a gun not an airsoft one.
    p90savagehunterrender.jpg

    ref again
    bigsavage.jpg

    wires
    p90wires.png
  • sltrOlsson
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    sltrOlsson polycounter lvl 14
    Yeah, i was not very clear. I meant that the edge you got is to far down, it should be were i scribbled a blue line. _I should have kept your own screen shot, it's very clear when you see them together.

    Looks very solid!
  • Perfectblue
    sltrOlsson wrote: »
    Yeah, i was not very clear. I meant that the edge you got is to far down, it should be were i scribbled a blue line. _I should have kept your own screen shot, it's very clear when you see them together.

    Looks very solid!

    Ah yes, you are correct, it should be moved up a bit to match the other edge. Thanks for crit and compliment.

    Also I need to scale up the size of the flashlight, its a bit small compared to the ref atm. Also need to scale up the size of the laser wire and the laser sight + mount.

    p90-1.png
  • Perfectblue
    This is my first test bake, using 3Point shader in view port. Just normal and AO. Wasted UV space and what not I'm aware, the full gun is going on a 2048x2048. Left light grey is the HP, right dark grey with gloss is the LP. Any good?

    bake-1.png
    2png.png
    first_bake_wires.png
  • EarthQuake
    You should be able to get away with 12-16 sides here as this wont be up close in view, also, I wouldn't model the inner area in the lowpoly at all, thats eating up a bunch of tris but will never be seen.

    For the bake, you've got some skewing on the one side, after you optimize(or remodel would be faster since its just a cylinder) the mesh, I would add a small bevel along the edge on the end there, that should help sort out the skewing. Take a look at the stickied "waviness" thread to learn more about skewing and such.

    The fine grip pattern you have is too sharp/fine in the highpoly, you dont have enough texture resolution to represent it, I would re-model that area so it has less indents, and is softer so it will read in the final bake.
  • Perfectblue
    Thanks for the indepth replies. Just trying to correct one problem at a time for now, for now that is the skewing.

    I added control loops on both ends of the cylinder as it shows in the normals tutorial by EQ, yet I dont see much of an improvement if any.

    controlskew.png
    attempt2maps.png
  • Perfectblue
    Yah I am attempting to float the cylinder extrusions of the silencer around a cylinder to bake them in. But Im not sure how to bend them 360d to get them to conform to the cylinder. As I illustrated in the sticky thread "how do you make dem shapes". Unfortunately I didnt see such a problem already solved in that thread.

    EDIT: Yes the pink cylinders are indeed test subjects, not final by any means.
    bendquestin.png
  • EarthQuake
    You can see it clearly here with the old bake:
    skewedsilencer.jpg

    And in the new bake it is improved. What does the geometry on the back of the silencer look like? If the cap is deleted there, you only need a bevel/loop on the front(I say this because the first bake only had skewing towards the front).

    Also yeah, your silencer isn't round, I didn't notice it much before, but see it clearly now.
  • EarthQuake
    this is how I do bent floaters, I bend the "matching" geo, by hand generally, but leave the inset geo alone, otherwise it gets warped.

    floaters101b.jpg
    (the top one is the good one, bottom two are showing "bad" methods).
    floaters101c.jpg

    PS: I bend, then add supporting loops after.
  • Perfectblue
    Bend is how I made the silencer to begin with.
    makingofsilencer.png
  • almighty_gir
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    almighty_gir ngon master
    notice that using EQ's bending floaters (lol), you can avoid any unnatural distortion caused by surrounding geometry.

    also note, that his holes are bevels, not extrudes.
  • EarthQuake
    I'd disagree a bit. I've notice small bits of interesting geometry in games like the insides of guns as they flashed by. Really helped pull me into the game more without my realizing it.

    From a FPV perspective, you would *absolutely never* see the front of the barrel, unless there is an animation of the player looking down the barrel or something, it just wouldn't happen.

    In third person, you would have a very low LOD, again the inside of the barrel would never be modeled.

    I'm all for modeling cool shit, but you have to actually be able to see it, or else its simple wasted effort/geometry.



    Notches:
    notches.jpg

    You may even use less sides, 96 or even 64, depending on the texture resolution. Remember, you need 1 pixel at least to represent an angle in the normal map.
  • EarthQuake
    Bend is how I made the silencer to begin with.
    makingofsilencer.png

    The problem here is that you have un-even geometry, to do this, you need an evenly spaced grid.

    This isn't perfect and still results in some slightttt smoothing issues, but shouldn't be noticable when baked down. Important thing is A. enough geometry, B. Even grid, C. How insets flow with grid.
    silencerbend.gif
  • EarthQuake
    If you feel you need control loops you should probably bake with smoothing groups, because you would also need additional control loops on the other surface, given a lot of details there.

    Oh i missed this before. This is just confusing. Using or not using smoothing groups will have no effect on a properly set up bake(IE: averaged cage) so its useless advice, or bad advice(suggesting he set up a poor bake just to avoid adding some supporting geo).
  • EarthQuake
    There's nothing wrong with baking using smoothing groups on your LP, along with a cage.

    Right, so the use or non-use of smoothing groups on the low is inconsequential to whether or not he adds supporting geometry to his low.
  • Perfectblue
    I removed the inward extrusion on the gun as suggested so its just a flat cap on front. However, this is creating a new problem. For whatever reason the inward extrude isnt registering with either the normal or AO map. For instance, the inward extrusion for the barrel of the gun just becomes a flat grey. It should at least have the appearance that its going inward much like the holes on the side of the silencer.

    roundbake-1.png
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