Weapon: M1A1 Thompson SMG

percydaman

Never really created a low poly next gen weapon before, so thought I would try one. The M1A1 Thompson seemed like a pretty easy first project.

Low Poly





High Poly




Did a couple normal bake tests, which I'll begin showing later when I'm done modeling everything and have it in one UV map.

percydaman

I think I've finished the modeling and did an initial normal/occlusion bake from xnormal. I'll create more normal detail using crazybump for stamped text, screws etc etc. I just threw on a metal like texture so I could see how the normals looked without just a gray color. The model weighs in at 1900 verts. I'm sure there's places I could improve on that, but that seems pretty reasonable to me. Screenshots taken from Marmoset Toolbag. On to texturing now I think, which is my favorite part. Not a huge fan of modeling :P

Low poly wireframe





Low Poly with Normals

AtlusZMH

its hard to crit much right now, it doesnt look too bad so far, but I'd say try to get a first texture pass on it and then post it so we can see more progress!

I will say you probably dont need that many loops defining the trigger guard on the inside. It wont have much screen time and it will most likely be covered with at least a finger :P

percydaman

Thanks for the reply. Here's an update. The metal is quite a bit too noisy, so I'll be working to make that better.

AtlusZMH

nice work so far I think the spec on the wood may be a bit too much, it makes it look similar to the metal spec as it is now.

And I agree, the metal is noise right now, i think you could tone it down and refine the scratching a lot.

keep it up!

percydaman

small update.



yeah for the moment, the spec map is a very quick adjustment of the diffuse. There's no gloss map and only using one shader at the moment, so yeah the wood and the metal are going to look a little homogenous, which makes for plastic looking wood. I always do spec map last.

sltrOlsson

Looking quick on it the first shot looks better.. Now there is no definition at all instead..

percydaman

Yeah its the specular map. It got inadvertently toned down by quite abit. The specular probably won't look super good until I spend some actual time on it.

Kitteh

You've made the usual gun texturing mistake of just slapping some noisy texture on the whole thing. It looks infinitely closer to stone than gun metal. Take a look at this. There's a tiny bit of noise but it's so micro you should probably just leave it out. Notice also the interesting swirling pattern on the lower part of the receiver, the shiny grease spots in the trigger group, etc.



In this pic you can also see the wear is quite purposeful, not random. The edges are worn to a shiny light gray and the rest is fairly smooth gray with just a bit of textural variety and a few spots of pitting, but no high frequency noise.

percydaman

Your certainly correct about the noise in the texture. And I'll adjust it today. I do want it to look very very used though. And I'd prefer to head off crits of 'it needs more wear/dirt/grime etc.

percydaman

Did some more work today. Not as much as I wanted, but my wacom seems to be on the fritz, and painting in small details etc with a mouse is painful. Probably finish up the diffuse tomorrow if the wacom will cooperate and then finish off small detail normals and spec. Kinda ready to move on to something else. :P

Mong0ose

Nice work

Model looks good, silhouette is pretty clean

The metal looks a little flat but that might just be your setup in Marmoset

Mong0ose

percydaman

Decided to take a left turn with the gun and make it interesting. Picture alien/future technology applied to the gun in WW2 times. Here's my crappy 5 min paintover.

Visceral

i approve of this post! it totally needs an eotech holographic sight though!

percydaman

I dont want anything recognizable. It should be fairly esoteric looking. Like alien/future technology but created using ww2 era parts etc etc.

marlfox8

how about a foregrip

Free_Fall

make sure there's another clip mounted next to it.

jordan.kocon

That idea is more winning than Charlie Sheen. Excited to see the result.

Kitteh

Don't ruin it, it was starting to look good

nordahl154

Take it easy on the upgrades. :poly136:

percydaman

Hboybowen wrote: »

where is the noob tube

What's a noob tube?

I started working on the power supply objects.



I'm not happy with them though, they already look too futuristic, and deviate from my sketch. Strap looks too narrow as well. So I'll be redoing them from scratch.

EarthQuake

I'm a little confused here, it looks like you want to cram a bunch of stuff onto a basically already finished asset. I think you'd be better served starting an entirely new asset with this sort of design in mind from the start, or go back to the highpoly stage and revamp everything.

What you're going to end up with is a bunch of weird stuff awkwardly tacked onto this asset.

percydaman

EarthQuake wrote: »

I'm a little confused here, it looks like you want to cram a bunch of stuff onto a basically already finished asset. I think you'd be better served starting an entirely new asset with this sort of design in mind from the start, or go back to the highpoly stage and revamp everything.

What you're going to end up with is a bunch of weird stuff awkwardly tacked onto this asset.

Well that's kinda the point. As I said earlier it's supposed to be a ww2 asset with future technology strapped on. Think a ww2 game where you start with a standard thompson and get to upgrade it throughout the game or something. The standard gun was basically finished minus some small stuff left. But I was bored with it, and it didn't seem to be getting much in the way of responses. After doing some forum browsing it would appear that happens alot to standard looking guns. So for the fun of it, I decided to make it fun. I knew not everyone would be on board, but it's not like I wont have a finished standard thompson smg to put on my portfolio.

Thanks for the reply.

EarthQuake

You're missing the point of what I said, if you want to execute this sort of design well, you should go back to the highpoly stage and fully integrate it as part of the asset, not just tack stuff on after the fact. There is a difference between a nice looking, fully concepted and properly executed design that looks like an Alien-re-purposed gun, and something that will just look like it has awkward greeble stuff thrown onto it.

A. Spend more time on the concept, a lot more time
B. Go back to the highpoly stage, add your details in a manner consistent with the rest of the model
C. Create a new lowpoly suited to the new design.

Dont just throw some random shit on it because you think thats what people want. The design and execution need to be solid, or else you're going to end up with something that looks worse and is less interesting than what you currently have.

Andreas

I thought you were on drugs when I saw that paintover... but I guess the idea has merit. Maybe add an under-barrell shotgun, maybe a sight? But don't go crazy.

Pedro Amorim

Yep. Earthquake has a point. I mean. That concept you did after you kinda finished the asset is something you should have done before, in the hipoly stage. I mean. So, now.. what? You will have a diferent texture for the new stuff you want to add?

percydaman

hmmm, I'm just seeing not the problem. So the concept wasn't done at the beginning. Big deal, I don't see how that's not something that can't be worked around. And sure, why not a second texture sheet for all the bolted on pieces?

To answer the question about going back and doing more concepts. Hey, your looking at the world's worst concept artist. For better or worse, it's just going to have to stand or fall based on what I've concepted.