WIP Sentry Gun

TicoTaco

Hey everyone, I was creeping through CG Tuts, and Chris Tate has a tutorial coming along about modeling the Team Fortress 2 sentry gun. Unfortunaltey it is not all up, so I figured, he gave out great reference material to download, given this I went about the model using my own workflow to see what I could achieve on my own.

I have a few questions , regarding my progress. I have been blocking it out using primitives mainly, you will see this in my screens. Is this a effective way at modeling, or will I have trouble with Unwrapping, AO, and Normal bakes with underlying geometry, and faces?

Here are a few screens on my progress, please, comment, and help me get through this the right , and easiest way.









Take note, this is early, and I have not taking time for detailing or even smoothing edges at this point. This is basically just a " Is this a correct way of doing this" type of WIP.


Also, I don't know if he is, but if ya are on here Chris, or Ben, thankyou for all the great tutorials, they have helped me out so much. :P

tonysladky

Don't know how the pros do it, but I know in a lot of cases when you're trying to get something low-res for games, it's often cheaper to just smash your geometry together than it is to make sure it's all welded together.

I haven't had any trouble with UV's or bakes using that workflow, though, just like any other bake, you'll have to painstakingly go through and make sure you don't have any geometry on the inside (as that will generate ugly black spots in AO and wonky spots in the normal) or overlapping UVs or n-gons or any of the other things that can be problems in your bakes no matter what your modeling workflow is.

Looking pretty good so far.

TicoTaco

Man, I love the fast replies on here.

Alright, I am relieved to hear this is a alright workflow, and yah this will be game ready, I was planning on doing a high poly, and normal maps, and all that nice stuff. So I am happy there wont be too many problems with mapping if I am careful.

Thankyou for the reply Tony =D

TicoTaco

Starting to get a little distressed about this model, here is an update, still blocking it out, but it is starting to feel very out of proportion. Thoughts?



Concept :

myles

I don't know if you are doing a highpoly, but if you are then you are going to want to model that first.
Otherwise progress seems good so far, just watch how many sides some of those cylinders have, some of them have a lot more than necessary.

passerby

ya it dosnt matter at all if your model is bunch pieces mashed togheater and if you get any weirdness in the bakes for normals or AO you can just do a exploded bake.

TicoTaco

Wicked, and Myles, really? I .. I usually do the low poly first, save that, then I edgeloop the hell out of it, bring it into zrbush, do a few SUBd's on it to get rounded edges ( I feel it is quicker then doing every edge in Max) . Then I get some dings, dents, screws, detail etc. Export it out, bake the high/low poly normals, texture, render.

.. Is my workflow wrong ?

Thankyou for the progress update critique though, I am happy this is coming along nice, I want to actually finish this, unlike most models I attempt.

myles

Interesting workflow man, I wouldn't say your workflow is 'wrong', it might just have a few flaws though, but see how the result looks.

n88tr

gonna add any unique detail since basically this is just a copy of TF2 sentry??

TicoTaco

Thanks Myles, good to know I'm not a complete noob at this =]
N88tr, well.. I have a feeling the tripod will give me a little hassle, so I may take a easier approach at it. I am just trying to get the upper part modeled, then I will work on the base, then see what happens in zbrush for details =D

ceebee

Hey I found these from a year and a half that I did for a class. They might be of use to ya

TicoTaco

Ceebee... You have no idea. Thankyou so much. The reference I have is great, but these blueprints are more clean looking, and that render, thankyou again!

TicoTaco

Alright guys, just finsihed the low poly, got some Clay renders for C&C =]