Sketchbook: Wesley

Wesley

Started work on a concept I found by johnthebomb over at CGHub.



Blocking out:




Started the high poly modelling:




A long way to go but can't wait to finish it. :poly121:

Daven

great start so far

sltrOlsson

Check your scale! It looks super broad..

uohm

very nice!

Wesley

Just a small update. A lot of the stuff from earlier has been completely remodelled. Just been moving this week so I've had much time.

SKid

Good progress.

Is there any major difference between max 2010 & 2012?

Wesley

For me personally I've found added stability and it's able to handle more polys a lot better. The biggest new feature I've used a lot is the new UV tools... definitely more time spent in Max UV'ing rather than taking models out. But personally everything just feels a lot more polished, like the graphite modelling tools.

SKid

I've found added stability and it's able to handle more polys a lot better

That a good thing

Thanks for the reply.
Looking forward to see your progress.

Wesley

I didn't have a huge amount of time this weekend because I moved, but managed to get a bit done.

Wesley

So I wasn't able to work much on this over the last month. Crunch time at work. But that's over now!



So I've been struggling to get some of the smaller details to look... "nice". But I'm just going to try and work through it.

Baron Flame

Nice :thumbup:!!
I love the way you were able replicated some of little n more intricate details from the concept. It'd, in all honesty, leave me baffled :poly142:.
Side note : For some reason this reminds me of Mass Effect\ District 9 :P.

Wesley

Just how it's shaping up. A lot of the edges need sorting out, some are way harder than others; especially some of the smaller stuff. Just wanted to get everything "done" before changing those edges for now.

Wesley

Edges still need softening in places, plus some detail in the area right in the middle... then just to add some kind of control panel on the other side of the "hull" and then onto the low-poly.

Wesley

Okay I've nearly finished this now. Still need to clean up edges and need to figure out what's on the back.



So I thought the back could display some kind of display. I thought maybe having a projection style transparent display, but may just go for a screen in an inset...



Not really sure.

Wesley

Not really sure how far to keep pushing it.

Daven

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEvwQgQPkF0&feature=related[/ame]

No, but it's looking really great right now. The details are there and it's got enough implied variety from the concept, which is awesome. I'd be careful with some of your edges though and soften them up. I'm not really sure what else to say, but it's come such a long way.

Suidae

Well done on all the detailing of the model. Is this purely a high poly exercise or are you planning to bake it down to a low poly mesh? If you're planning to bake it to a low poly, I imagine you're going to have difficulty getting those tight details into the normal map. Unless, of course, the low poly has a lot of geometry modeled in to capture it.

Wesley

I am planning on baking it down. I will do a couple of LoD versions to try and get the best I can out of it.

So which edges are too tight? I've never done a sub-D high-poly bake so I'm not too sure what's too tight and what's not.

Eoq

Dayuum, it's looking really neat man! Keep it up!

Suidae

Here's some normal map reading if you're interested. polycount wiki

Here's an example from the link above that illustrates what happens when you bake something down that has perfect 90 degree sides onto a flat surface. It doesn't catch the light well and makes it appear too flat.



So if you're going to bake the little circles and squares on the side of the gun down onto a lower poly plane, they probably need some bevels to show up enough in the normal map.

Wesley

Cheers Suidae! I'm going to make those changes and read up some more about normal mapping. Like I said, this is my first time doing a bake so that is really useful!

TheShrike

Hey Wesley it looks great! I am just curious is maybe you could post up some wireframes. I am curious if, for a lot of the details and small paneling, if that is actually modeled in and subdivided, or if you sculpted in those details in Zbrush/Mudbox...

Thanks for any help. Looks AWESOME

Wesley

Hey sure no problem.



It's all sub-d, I'm not using any sculpting for this. For any extras normals I'm just going to use Photoshop, etc.

After getting some feedback I've decided to try an alternative back end for the main body. No type of display and instead something along the lines of a mechanical pattern.

Finalstraw

This is looking good Wesley, very nice.

I was very interested by the back of the gun, as it seemed quite bare compared to the amount of detail around the rest of the gun. What sort of mechanical pattern were you going for? Also what was the approach going to be on modelling the other side of the gun, or will it be the same?

I realise this is not on the image you are working from, but is there any sort of sight tool on the gun?

Wesley

Yeah that is a concern, I think the big display kind of compounds that. I'm not too sure what mechanical pattern at the moment, someone suggested something like on the back of this nail gun (https://www.sitebox.ltd.uk/prodimages/ITW/PULSA700P_L.jpg). I'm not too concerned about the other side, because it would be in FPS view anyway. But I'll mix up some of the detail a bit and just add colour variation.

And no I'm not putting any sight in, I want it to be like an old-school rail-gun type thing. Point and blast. :poly142:

Wesley

So I've been away from the PC for a while and started back at this the other day. I finished the high-poly but may change the back end later on. For now it stays though.




So I started on the low-poly as well. This sits at 7,500 polys.




And wasn't sure if that was too high poly, so decided to try and reduce it some more, this sits at 5,500.




Not sure how low to go, will look at other peoples' weapons. One problem I'm having is that most weapons I find are traditional and essentially have cylinders as the main base. Where as this has silly shapes everywhere.

glottis8

Nice! very clean layout. It looks a little blocky, but i am sure that will go away once you start laying down your textures. How big of a texture will you be using?

Wesley

Okay so I've been a little busy and I've also been spending a lot of time reading up about normal maps.

Here's how my low-poly is looking.



And here's how it's actually mounted and used.

Wesley

So I've started back at school and had to get a couple of early assignments and other planning stuff out of the way. So now I can get back into the groove with 3D stuff.

After not being happy with my normals and getting some help I decided to tighten up my high-poly and redo a low-poly.

My high-poly is roughly the same, just some softer edges and deep areas made shallower.

The low-poly is all new though.









Split into 4 meshes, two triggers, the front top part that moves and then those things at the back just cause they'd be super messy.

Sitting at 11,000 tris at the moment.

I added some detail as geo because of the FPS view. The added detail at the front middle section... although from an FPS view you can't actually see it, other players (assuming this gun would be used in that fashion) would be able to? I dunno, it's hard to know what to cut, especially when this isn't actually going into a game.

Would maybe just make a LoD that completely cuts over all that detail...