Sci Fi Gun - WIP

David-J

Hi everyone,

I decided to model something just for fun. After looking at all the awesome weapons from Brink I decided to do something similar. I found this awesome concept by Jim Svanberg. Here is my first progress shot as well.

cheers everyone.

Current State:




My progress.

David-J

Another small update. Still working on the High Poly.

n88tr

trigger guard looks way too small to even put a finger in there
looks non-functional in that area

Oniram

oo i love this one. i used the barrel from that concept in my most recent rifle. should be a great piece to work on. what you have now seems like its a pretty decent blockout. i think however it seems a bit thin. the barrel seems to come up into a point when it should flatten out a bit. and also make sure to stay away from the blocky nature of the gun, keeping in mind that there are a lot of bevels. should be a good one to keep an eye out for tho.

n88tr

Yeah Oniram made this one already
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=83684&page=3

Oniram

well its a different gun. just the same barrel

David-J

thanks guys. I will take into account all your suggestions. Awesome work by the way Oniram. Yours turned out amazing.

[HP]

make your high polies smoother, otherwise there's no point in even making them!

) -> correct
_| -> not so correct

Also, if you're gonna be posting base mesh, then post with wires on it. I recommend showing the base, then the smoothed result on a separate pic, otherwise It's gonna be difficult for people to give you feedback.

jimsvanberg

Hi David! I kinda happened to delete your mail before I got the chance to read it but I manage to klick your link at least first :P So what did you say in your mail?

Andrew Mackie

Looking good so far, that thing is going to be really fun to texture!

David-J

@ [HP] - I am new to this sub D modeling but I think it's looking good. Don't know if I need to round out more the bevels so it transfers well to the low poly.

@jimsvanberg - Just letting you know that your art was awesome and that it inspired me to model this gun.

@Andrew Mackie - Thanks. Looking forward to texturing but still having lots of fun with the high poly.








So here is a small update. The light blue geo is the final high poly. Until I have all the high poly finished or close to it I will go back and tweak my low poly and show the wireframes. Right now I am still making some changes here and there so tweaking the low poly doesn't seem that important and useful now.

justaguy

I'm loving the design and the model is looking pretty on point too

SouthpawSid

holy tight edges batman!

jimsvanberg

Great fun to see ^^ Your 3D is pretty awesome too David

David-J

So here is another update. I was just enlightened about the whole floating geometry for detail and I am loving it. I'm leaving the more complicate pieces till the end.

One thing that I have doubts about is the baking process if my gun is symmetrical. I was going to make the low poly, unwrap half of it and stack the UV's. Is that correct? And what is the setup for that? for my low poly object I have half the geometry but for the high poly I have the full object (both halves)?

Either way. I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

Thanks everyone for your comments and dropping by.

Ghostscape

SouthpawSid wrote: »

holy tight edges batman!

Agreed, soften some of those, set up a camera at the ideal viewing distance/angle and make sure your angles aren't too sharp in it, I think you're going to lose a lot of good edges because you're making them too sharp.

For a symetrical bake, I do this:

Model the gun.

Delete the 'second half' (the 2nd-Nth parts that will be duplicated).
Reset X-forms.
Unwrap my mesh.
Adjust smoothing on my mesh to match my UVs as needed.
Duplicate the unwrapped mesh.
Offset the UVs on that by 1 unit (moving them out of the 0-1 space)
Mirror/clone/etc the duplicated parts into position (either do not use the Max mirror tool or reset x-forms on the mirrored mesh, collapse down, and flip faces, or else you can cause issues because Max's mirror tool is a piece of shit)
Attach the mirrored bits to the regular mesh object
Weld together (select borders, ctrl-click verts to convert to vert selection, then weld with a very small threshold is most convenient)
Bake

This process, followed in these steps, ensures a clean bake with minimal issues and minimal fighting with overlapping UVs, etc. Reconstructing the mesh after unwrap is a dirt simple process and it makes it a lot easier than managing the whole thing.

It is vital to follow all of these steps, but especially the welding portion before baking, or else you're going to have incorrect smoothing down your mirror seam that you will bake into the normal.

David-J

So life got in the way and I couldn't work on this until recently. I am going to finish this no matter what.

Here is my progress. I am almost done with the high poly, just some minor artifacts I have here and there.







I have a doubt about floater geometry. How far can they be from the main piece. For example here. IS this too much? Is there a rule of thumb for that?

LtChicken

From what I understand about floating geometry, as long as the geometry is perfectly parallel to your baking cage than it should look okay. Imagine thousands of rays being cast down from the cage at a perfectly perpendicular angle to strike the high poly geometry. The data gained from this is then converted into your normal map. This might give you a better idea of whether or not your floating geometry will work.

However I don't use floaters too often, so maybe someone else can offer better insight.

Terrific work by the way!

Andrew Mackie

Very nice work. It is coming along great!

Computron

The higher you cage is from your model the greater the potential for distortion. But that depends on the low poly a lot.