Modified Saiga
Hey everybody,
This is a little project I've been cooking up during my off hours. Guys like Polygoo and Lonewolf are big inspirations of mine, and I wanted to try my hand at another gun. This one is a Saiga shotgun, sort of a mish mash of several references. Saw this thing on Sons of Guns and immediately wanted to build it.
Here are some shots. About 15 hours in, and I'm fairly happy with where the high poly is at. Totally open to crits or suggestions! Many thanks.
This is a little project I've been cooking up during my off hours. Guys like Polygoo and Lonewolf are big inspirations of mine, and I wanted to try my hand at another gun. This one is a Saiga shotgun, sort of a mish mash of several references. Saw this thing on Sons of Guns and immediately wanted to build it.
Here are some shots. About 15 hours in, and I'm fairly happy with where the high poly is at. Totally open to crits or suggestions! Many thanks.
Replies
I'm not really too familiar with this gun so if you could post your refs that would be awesome.
For crits:
I see some edges that might be a bit too tight and not transfer too well to the normal map / ao bakes. Ex: Bottom edge of the grip looks super tight.
The grip has some weird extrusions around the finger insets. Are those in the ref like that? It looks like it would be uncomfortable.
Also it is hard to tell but watch the 90 degree angles. It looks like some of the details are really hard angles and wont transfer too well in the bake. Ex: screws, etc
Do you plan on taking it full to game mesh and textures?
I wanted to check some refs to see if I was incorrect, but it looks like you've got some of the receiver shapes wrong.
These are basically AK47s, which means from the rear it should have that AK-47 rear look on the top of the receiver, which is flat, with soft edges making that [^] kind of shape. You've got a curve to yours for some reason.
The extrusion you've got on the side fo the receiver looks like a separate piece, and yours looks to come out farther and come in the wrong shape compared to the actual one:
In general it's reading as a Saiga but it feels like a few of the secondary shapes are wrong, and I think from an FPV the rear is reading incorrectly especially. I'm personally not a fan of the standoff/flash cage on the front, either.
@JesseMoody: Thanks for the crits on this thing, man! One of the challenges I've always had is dealing with baking from high poly, so part of this exercise is trying to get more proficient with that. I definitely agree that some of the edges are too tight, and I'll remedy that ASAP. As for the 90 degree angle issue, would you recommend beveling the edges of the low poly before baking? What other strategies have you had success with when dealing with this issue?
@Ghostscape: Indeed the receiver section is built wrong. I'll probably rebuild it before moving forward with the low poly. It started out as blockout, and because of the main shape, I painted myself into a corner. It definitely needs a rework, and thank you for pointing that out! You make some excellent points, man. I do have one question: when you say 'standoff/flash cage', which piece are you referring to? Forgive my ignorance with some of the terminology.
@HP: Thanks!! I do intend to take this to a fully realized in-game asset. The goal here is to get some good solid practice into the baking pipeline. A big part of why I posted this is so that I'm forced to see it through to the end - personal projects are hard to squeeze in these days!
I'm posting 2 refs that I used. Ghostscape's images are very similar in design, for sure.
The thing on the front of the barrel appears to be a combination of a birdcage-style flash suppressor (disperses the gases in multiple directions to reduce the flash) and breaching standoff - the points on the front allow you to put the gun up against a door or flat surface and still allow the gas from firing the weapon to escape.
@Ghost - Thanks for clearing that up for me, man! Lots to do!
I reworked the receiver entirely, swapped out the top sight for a holographic 'Aimshot', and otherwise added details, pulling from different references. I also loosened up a lot of the hard edges to hopefully provide a better bake. Some of that will continue as I bake down the different sections... trial and error and such.
Thanks all for the continued crits! Low poly soon to come!
The final specs are gonna end up being 2048 maps (possible reduced to 1024, depending), and about 14k TRIS for the entire piece.
Any major crits would be helpful! Cheers!
My understanding is that gradients on a normal map indicate a problem in the smoothing groups, yes? I'll rebake those sections if I notice the surface acting funny in engine... perhaps UDK just to test it out. Thanks for pointing that out, man!
It's thinner top-to-bottom at the front trunion (base of the barrel) than it is at the rear (where the buttstock attaches). Check your references again... ...and then please don't kill me, it's going to be a major FFFFFUUUUUU moment.
Final specs:
4096 Spec/Diffuse/Gloss
2048 Normal
14,888 Tris
S2: I have some Infamous 2 stuff up on my site: www.JoshRife3D.com. I'm compiling Festival of Blood screenshots to post as well, hopefully soon to come!
Perhaps tone down the noise on the foregrip by just a tiny bit.
No major changes, just some fine tuning, touch up and better renders. Enjoy, and thanks again.