Practicing, Hi/ low poly rifle

Luke003

My friend and I occasionally challenge each other to strengthen and hone our skills. We've both been out of school for a while, and a bit out of practice. The goal here is simply to create a fictional rifle in a few days. I started with modeling some accessories, because I want to focus on creating a good workflow for myself. To be honest, my current workflow and current knowledge sucks. I've been lurking for ages trying to pick up tips and such. Particularly Normal mapping and hi-poly modelling tricks.

Anyway, these are some grabs of the suppressor I've been working on. I know the models, unwraps, and textures are laughable at best, but I'm learning quick. I started off with a cylinder and geo'd up the dimples and such. I then created the low poly cylinder. I used render to texture to bake the normal onto the unwrapped low poly cylinder. This is the first time I have ever created a normal map from geometry, so I think it turned out well. I'll post more, I'm now working on the scope.

Also, I've lurked for a long time, but this is pretty much my first official post.

tigg

The bumpy textured area towards the rear of the silencer: I would make those details larger, at the moment they'll probably alias quite badly and just look like noise.

Also, a nice spec map will help the piece a lot. You can layer on loads and loads of overlay textures, streaks of grime and oil. Maybe try and think about the "story" of the piece. Are there oily sections where it has been screwed onto the end of a gun by the soldier dude's bare hands? What material is it? Painted metal? Polymer? maybe the paint is scratched away at the edges showing bare metal underneath?

You'd be surpised how much a good specular map can add.

Luke003

I added the knurled detail to the grip by adding a pattern directly to the normal map with the nVidia normal filter in Photoshop. I wasn't too happy with the result, but I only spent a few seconds on it. I also will add some more detail to the diffuse as well as add a specular map. I'm going to save that for now, only because the rest of the rifle still needs to be modeled. These are some pics of the first version of the silencer, and my initial try at baking normals.

jeremiah_bigley

I am not sure I understand your process... You shouldn't be modeling single pieces at a time.
It is slow because you have to keep changing your flow. Model all. Lowpoly all. Cast. Texture. Done.

Usually when people model objects separately they end up not fitting together like they should. Therefore they start slightly scaling things to get them to fit.

Common workflow is to:
1. Block your major shapes in.
2. Highpoly
3. Lowpoly
4. Unwrap
5. Cast Normal and AO
6. Texture


Good luck

MainManiac

You would have been better taking a small "dip" normal hole and just evenly distributing it over your silencer normal map.

I tend to take alot of shortcuts like this because it keeps me from spending too much time on any specific part because I don't have to deal with topology. And it also helps me create a library of "normal sprites"

EarthQuake

Model the whole thing at once, creating small bits and doing uv/bake/textures is a really slow way to to work, and you easily lose the overall scale of the asset.

MainManiac

Was that directed at me?

Luke003

Thank you for the advice. I mainly want to improve my workflow. This initial project is also a way for me to test techniques as well though. Both of these suppressors were just test pieces mostly.

With the initial blocking in, is it wise to model separate sections as individual pieces?

Luke003

This is what I have so far for the entire rifle. For the most part, this has turned into a geo and normal lesson for myself.