[WIP] M249 FN MINIMI Para

OddEyes

Hello together,

first of all, thank you for taking the time to view my work.

This is a gun i have modeled for a 1st-person shooter project, and wanted to upload the progress of my model here for feedback. This is actually my first weapon of its kind and also my first hp that detailed.

I'm looking for feedback on the accuracy of the gun, my modeling techniques and even the rendering and presentation. Please feel free to tell me what you think..

Isaiah Sherman

Well, looks like a good start. The shader on it blows out the contrast and it's hard to tell what is what on this thing. It also hides any modeling errors you may have.

Could you just use a gray phong?

OddEyes

i still struggle with finding a neat shader and light setup for presenting the high poly work

Could you just use a gray phong?

Here a collection of some screen grabs straight from max viewport. Also some missing details and text i'll add later in the texture via ndo.

Isaiah Sherman

That's better, but if you choose a shader with slightly brighter spec it'll help even more.

I'm lovin' that bag for the ammo pouch!

OddEyes

thanks and i'm really looking forward to how the ammo pouch will look in the bake.

ok .. another try..

Envart

Looks like an awesome model. Try this material rendering tutorial. http://www.artemstudios.com/2010/tutorials.htm
Also, rendering on a black background isn't very appealing. the grey worked much better.

Isaiah Sherman

Yes, follow Walrus' link. You can see that the demo asset is a simple set of barrels, yet they read incredible well.

ES_139

Haiasi wrote: »

.....

I'm lovin' that bag for the ammo pouch!

second that! very nice

OddEyes

thanks for that link, the renders are now way better.

i have a little problem when rendering in max. when i save that image out as an *.jpg, the result is much brighter, than it was in max. Any idea?
I adjusted the levels for this one in PS:

Computron

Cue racer445_Scope_SubD.jpg

OddEyes

thanks everyone for your feedback. I really appreciate it.

here is a little progress of my low poly of the ammo pouch. I'm still not sure, if it was the right decision to separate the bullet in the three separate things you can see in front of the pouch. This way i can use the same texture for the bullet and shell, but for the cost of some extra tris. Otherwise I can use the belt links later for animation, because when this gun gets shot, the shell and the belt link drops down to the ground. What do you think ?

ES_139

Computron wrote: »

Cue racer445_Scope_SubD.jpg

didnt think you could get away with a thread of a high poly weapon without that image popping up.....:poly124:

JoshC

Glad you chose this weapon, because me and the SAW go way back. I have a couple of critiques for you. First is the lower heat shield should have several ridges in it. Second is your feed tray covers feed paws and slider are off, by a lot. Third your bolt assembly is also wrong. My last critique would be more of a design issue. For this to be a true para, it should have a short barrel and a collapsable stock and the RIS system where the heat shields are now. Just a thought.



here is a modern para


Wish I could find images for the feed tray covers underside, annoying.

OddEyes

JoshC wrote: »

Glad you chose this weapon, because me and the SAW go way back. I have a couple of critiques for you. First is the lower heat shield should have several ridges in it. Second is your feed tray covers feed paws and slider are off, by a lot. Third your bolt assembly is also wrong. My last critique would be more of a design issue. For this to be a true para, it should have a short barrel and a collapsable stock and the RIS system where the heat shields are now. Just a thought.

thank you very much for your detailed analytics. This High Poly is modeled in mind to get a nice bake from it. That's why there are no ridges on the lower heat shield, because i'm sure, PS will do a better job. And i know some proportions are off, unfortunately, i guess it would be a pain in the ass to fit those.

JoshC wrote: »

Wish I could find images for the feed tray covers underside, annoying.

An image would really help, cuz i have no idea what part you mean ^^
Maybe you are lucky here http://www.pixagogo.com/3793204203

Illusive

fuck yeah those renders are x10 better, i can now see how awesome your model is. look forward to seeing it textured

JoshC

Here are the in depth insides of the M249. I'll start with the feed try cover.







The feed pawls are spring action but aren't actually welded or bolted into the cover, they are actually on sliders and the two smaller outside ones alternate from the big one when they slide back making a kind of crossing action. To two right pawls just go up and down and are part of the link ejection process.



Here is an excellent top down view of the inside of the SAW with the bolt to the rear. The SAW is an open bolt weapon meaning it can only fire when the bolt is cocked back. Here you should only see the bolt and bolt carrier unless you want to get more detailed.


using this reference again I labeled the major inside parts. The bolt, bolt carrier, and the piston all attach together (the firing pin would be inside the bolt and not seen). The spring slides onto the guide rod and goes into the back of the piston so is barely seen unless the bolt is forward.

The site you linked me in the PM has loads of reference for the SAW with multiple angles. My advice would be to find pictures with the parts of the SAW you modeled and try to get them from multiple angles so you can really bring out that detail in your high poly mesh.

OddEyes

@JoshC
wow, thank you really much. It seems you know this gun inside out, you got my respect.
I'll see how i can improve my high poly model, without making it to complex for baking. I'm already working at the lowpoly mesh and the hp model is designed this way to get a great normalmap out of it. That's why a lot of the inner parts like the feed pawls isn't that accurate to the reference.

OddEyes

Currently working on the scope. here is a wip pic:

(if there is no image, plz let me know)

tigg

There indeed is no image, I'm afraid.

OddEyes

Hey,
i hope you guys see this time a pic. Somehow i have problems with my new dropbox account There you see the LowPoly Bake of the scope:

Sage

To be honest I don't like the scope on your weapon, it seems out of place. I have yet to see anyone use that on a 249. I suggest you model the one found in the reference provided. Nice modeling so for by the way. Hey JoshC where did you serve? Pm me about it since I can't give details while I'm out and about, not that i'm doing anything exciting.

For your scene lighting just do a 3 point lighting setup with a darker gray material and crank up the spec and gloss a bit.

tigg

Those screws beside the buttons need more sides.
At the distance/size you'll see it in game, the segments are really apparent.
http://i.imgur.com/V2MG9.jpg
that's battlefield 3's sight for scale comparison, you can see that at the same size some of your details still look blocky. You also need to add support edges to that backing plate thingy in your high poly, it's too blobby.

It's a good idea to look at it from the perspective it will be seen in game (hypothetically) so that you can tell what details need to be modeled in and which don't.

OddEyes

@tigg, thanks for your advice. I deleted the screw mesh and now they are baked in. It looks now much cleaner and after a while i didn't like these "huge" screws anyway.

But here now my current lowpoly mesh. I would love to hear from you what you think. Where are too many and where are to less tris? Also some minor details are still missing. Current Tri-Count: 6290.

Pic of lowpoly:

odium

Usually the scope is right in your face, so I would spend a few more tris rounding those screws and the top corners of the scope there, just so it flows nicer. Remember that you would be pretty much looking directly at this area, and whats the use in a high quality asset if its gonna fall apart on the main area you look at?

OddEyes

Ok, due to several requests to smooth the outline of the scope and some other things like the screws, i worked on the High Poly aswell to achieve a better result. The Tri-count is right now just under 1100. I think the scope is finished in terms of baking. The other missing things will be done with ndo2.

JoshC

So after some heavy searching, I found these old photos of my Saw I carried in Iraq. Figured you'ed like them for any added ideas.





If you aren't sure of anything on the weapon, feel free to ask.

Dagon

Aww my favourite weapon! Although I've never handled or fired one I still wish I did haha lucky to those who have done so! Right now the model is awesome But I really think if it's the Para version the buttstock is wrong as the one you have currently belongs to the standard M249 if I'm wrong then ignore me as I'm not a soldier and never handled the weapon. Otherwise I think it looks amazing and so keen to see it completed! Good luck!


I've always wanted to model one myself but just can't deal with how much detail it has as I barely managed to complete an M16 and it wasn't exactly the best result. I wonder how you manage!

gauss

love photos like this that carry more of a sense of place than you ever could have expected when it was taken. the tiles, the shoes, the dust etc. thanks!

OddEyes

thanks you Josh very much. these pictures are awesome. They inspired me already for the texture.

For me, i know this weapon only because of games like battlefield and co. Never saw one in real life. I learned a lot about the weapon while studying and modeling this gun, but obviously not enough.

And i would love if someone out there experienced in weapon modeling can give me advise about the low poly mesh and tri count. (Pic on page1)
New pictures soon

n88tr

the low poly stock looks easy enough make and i think needs a redo
all those triangles in the rear look awkward

edit: also you have some ngon faces. not sure if those are ok with you or not.
I mean this here

OddEyes

Thank you for pointing out the ngon, i fixed that. And for the stock, i think i can give it some extra tri`s.
I forgot to post the fpv. Some notes, this has still the old scope mesh and some other minor problems, that are already fixed.

OddEyes

after a lot of other stuff, i finished the baking... In fact i'm still busy.
Sounds like a bad excuse for my slow progress here



As always, feel free to comment and criticise.

Ghostscape

I feel that since you're going so high detail here as is, you might as well add a couple more rounds to fill the black space in the magazine.

If the gun is going to be held at that angle and not forward a bit more, I'd model the F into that F bolt on the back.

Is the cylinder on the right of the ironsight supposed to look that way? It almost looks like a baking error where the low poly didn't have smoothign groups set up or something. I think the iron sight could use a few more triangles as well given that it'll get a good hard eyefuck if you were to iron-sight it. Right now the eotech looks much more rounded than the iron when that's closer to the camera.

n88tr

Did you bake the entire gun, every piece or was it selective?

OddEyes

if i get you question right, i did a exploded bake of the high poly and a combined lowpoly bake. The rest is just added and edited in PS

Pac_187

Is it just me, or does the normalmap look inverted? Try flipping the y-channel of the normalmap if so.

OddEyes

@Pac_187
I guess it's just you
Cuz i flipped the y-channel for checking, and the normals were wrong..
What did you made think so?

Pac_187

The stock, if the normals are correct it should be flat, right?
As well as the cap/screw labeled with "F", it just looks wrong.

Did you overlay a cavity map with the AO map? Dunno, but it doesn't look right to me :P

OddEyes

The thing is, i have generated a AO pass out of the normal map with ndo. I think i'll edit the AO pass to make it less look wrong.

Pac_187

Yea, try using MentalRay or xNormal, gives you way better results.
I know it's a lot of extra work to export all those highpolys/cages to xNormal but it's worth it, had the same "fun" with my P90

OddEyes

I have three different AO Passes multiplied. first one is the bake result of the high poly with xnormal. the secont is the result of the low poly and the last one is the generated AO pass out of the normal map. I still have to experiment with different settings and opacities, because it's the first time i use ndo2 on a project.

Pac_187

Try using xNormals "Normals2Cavity" Photoshop plugin instead.
Its located at the very bottom in the filters category in Photoshop.
Make sure your y-channel is flipped correctly before executing it.
Then paste that new texture into your diffuse map and overlay it with your AO at about 50-75% opacity.

I would recommend ndo2 only for normalmap work or environmental texture work,
never worked really well for weapons for me.

Just some tips, so you don't waste your time adjusting sliders

n88tr

What is an exploded bake?

I'm thinking: each part of the high poly that corresponds to the low poly is baked

OddEyes

yeah you are right, this method though avoids projections you don't want. Polycount Wiki has some very nice articles about that topic.

I got some time to texture while enjoying xmas:

Amadreaus

That bake is pretty solid, and the AO pass looks good too. I think the main thing that would help now is a very clear separation of value on certain sections. Right now if you blur your eyes, everything is the same tone, which makes it appear flat and difficult to read at a glance. I'd just pick a few pieces of the gun and make them lighter or darker in order to separate those values out. A little bit of that can go a long way.

n88tr

what is AO pass?

I know what an AO map is I think though.

Amadreaus

AO pass, AO map - I'm using the terms interchangeably here.

n88tr

I thought an ambient occlusion map was only used in rendering...?

Amadreaus

It depends on your output. It's very common to use AO in a diffuse texture in a multiply layer. Generated on a 1-off texture, it's pretty much standard protocol. Games will also sometimes employ screen space ambient occlusion (SSAO), based on geometry, but it tends to be a little harder to control/doesn't look that great on it's own. I believe that when you refer to AO in render time, you're referring to something like what Mental Ray does - that's effectively SSAO, but since it's done for a single frame, you can set it up to look really good. That sort of thing isn't quite as practical when you're trying to get good performance in games, though.

n88tr

When would it be appropriate to use an ao map? Does the object type matter like hard surface versus something more organic?

OddEyes

You shouldn't use an AO map, when your scene has a lot of dynamic lights. Imagine your light enlightens a part of your object that has baked shadow, but there shouldn't be a shadow. On the plus side, a AO bake gives the object a lot of depth.

So, and after a little more work on the texture, there is my current state: