AK47

juguefre

Hello polycounters, I'm still struggling to reach a good skill level but for now this is my best, tris count is 3037 all opinions and critics are welcome.







Thank you ALL for watching and comment.

Pdude2K7

The model looks okay, but without a wireframe its hard to see where you've wasted triangles...Although its clear that many are spent on the small details which are kinda redundant on a lowpoly(Judging from a far, I might be wrong on this). Also, what reference are you using for the texture? Are you going for realism? If so, then its really off. Where is the wooden stock? And the trademark colors that define an AK?

Akamo

Pdude2K7 wrote: »

The model looks okay, but without a wireframe its hard to see where you've wasted triangles...Although its clear that many are spent on the small details which are kinda redundant on a lowpoly(Judging from a far, I might be wrong on this). Also, what reference are you using for the texture? Are you going for realism? If so, then its really off. Where is the wooden stock? And the trademark colors that define an AK?

There are different AK models used by different people I think. I guess some special forces prefer all black weapons for obvious reasons, so I think his diffuse is okay. The middle metal part seems to bright though. The whole render looks dull / plastic-ish due to bad material.
I also wonder what this model is for. For a 3rd person weapon prop, the polycount is too damn high.
For a first person model the polycount would work well, but in this case you could go with even more polys on top / less polys in places that you wouldnt see. What it really needs is a stronger&more defined normal map and lightmap though.. and better rendering Other than that the model looks nice, good work!

passerby

@Akamo though one of the other AK's is more likely going to be used by special forces than the ak47, such as one of the ak74's or the AN94's

KartoonHead

How much of the lighting is baked into the diffuse and how much is the normal map? It looks like it's all baked into the diffuse and it's far too strong, for example, the rivets/bolts and whatnot on the side of the weapon are reacting asif lit from the floor, and other parts such as the detail on the magazine appear to be lit from above.

The overall shape looks off also, the gun appears to get squished towards the front, and the grip is too blocky, AK grips are generally quite rounded. The sight is too narrow; remember to not only use a reference image of the whole gun but to also reference images of certain parts of the weapon, and from all sorts of different angles.

juguefre

Ok thank you all for your responses, this is one of the reference images



oh and if 3k tris are too much for a third person then what should I do? this weapon is to be used for the enemies in the game, not the player........making a LOD maybe?
and to be honest I don't really understand the whole thing about "baking the light into the difusse" as far as I'm aware I haven't done such thing, what I did was I multiply the AO over the difusse is that what you meant? also I level up the brightness in the metal parts (maybe is that what cause the "problem") and about the "squished towards the front" and the other details I just don't know what to say..... I really follow my reference images the best and closer way I could (I put those images in the viewport and trace the shapes).



the reference image is under the actual photo from the engine, aside from the diferent perspective the only really noticeable detail for me is that the gun barrel is a bit longer than the reference.

KartoonHead

Here, I'll illustrate what I mean about the lighting,

I've blown-up certain areas and shown which direction the light appears to be coming from, as you can see it doesn't make sense that different parts would get lit from above, whilst others would only seem to be lit from below. Also; I think the squished look mostly comes from the part where the front grip connects with the barrel, those parts should be parallel, and they don't look it on your model, but that could just be the perspective.

Hope some of this helps.

The Lone Penguin

For a third person model there are details you could just bake right into the diffuse and normal. The fire selector switch, rear sight adjuster, and the button on the back of the dust cover can easily be handled by the normal map and would save you some triangles. Really work on the diffuse and spec too. Look at your reference and look at your model. The actual AK is pretty much the same shade of black all across, yours has some odd varying metal all across. Use the spec map to help define the differences between what's metal and what's polymer, or hard plastic.

juguefre

OK KartoonHead thank you very much, you have some really good observation skills, but I'm still not sure why this happen? that can be fixed really quick but I didn't paint any shadows by hand my best guess is those shadows are from the AO but that is generated in an automated process... could it be a bad config when doing the AO?

juguefre

FIXED I found the problem and it was the normal map......

without normal map looks fine


normal map in maya looks fine (the way is supposed to)




the green channel have to be inverted in the normal map. Thanks KartoonHead for pointing that problem, now how about the texture? I dont really like the full black is kinda boring.....

HornyRhino

Your model is looking good. but its a bit to blocky have you taken a look at Racer445 AK tutorial? maybe that will help you out a bit here it is: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=63496 its completely free and thanks to that tutorial i learned a great amount of modeling weapons best of luck and dont stop pushing for better quality

jeremiah_bigley

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=966646&postcount=1

He ripped it down a while back. Check the links in the thread you posted. 404.

*shakes fist*

juguefre

Hi guys, thanks for the comments, I did some re-check and this was the result



I also decide to cut down some more polys and to redo the bake/unwrap/textures, so I will make the gun barrel/grip parallel, but should I go with a full black all over the model (I mean texture)???