AR-15 Carbine

Olli.

sup guys, heres an M4 ive been making for a mod. The model and bake is done, so now im just texturing.. going for a realistic look. What i really need is crits, and suggestions on how to improve the texture.


here im going for a sort of new, but rough blued finish, resulting in a matte surface. not sure if i've quite nailed it yet.



ill be keeping this thread up to date as i go.

Olli.

bump

dogzer

MOAR!!

gsokol

Hm...I'm not so sure that having noise in the gloss will really help. Try adding a subtle amount of that to the spec map. You could also try to add a tiny bit of blue to the spec map as well.

Also, are you using the default lighting setup? It will probably help you evaluate the properties of the material if you use your own lighting.

Boyso

Can you change your BG when you render? Gray on gray is hard to see

Olli.

im not really rendering.. im just screencapping the viewport..

i tried creating my own light setup but i couldnt figure out how to adjust light intensity (using 3 point shader) and a intensity 1 light is just too dim..

ill try swap the gloss over to the spec map though.. see if thatll help

S_ource

Looks good i would probably lighten up the specular and add brighter edges and moar contrast but it just a sugestion its mostly about taste.

I would also recommend this shader if you use 3ds max. http://xoliulshader.com/

Olli.

update: created a custom lighting setup.. removed the noise (decided its the wrong approach) and textured some more of the gun too.

maxivz

Thanks to you, i have finally found out how specular maps worked properlly, thansk a lot , even if it wasnt a tutorial those texture images helped me
Btw, the gun is looking really good, keep it up

Olli.

I'm actually here looking for help.. ironic that i end up giving it.

well I'm glad you've learnt something

Shogun3d

The M4 is looking great, I just had a quick comment on the noise you're using. Instead of using photoshop's noise, you should try using some more natural noise. Otherwise, the model and texturing is looking good thus far!

Racer does a great job explaining this in his tutorial
http://www.nextgenhardsurface.com/index.php?pageid=racer445

Olli.

im actually not using any kind of noise for my texture at the moment.. even though a real life blued surface usually has some noise, it is so fine that it would just transfer to no noise at all at 2048x2048 texture size.

i did however try various techniques from racer's tutorials earlier on but any kind of noise i place on the metal parts just looks out of place and blobby

Olli.

thats it for today.

Now, gentlemen, if you'll excuse me, I have a certain game of battlefield which requires playing.

Olli.

Finished with the metal parts.

here are some pics.. ive doubled all lighting (2x light intensity, 2x spec) so the model is more visible (its quite dark atm, which i'm happy with, but its hard to get all the details in a still picture with realistic lighting)





im worried i might have rushed the texture a bit.. looks fine-ish to me though, so crits are welcome.

Korrax

You should show these with a lighter background or turn the lights up a notch. So we can see the model/textures more clearly! Cause I can't really see much.

marq4porsche

Same, you really need a lighter background.

Olli.

Lighter background?
wouldnt that make the details harder to see?


well you get what you ask for.

Amadreaus

A pure white gloss isn't really adding anything. You might as well just crank the spec falloff uniformly via a shader and call it a day. Doing a proper gloss to help separate materials is one of the more difficult, but necessary parts of doing a good gun texture.

gauss

well packed UVs, overall pretty accurate take on the weapon and is always a good exercise to do one of these rifles in a portfolio, i think. keep at it and you'll have a well tuned piece and good experience for future projects.

but please please please do not use that dogbutt style rail adapter on top of the carry handle. you see those knobs on the bottom side of the carry handle? you use those to detach the handle from the rails. you know, the rails that you put scopes on, directly onto the upper receiver. you always want to have your scopes as low as possible.
you only use a rail adapter that fits on top of the carry handle if you can't put a scope directly on the rail due to a fixed carry handle (M16A1 and M16A2 style). which you can, on this gun, but for some reason you're not.

see this?

this is very similar to the rail mount you're depicting. note a couple of things

-remarkable resemblance to a dog's butthole
-there is no gap between the carry handle and the upper receiver, because this is a M16A2 profile rifle, thus necessitating an adapter.

i know this sounds like asshole gunnerd stuff but you are building a universally recognized gun but in an outrageously silly configuration. it's like a kid showing up to school wearing his underwear on the outside, everyone would laugh at someone carrying a scope, mounted to a rail adapter on top of a detachable carry handle.

since you're building an m4, there a billion customization options under the sun and quite a few of them look badass. this is not one of them. for example (because i hate it when people leave unconstructive criticism) i have never seen someone do a model of the m4 configuration seen in punisher: war zone for instance.

http://www.blogcdn.com/blog.moviefone.com/media/2007/12/pwz_2150-(3).jpg

i would still stick with the stock you have now, but playing with this kind of extra low profile and very far forward scope mounting solution, more akin to an ak74su, is a novel approach to a very tired gun. i am not trying to be a jerk here, i am really trying to be helpful. the gun looks good, but it's in a deeply naive configuration right now.

Isaiah Sherman

Oh look, Amadreaus, those are his UVs, not his gloss map! You silly goose. The UVs are lookin' good, just get dat smudge on with more gloss variation.

I like to exaggerate my gloss maps with a good levels crunch. It's an easy way to get interesting results quickly. Then you can get more precise from there.

Olli.

thanks for all the crits guys. The reasons i went for the "butt ugly" carry handle RIS setup are plenty. First of all its something i havent seen before in a game, it also fits our animation setups since requiring a seperate anim to detach the ironsight before attaching a scope would lengthen the whole scope attaching process thus unbalancing the weapon. I sort of agree it looks "different". I wouldnt go as far as say its butt-ugly but it certainly takes a bit of getting used to. Ive got my concerns about how the high weapon profile will play out in first person, but in any case if it doesnt work at all, i can always get rid of it entirely and replace it with an A.R.M.S #40 L-P ive got stored away for just such an occasion.
This setup is quite flexible, since the rail under the carry handle is modeled and textured, so i can remove the carry handle and do different variations with various sights, and ill definately look in to that far-front oriented sight option.. looks pretty cool.


Heres a picture of how the whole setup could/should/might look in first person, also including an artists rendering of a possible target.


and thanks Haiasi for those gloss map crits.. I agree the current gloss map looks quite monotone.. I turned the contrast down a lot for all my base textures, so most of the elements have a solid color gloss with possibly some AO or fingerprints on top..

heres some of that smudge you told me to try on. not sure if this is exactly what you meant but anyways.. I didnt really think about where i put the smudge.. i just smudged all around the reciever.


and heres how it looks on the model.. also included some new pics of a bipod im working on.

Olli.

bumps for dem crits

The Lone Penguin

You said you're going for a realistic look so here's some accuracy comments. For one, an AR-15 and M4A1 are not the same thing. AR-15's are the civilian version of the automatic and burst fire M4's. I know you asked for texture crit mostly but there's one thing on the model that bugs me that's an easy fix. The mounting screw heads on the carry handle are normally much bigger and I would like to see them scaled properly. Also I'd have to second that comment about the scope being mounted directly to the rail. As you mentioned in profile the gun will take up quite a bit of screen space, and I know most games you don't see that in however it's kind of for a good reason, it just makes no sense. As for the texture, definitely want to see more variation in the spec and diffuse maps. You seem to have the right direction I just think pushing it a little farther would be nice.

gauss

well if you must, you must. but looking different just to do so is an iffy proposition, like I said with a little work you can still do novel m4/ar15 family gun set-ups, but scopes mounted on top of carry handles are very much the province of pre-picatinny rail rifles, it's a retro look. one i happen to like, but it needs to carried through style wise. right now your rifle is still kind of a naively assembled mutt.

so if you got to do one, I still implore dropping the rail adapter. There's a hole in the carry handle to allow scopes to be mounted directly, like so:


i just don't know if that configuration is available for the ACOG.

and penguin's right, the knobs on the detachable handle aren't big enough, take another look at your reference.

gametime

hey olli,

great work, especially on the normals. i was wondering if u ran into any issues with the bake? bc u have the front and backside overlayed, for example the mag. wouldnt that cause errors on the backside?

Olli.

nope worked just fine. there is a slightly larger seam on the backside but that isnt a problem since its barely visible anyway. tangent space normals work fine on MIRRORED mesh.. the problems arise when you try to rotate the mesh

gametime

so that means that tangent space normal maps can't be used in games (for fp view)?

btw: are u gonna add different color versions?

MainManiac

dont render against white please

JoshWilkinson

gametime wrote: »

hey olli,

great work, especially on the normals. i was wondering if u ran into any issues with the bake? bc u have the front and backside overlayed, for example the mag. wouldnt that cause errors on the backside?

Not if you slide the overlapped normals over for the bake, and then reapply them after.

Amadreaus

@Haiasi - My bad. Sorry dude, carry on!

Olli.

gametime wrote: »

so that means that tangent space normal maps can't be used in games (for fp view)?

btw: are u gonna add different color versions?

no thats not what it means at all.. tangent space normal maps CAN be used for games, and they work really well unlike object space normal maps (which dont work well dynamically afaik)

as for different color versions, I dont think its possible to blue a gun to another colour than black, so having it be another colour would mean that the gun would have to be painted, which would mean a whole new type of wear on the gun, which is a lot of work so probably wont be doing it..

GarageBay9

Olli. wrote: »

no thats not what it means at all.. tangent space normal maps CAN be used for games, and they work really well unlike object space normal maps (which dont work well dynamically afaik)

as for different color versions, I dont think its possible to blue a gun to another colour than black, so having it be another colour would mean that the gun would have to be painted, which would mean a whole new type of wear on the gun, which is a lot of work so probably wont be doing it..

Various anodizing and phosphate parkerizing treatments can and do produce hues running the gamut from red to tan to gold to purple. Bushmaster was notorious for some purple-hued lowers at one point.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y180/Hanzbucket/PurpleBushy-1.jpg