Walther P38

Oniram

So im finally back to working on personal things. Been goin at this on and off for a while but i put in time when i can. Figured id get a thread started up for it so i can get some critique on it before moving on to any heavy detail.

I just wanted to get some thoughts and opinions regarding the model as a whole.. edges being hard/soft enough, accurate to reference, etc. i have already had a suggestion to make the trigger guard a bit thicker, which i will do, but aside from that.. im open to anything.

so here's what ive got so far.

pseudoBug

That little "lip" on the end of the barrel looks a bit odd. . .


...also there doesn't seem to be any bevel, or roundness to the frame, specifically on the handle.

Oniram

alright. awesome spotting that. most of my references do not have that lip but the one im using to model off of (accompanied with other angles) does have that, and i thought it was an interesting feature since it is kind of rare among these guns i guess. but now taking a second look at it, it could definitely use some refining to not look so soft.

here is a reference of that.

http://www.atarian-alps.com/p38n/images/2.jpg

Racer445

bit busy right now so i can't comment on accuracy, but right off the bat i can tell you that your edge widths are inconsistent, giving the model a really strange weight. the slide is extremely thick, while the sights and frame are thinner?

grip is very blobby too. that kind of shape should be defined well to avoid it looking melted.

pseudoBug

Huh. . .interesting. Norwegians.

Yeah, if you were to keep it, maybe harden the edge up, but also not so thin and weak looking. Even in the refs it's a bit thicker it would seem. The ratios of the steps on the end are off a bit too. The lip at the very end is close to if not longer than the step off of the sight bevel. . .thing. . .

Beef it up a bit. .

Alberto Rdrgz

yeah, racer basically pointed to what i said in the WAYWO thread. I made a paintover to kind of illustrate the edge consistency i'm suggesting.

Altho, i over did it at some spots.(sorry)

Oniram

thanks for that alberto.

i have gone ahead and addressed some of those issues BUT for judging of edges to compare thickness, as they appear irregular from one another, know that the front of the slide is not the intended edge thickness i am going to have, since that part is actually chamfered on the gun i will be doing that, but trying to keep the edges fairly wide.

heres a bit of an example of what im talking about with the front of the slide.




also, racer.. would the preferred edge width be something along how the slide is (originally) or how the frame is? getting them consistent is no problem but i guess im wondering what would be the proper edge width to have without it looking, as you have so humorously put, like mashed potatoes.

Racer445

basically just look at it from fps view and zoom in and out; do the edges alias or are they still visible? from there you can tweak according to reference.

Alberto Rdrgz

yeah what racer said, what i usually do to check the density is zoom out and see if any edges start stair stepping, if it blurs you're clear (for the most part).

Oniram

thanks for the tips guys. it definitely helped to back away from the model a bit and see if the detail still remained. ive done some adjusting on the edges to help it feel a bit more uniform all around. fixed up some issues like the blobbyness of the grip, thickness of triggerguard, and ive added a few small details. what do you think...are the edges looking better?

ill start moving on to more of the smaller details for now. aside from that only thing really left to do is finish off the back end and deal with the asymmetry.

i was messing with some lighting and rendering just for presentation's sake. so here's a new render.

Alberto Rdrgz

way more consistent edge density with this update!

lordsarum

great job man, would be cool to carve some text in to it

Oniram

@alberto: awesome. glad to hear that its going in the right direction now.

@lordsarum: yeah definitely. ive got a bunch of references with carvings of serial numbers, nazi eagles, etc, and ill more than likely be putting that in during the texturing phase. just something to add in quickly to the normal map.

i did also have a small desire to do something like this

http://www.rockislandauction.com/photos/52/p_standard/ZRV3-T-CU2-H.jpg

but i think the details would be way too small to see from any distance in realtime, especially if im limiting myself to a texture size that would be optimal for in-game. but we'll see.