Freeze Ray MiniGun
polycounter lvl 10
So new project I'm working on
the parameters are we need to design and model a "something" gun. So I went with a freeze ray cause I love all things cold blue and icy.
I'm trying to base the shape and function off a mini-gun/gatling gun sort of design, or for those like myself who are not well versed in guns, it's gonna be like Heavy's gun from TF2
I plan on pulling ref from lots of places including the master of of the bad-ass ice weapon Mr. Freeze
EDIT Nearly done, got eh spec fix and working correctly, found where to turn on bloom in Marmoset so the emissives look like emissives now. Getting very close to done, any feedback would be great! This thing's due at 3 tomorrow.
EDIT: High Poly finished
Going forward I'll be grabbing even more ref, especially for material call-outs and smaller details
I've started doing a few exploratory thumbs, I'm not a concept artist by any stretch of the imagination, just trying to get some interesting shapes down before I start blocking things out in 3D.
*EDIT removed some images to make this thread more manageable*
I'll be doing a lot more thumbs, I'm currently leaning heavily towards #5 myself, although that could just be because I put the most detail into that one.
Once I get the gun design down depending on how the final one looks it will either have some sort of power source on it, or it will attach via a tube to a backpack power unit that I'll design to complement the final gun idea.
I'm liking the idea of lots of lights along the body of the gun and the barrel (like that row of circular ones on a couple of the designs above) I think it would be cool to have them light up as the gun gets rotating and ready to fire starting from those closest to the trigger all the way out to ones near the end of the barrel.
I've got 1 week to get the concept down, blocked out in 3D and start the high poly, and 3 weeks total to finish the gun so any and all crits would be fantastic.
the parameters are we need to design and model a "something" gun. So I went with a freeze ray cause I love all things cold blue and icy.
I'm trying to base the shape and function off a mini-gun/gatling gun sort of design, or for those like myself who are not well versed in guns, it's gonna be like Heavy's gun from TF2
I plan on pulling ref from lots of places including the master of of the bad-ass ice weapon Mr. Freeze
EDIT Nearly done, got eh spec fix and working correctly, found where to turn on bloom in Marmoset so the emissives look like emissives now. Getting very close to done, any feedback would be great! This thing's due at 3 tomorrow.
EDIT: High Poly finished
Going forward I'll be grabbing even more ref, especially for material call-outs and smaller details
I've started doing a few exploratory thumbs, I'm not a concept artist by any stretch of the imagination, just trying to get some interesting shapes down before I start blocking things out in 3D.
*EDIT removed some images to make this thread more manageable*
I'll be doing a lot more thumbs, I'm currently leaning heavily towards #5 myself, although that could just be because I put the most detail into that one.
Once I get the gun design down depending on how the final one looks it will either have some sort of power source on it, or it will attach via a tube to a backpack power unit that I'll design to complement the final gun idea.
I'm liking the idea of lots of lights along the body of the gun and the barrel (like that row of circular ones on a couple of the designs above) I think it would be cool to have them light up as the gun gets rotating and ready to fire starting from those closest to the trigger all the way out to ones near the end of the barrel.
I've got 1 week to get the concept down, blocked out in 3D and start the high poly, and 3 weeks total to finish the gun so any and all crits would be fantastic.
Replies
*EDIT removed some images to make this thread more manageable*
I'm liking #10 I might try adding a bit more of #5's details to it
Any crits would be great or even just opinions on which of the thumbs works the best, that'll help me narrow down which design to pick.
I'll probably work on the design for another day or two and then pick one tighten it up and start the block out.
one major issue i'd like to point out for you though, is that most freeze/frost/ice/cold/blizzard/whatever guns are rays, just like you said yourself, so having it in gatling form would suggest its firing shards or something the turns whatever it touches icy, but in a rapid fire bullet storm way, not a ray or thrower style.
SO with that in mind, maybe think of how you want the gun fire first: ray, bullets, bolts, bombs. then based on your ammo, think of the best way to carry/load/and fire
like you could make a gatling gun that shoots shards that are super cooled, and the freeze expands after firing as the initial bullet warms. loads like a gatling gun, with a belt that feeds from a backpack.
or maybe it fires little ice grenades that have to form within the gun, and it builds up like a car piston: part one in, part two in, mix, fired out, explode!(icy of course), freeeeeze. in this case maybe you need two fuel packs like flamethrowers.
I see awesomeness coming out of this, just keep with it
Although it might be too close to bullets... Cause Don banned using bullets as ammo for these guns since that would make things too simple
I shall have to ponder this...
So I used the mini-gun shape as inspiration and it's mostly about how the gun is held and the barrel is one single large tube rather than several barrels.
The idea is that the gun takes ammo in two different canisters that screw into the bottom of the gun, the canisters are different sizes and shapes so people don't mix them up.
The canisters contain compounds that, when mixed create a liquid that cools rapidly when it comes in contact with oxygen. So if you hit a guy with this stream it will splash across his body and within 5-10 seconds will freeze completely solid it will last for several hours at room temperature and generally by the time it thaws victims have died or contracted severe hypothermia.
The barrel is heated and rotates during firing in order to avoid the compound freezing to the gun rendering it inoperable. The lights along the side and barrel provide a visual indication to the operator (or the player if this were an enemy weapon) that the gun is rotation at sufficient speed and is heated well enough for the gun to begin firing, this warm up procedure is started with the button on the back of the trigger joystick.
*EDIT removed some images to make this thread more manageable*
Any more crits would be great (does the scale look right?, Should I put the canisters in a different location? Is the gun too thick from the top view? etc), otherwise I'll work on adding a bit more detail to the design and then get the concept approved by my teacher so I can start the block-out.
I think I'm just about ready for the block-out stage
EDIT removing some images to make this thread more manageable
And here's a version with some ref and call-outs attached
Gonna get some feedback (hopefully) from you guys and my teacher and then after any changed I think it'll be time to start blocking things out.
The design will be changing as I move forward especially when I start trying add more detail in the high-poly stage, but so far I'm pretty happy with the major shapes, but I would definitely love some other opinions
And yes the idea is that the forward handle can pivot, I'll spend a bit more time solving the specifics to make it read better once start on the high poly.
EDIT removing some images to make the thread more manageable
Hmmm... maybe have one or both of the canisters come out the side instead... Possibly replace the two biggest lights on either side and I'll shrink them down a bit so they don't look ridiculous jutting out of the gun.
EDIT Shifted things, I like it alot better actually; also I added a piece on the bottom that, with a whole lot of reference, will be a connection point for a tripod stand so it can be used as a stationary gun as well.
It's been approved so I'm moving on to the block-out, any other crits would be great as I'll still be making design changes through to the high poly.
Once I get instructor approval in this it'll be time to jump into High Poly!
EDIT removing some images to make this thread a bit easier to manage
As Always crits are very much appreciated
I found an old post on here that had some nice Mental Ray mats for high poly rendering and I'd say they're a decided improvement over basic Max renders.
Still lots of work to go, especially on the main body block and the back handle. Once I finish those I'll move on to smaller details.
I'm getting close to needing to build the low I think, I pumped up the middle barrel ring like it should have been in the first place and I added some more organic curved areas as per my teachers suggestion
Crits would be great especially since I think I'll be moving on to the low making major changes much harder
Here's some feedback. Remember - pixel quality and resolution is king!
Gonna start in the low and have it done by this Saturday at latest
Not really a "mini gun" though as the title of the thread states. More like a hand cannon or something.
@ysalex Yeah I did sort of like the square bits but they really were unnecessary and boring, and since there's already so many lights on the thing they were kind of excessive
Thanks for the comments guys
Anyways here's my first pass on the low, it's sitting at 7,176 tris right now. Which I think for an FPS gun is reasonable (or maybe even under budget), but correct me if I'm wrong, I might look into adding more polys to the cylinder lights and the rings on the barrel potentially.
Also I realized that as much of a nice learning experience it was, cutting the lights into the high poly was unnecessary and I might end up modeling them as their own pieces to adi baking them correctly to the floating geo. But we'll see how things go baking the current high.
I'll probably also bake out some sheets with several screw/rivet details to overlay onto the main bake for some added details
I got it unwrapped and finally (with some difficulty) baked. Only to be informed of a quirk of UDK that I didn't know of about mirroring pieces and how the UVs have to be oriented.
So after making some alterations to the UVs I've got things ready to bake again. I just can't find my render to texture window >.> <.<... Switching between two screens and one has made it go into hiding and I can't seem to get LoneRobot's script for fixing it to work.
So until tomorrow when I get back to my dual monitors and bake out my final normal and AO pass, here's a color test out of Marmoset. I'll be rendering out of Marmoset for the rest of this project.
Just Diffuse, Emissive and default all over spec from Marmoset. HEAVILY WIP no details put in so far just seeing it I still like the original color scheme. There will be more little sections of colors in places one I get the normals baked. I just decided not to guess for their location and just check if I like the rhythm of the major forms with these colors.
*EDIT: just noticed that the middle ring has emissive going too far to the left side of it, no need to point it out, I'll fix that for next time*
The diffuse is still just flat color with the Normal (desaturated and with High pass) and AO maps overlayed.
I'm getting a weird smoothing error or two along the main body that I'm going to look into fixing. Otherwise I'm going to start adding wear and tear to this thing, scratches grime, dirt etc, and baking out those couple detail normals for rivets and bolts and stuff. Also need to paint out the mirror seams on the normal map still.
I've changed the color scheme to a lighter, bluer version that one of my friends suggested.
I started adding scratches to the gun in raised parts that would see wear, nothing major yet. Haven't had a chance to do grime and dirt yet.
I've been having an issue with some faceting on my model. Marmoset's basic specular seems to be picking up the edges of low poly, specifically diagonal cuts on the main body portion. I'm not sure what that is and I'm really hoping it has more to do with the way flat spec is handled in Marmoset than something else. I retriangulated some part of the main piece to try and fix the issue and then rebaked, but that seems to have actually added to the problem somehow... If anyone else has encountered this problem I could use some advice.
Still to come
-Painting out the normal seam on the mirrored pieces (still need to go over the specifics of the tutorial for doing that)
-Detail normals
-Grime Dirt etc
-texture detail (ie making the brushed metal look different than the painted stuff and the plastic stuff etc)
-Spec map to start differentiating the materials, and hopefully fix the faceting issue.
I think your edge wear is a bit uniform. I would go back in later with a round brush with pressure on opacity and soften up some of the jaggedness some.
Imo you should make the handles of your gun the light color on your barrel because right now they're just blending into the body - just a thought, otherwise your colors look pretty unified and nice to me :] Excited for speccc
I reworked a bunch of stuff following a very nice tutorial I found/was linked and I'm liking things a lot more not, everything's much more subtle in most areas
Also I finally got a proper spec on it. Although I'm pretty sure I went and make it too dark overall as I'm having trouble coaxing some shine out of it without blowing out the matte pieces too... I'll lighten it up for the next post so things start looking like metal again.
There's still one or two problem spots but I think they're just an issue of triangulation so I'll go in and make those few changes to the mesh and maybe re-bake the normal if things end up too distorted.
I'd really love some tips to push this thing further as it's due Saturday, I may work on it some more once summer starts though, maybe make a turret stand and a pedestal for it.
Diffuse
Spec
And Normal