Super Soaker
polycounter lvl 10
Heyo! So for my modeling class I'm designing a gun - it can't shoot bullets, and it has to have a theme. I'm doing a heated water gun - in the middle is the hot water reservoir, and at the front is the heating compartment, which is connected to a gas tank that you carry. I have 3 weeks!
Here is my reference and inspiration sheet:
Here are some preliminary thumbs and studies of me trying to figure out gun anatomy 8[:
Here's my concept! Please critique! Thanks in advance :]
Here is my reference and inspiration sheet:
Here are some preliminary thumbs and studies of me trying to figure out gun anatomy 8[:
Here's my concept! Please critique! Thanks in advance :]
Replies
:thumbup:
Look forward to seeing your progress
I'm not expert in weapons, so I have no valuable crits to make. But talking about design, I think front part should be slightly longer to be proportional to the rest of the gun.
looks like a fun project, good luck!
I ran into a similar problem with mine that Burton pointed out of having glass and metal ammo canisters coming out the bottom making it hard to set down without shattering them.
But if you're planning on shifting the tank or having it be out of something see-through but less fragile than actual glass don't worry about it.
zakhar2 - Thank you, I will angle it back some more.
tehrobster2 - I'm glad to hear you like the design :] I didn't do too much iterating on the tank actually, so I will take a look at the Ghost Busters stuff - forgot about that, that should be some great ref!!
biofrost - *facepalm* Forgot to put an area for reload. Thanks for pointing it out.
Alex - Oo, I agree :0 Either I will redesign the tank, or reinforce/protect it better, as it is made of glass. I really appreciate the crit
Redesign will be posted soon, blockout coming after that - more critique and comments welcome along the way!
Critique and comments welcome!:
Remember that the part of the gun above the primary handle is the part closest to the screen - make sure you have interesting stuff there. It's a great place for pressure gauges and nozzles and intricate pipe connections.
You're going to want take your concept and block model it out roughly and then set up a FPS camera and re-concept over that, I think, to get a better handle on designing to the camera.
Personally I'd look more towards a flamethrower type design with backpack water flasks. And steam cleaners, like those by K
Paul Richards was a machine when it came to this kind of thing
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Ghostscape - Thanks for pointing out the trigger! Lowered it.
Snader - Yeah, I see what you mean. These flamethrower/pressurized water guns are a bit simple though I think, and I want to see what I can do with detail. I'm liking those big triggers though haha, I'll try incorporating that and see if it helps the look a bit - also I am using the idea that this gun hooks up to some backpack water flasks. In the texture I will try to make this more water-like, maybe clean, sleek textures, grays, and blues. Thanks for the crit
konstruct - God, those Paul Richards concepts make me cry lol. My teacher didn't say anything about first person perspective, but I'll assume it's important cuz it's a gun I'm making hehe. I'll try to make it look interesting from there!
So I thought I'd post up some of my progress (first person shot included!) Got most things blocked out, but still need to add some more detail things, probably just above the rear grip, as Ghostscape suggests. This is gonna be my high-poly; I'm slowly adding edge control as I work. When it's done I will be building the low beneath it. Critique and comments welcome:
jramauri - Yeah, when this is done it will be smoothed, I am just posting up some of my mid-way progress in case anyone has crits as I work :]
You should look over the design elements on the gun. Take a look at the laser gun from fear; all shapes and details are straight or angular. The same with the Portal gun but instead of straight, everything is curved and smooth.
Your gun is pointy, straight, smooth, circular, rectangular - random.
I'd also say to get rid of the cage over the tank since it's basically the only thing that makes it a non-bullet gun. And it's not visible in the fps-view at all, unless you know it's there...
While at it, make the tank bigger and more prominent in general.
-c
For the rear sight it looks like you drew some inspiration from the M1, but I think you could really push the shapes and make it more similar/complex. On that note I think the way the site attaches should be more functional and sitting on top of a rail, not just on the body of the gun.
Also maybe just make the gun less square/blocky.
I know this is still a WIP, so I don't know what you plan on doing, but that's just my two cents.
MrNinjutsu - Thank you :]
Carl - I see what you're saying about the shape language - I'll pass over the pieces again to unify them - now that I look at it, I wanna go with more of a 'chamfered' feel, kindof an inbetween of curvy and straight - so that means I will have to soften some edges a little more, especially those rectangular insets on the stock.
I'll play with the cage design some more so that it exposes the tank and better reveals the theme of this gun - thanks for pointing it out! I really appreciate all the crits.
jordon.kocon - Thanks, I will round out the grips some more. How does the sight look to you now? Still need more detail? I did look pretty closely at my reference. I will look into building a rail for it to sit on.
Another question in general - Do my edges look loose enough for a good bake? The cut lines in particular. Here's a buncha shots:
I think the sight just needs work where it attaches to the stock. This reference is from a 'real' gun, so you may have it correct as far as super soakers go, but here is an example of how something such as your sight would mount to the gun.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_BfntzXv0_PE/S79ykdlaaXI/AAAAAAAAAlw/_xMFHSr1r4I/s1600/DSC_6707.JPG
... Basically just notice in the bottom left how the sight or whatever it is is 'clamped' onto a rail, where as on yours its just sitting on the stock.
Either way like I said I really like the new grip though, the design is looking cool.
So far as your edges, personally I would say they could stand to be looser, they are looking farily tight right now.
makecg - Thankie
jordon.kocon - Awesome! Glad you like the grip, I think it caters more to the water theme too, like a 'pump' sort of thing. Thanks also for the rail reference, I'll get on that
Flamethrowers are simple in they're just pumps with pilot lights at the end. Search images for the M1A1 and M2 flamethrower, they're basically a single tube with grips.
- Good technical modelling skill can only do so much for a very weak concept. Right now your concept is a mess, just look at it's silhouette without any of the details.
What I suggest is to play around with primitives to arrange a more compact and sleeker silhouette that reads more cleanly.
Some things I noticed:
- Pipes that stick out and exagerate the width, yes commercial pipes that you could buy out of store do make it more interesting, but functionally it would be better if they were more tightly packed together. See: Compressed Air Guns for some good refs.
- Random cubes that make up the frame and other pieces, uh what are these. Going for a improvised made with whatever look, the shapes just don't fit and make the whole piece look amateur. If you need something to hold parts together then use real world materials that hold things together, tape, string, blocks of wood with screws in and etc. When there is rectangular parts in improv guns they are usually extremely simple and not machined to have odd bumps and cut outs. Impro Guns Zip Guns The gasoline pump for a pistol grip is a great start.
- Tiny little electrical wires out front, uh those usually eat up quite a bit of tris, and in a fps ego view you will barely see them, not to mention functionally they are just asking for something to get snagged and broken via a sudden movement. My suggestion is to get rid of them, or add all the electrical devices in the rear where the detail can be appreciated by the player.
- Try to move the bulk of the stuff to the rear, as it obscures player sight and would make the thing front heavy and harder to turn and aim quickly.
- Using an actual firearm iron sight, my critique is that the sights you used are long distance aperture sights (see the tiny hole on the rear one?). Compressed liquid is not known for distance or accuracy so my suggestion is to change it to something with a bigger sight picture that allows faster target acquistion, say like a shotgun's ghost ring sight, a gutter sight, or including a red dot optic. Also you've modelled the profile of a picatinny rail into the bottom of the rear sight, so you might want to look into including an actual picatinny rail screwed on or something for a lot more authenticity.
Thanks very much for helping me to think more critically about design, and for all the ref links. Hopefully it is looking better now, and not so amateur haha:
Low poly comin' soon, critique and comments welcome!
-Jessica
Lowpoly is looking prety solid, if i were you i'd add an extra edgeloop or two on the stock so that the angle change isn't as sharp, seeming as its right infront of the camera in first person view. Keep it up!
6,627 tris
Did you bake the edge highlight map or derive it from your normal map?
A pretty decent rule of thumb is, twice the radius, 1.5 times the sides.
Now I know you don't have the triangles to work with 10+ sides on most things, but you could use 6, 9, 12 and 15 or something (12/15 for the barrel, 6 for the thin tubes on the side, 8 for the thicker parts there)
If you're running out of polies, take those bendy tubes down to 5 or 6 sides, and maybe take out 3~5 loops per tube - not too many. You should definitely collapse some vertices near the rail, many there don't do anything at all.
The super thin wires near the scope seem to be 6 sided? They don't need to be. 5 or 4 should be enough. Reinvest those tris into more loops to round out the silhouette. The butt/stock could also use some extra polygons and loving.
Luckily, most of these are either easy to rebake or haven't been baked yet so there's not a lot of extra work. I'd say the highest priorities are:
1 - rounding out the barrel
2 - making the silhouette of the thin wires and buttstock better
3 - save some triangles on the tubing
4 - the rest
What kind of budget do you have?
Snader - Thanks very much for the crits on geo - my budget is 10k, so I could definitely afford to make the changes you are suggesting. I've cleaned up the rail since my last wires post. I'll round out the barrel, give the thin wires a better silhouette, and try to optimize the tubing a bit - I see some straight areas now that definitely don't need so many loops.
I don't really see what's wrong with the silhouette of the buttstock, but will take a look at some more reference for it.
For now, here's my color and material plan - mostly anodized stainless steel with rubber for the tubing and plastic for some parts of the grips and stock:
**Edit: Thanks also for that Rule of Thumb pic!!
I do feel like it's missing some sort of serial number or something
lookin good!
I think chamfering that one loop, or even just at 2 points of the loop (where it connects to the receiver and right on top of the floral/curly thingy) should make it a lot smoother. Could be as cheap as 4 triangles.
_
/ \ instead of just /\
Looking at that last side image, you need to move around the middle vertices on the back of the grip a bit. Just smooth the curve a bit.
For textures, it might be cool to have a brand/logo on that panel all the way at the front, and a serial code would probably go well on that chamfered bit of the bottom hose connector.
The red ones I think it's to many square shapes makes it look a bit boring in my opinion.
Green that cylinder could do with a few more sides to it, looks quite blocky now.
Hoping to see a killer texture
Also, I'd love to see the water tank a tad larger since you removed the cage.
Great work though
Note: I'm going to assume that this is an FPS weapon, and am going to make optimization suggestions based on that. Your FPS views seem to indicate that it is for an FPS, otherwise you're not displaying it properly for a 3PS shooter (which are usually over the right shoulder).
There is no reason to have a front-facing cylinder use 8 sides when it isn't visible from the FPS view. It can safely be cut, to be honest.
The sling attachment rings on the stock and under the weapon are eating triangles. They're not really be seen in 3P view and they are hidden in FPS view.
The ridges modeled into the water tank are very subtle and not very useful, you could normal map those. It's a good place to save triangles.
The rail in front of the rear sight (which is obscured by the rear sight in FPV) doesn't need ot have individual rail pieces modeled unless that rear sight is removable.
If this is your wireframe, you need to rework the rail block - the /```\ looking top part of the rail should be floated over the bottom to save triangles - you're continuing those loops through the whole block and probably eating hundreds of triangles for no reason.
you can pull some loops out of the trigger and the foregrip, those are obscured by the hand and aren't the focus of the weapon.
The bottom located hoses should be reduced to 4-sided cylinders past the initial hookup (which can stay as 6) and should be set to a single smoothing group since that facetting looks nasty.
The topmost wires should be 3-sided cylinders. The bottom-front hose should be 4 sided. Set them up with a single smoothing group!
Now, with all of these triangles that you've saved, round out the rear ring on the sight, the barrel, the top of the butt where it meets the receiver below the rear sight, add more edgeloops to the top wires so they're smoother and less chunky, and add more sides to the pipes that run down the length of the side of the gun.
Snader, Stromberg90, KennyTies, Dimfist, Ghostscape: Thanks for the critiques; I really, really appreciate them. I took them all into consideration, and implemented as many as I could within my time constraints. I have a few hours left, so will try to do a little more of the suggested optimizing and finishing up my texture.
Here is my texture progress. I've got my flats on my computer at home and will post them up in a bit. For now, here is what I have in UDK. Critique and comments welcome: