shot gun model

johnnybevo

ok guys I know this is a newbie question, but I am going to ask anyway.
I plan to model a shotgun.
Is it common practice to model in pieces, then attach them together as one object. like the barrel, the pump and so on. Or do all the surfaces need to be connected? I dont plan to rig it or anything.

Ghostscape

None of the parts need to be connected. If you were rigging it, you would run into significant issues if you welded the pump or break action to the receiver, etc.

When modeling, the most simple rule is that you should merge together objects that will use soft weighting for animation (organics, etc - characters should have their belts welded to their pants, etc), and to keep objects separate if they will be using hard/absolute weighting for animation (ie, the pump on a shotgun). If you are not animating, then the major tradeoff for floating intersecting vs welded intersections is one of vertex count vs texture usage. There are other considerations that are tech dependent (ie, vertex lighting) but those are the major ones.

johnnybevo

Thank you very much Ghostscape This helps me very much