Bushmaster ACR rifle

Yury

EDIT:

Alright. I'm done. Here's final renders in UDK! More pictures can be found on my website




I added a rel-time web 3d preview. The application uses WebGL and runs on Safari, Firefox and Google Chrome. IE and Opera requires additional plug-in.

Bushmaster ACR (View in 3D)


EOTech 552 holographic scope (View in 3D)




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ORIGINAL FIRST POST:



Hey, polycounters!

I haven't posted anything on polycount for a while. It's time to make my first WIP thread. I'm working on a Bushmaster ACR rifle at the moment and here's what I have so far.


High poly WIP









Comments and critiques are always welcome!

SPYFF

Nice wires, you doing right

Yury

Thanks, SPYFF

Computron

edges are way too sharp.

Yury

Thank you, Computron! I'll look into it

Here's some progress on the handle part

Yury

A little bit more progress on the high poly model

Havoc89

Looking good. Very clean looking model.

Yury

Thank you

Polygoblin

Nice and tight.Looking good. Just be careful about super-sharp edges since they never bake well. Some might even have to be softer than intended just to bake properly. Keep going!

Yury

Thanks, Polygoblin! Yeah that's what I heard a lot about edges sharpness. I'm definitelly going to soften all of tem even though it's a bit hard to predict the right softness as I'm fairly new to high poly modeling for normal map baking

Donavonyoung

A really quick way to soften them is with some of the brushes in max within graphite. You can just turn down the strength, and give it a once over. It works pretty well for me.

Yury

Thanks for the tip! I'll give a try for sure

Yury

Magazine is done. Modeling the stock now.

Yury

Almost done with high poly. Need to tweak some edges and model iron sights.

Yury

Working on EOTech 552 scope now

Critiques and comments are always welcome

Havoc89

Looking good, very interested in this.

Yury

Thank you, Havoc!

Yury

I'm done with EOTech 552 scope. Only one more thig left and high poly willbe done and I can move to low poly

Polygoblin

All the edges on your gun are looking much better since the last time I checked this thread! Great work so far. Kickass scope too! You still are going to have some seriously noticable bake issues with those crisp picatinny rails.

Keep it up

Yury

Hey thanks, Polygoblin! Yeah I'm going to remodel tose rails, make them more smoother

Yury

Some more updates. Working on the last piece of HP model which is Magpul MBUS GEN 2 iron sight

Yury

Alrighty, high poly model is finally done. Time to do some low poly modeling

rock

Lovely details Yury, I'm really looking forward to see some progress on the LP.

Keep it up! Cheers.

katana

Yep, Pretty....I'll keep watching.

Yury

Thanks for the comments, guys!

Here's some progress on low poly. 2 109 polys so far

Computron

Those are hard 90 degree angles and also, having them match the round curvature will require a lot of long thin polygons and messy topology.

Oniram

+1 to what computron said, as well as.. ditch all those segments connecting to the rails. if this is intended for a fpv gun then have each of the rails floating on top of the body as different elements, that'll immensely cut down on tri count and itll be less problems to run into later.. or... if this is intended for a 3pv gun.. just make the rail 1 long mesh that is either connected or not, and let the projection do the work.

i think racer445 had an example floating around of the "proper" setup for rails on a low poly. ill see if i can find it.

Yury

Hey thank you for the suggestions, guys!

Computron, I'll definitelly try this approach. You are right, it's better to leave it for normal map, I'm not really happy with this topology.

Oniram, Yeah It's a FPS gun. So you mean I just need to detach the boxes and let them float inside the model right?

Computron

You could have the little rail bits modeled out up close, instanced and rotated randomely to save texture space, like the ones behind the sight, but have the rest fade out into a normal map. As it is right now, you are not going to have fun baking or UVing with that topo.

Yury

Thank you for the suggestion. The reason why I wanna leave the rails as a geometry is that this model is intended as a portfolio piece in the first place, I do want to place it inside UDK or CryENGINE later though.
And I also cleaned the topology a bit more. Now it looks much cleaner I think. I'll post some more updates a bit later

Jet_Pilot

You can save a ton of tris if you separate the top bits of the rails into their own elements. The bottom piece can be just one plane and have the rail bits sitting on top of it, instead of cutting the bottom of the rail into all those sections.

Yury

Thanks, Jet_Pilot! That's exactly what I did.

Here's some more updates. Almost done.
Polys: 2 705
Tris: 4 829

tac0m

Good job so far man. Keep in mind that the handle is almost never seen by either a 1p camera or a 3p camera because the players hand covering the handle. So you could lose some of those edges loops and save some of those polys on the handle and put them somewhere else

It depends on what kind of camera you want this weapon to be made for. If your making a 1p weapon then anything facing the 1p camera will get more polys and probably a bigger texture space as well.

If it's a 3p weapon than you should spread out the polys evenly and the texture space.

I haven't been in the industry too long but i do know that when people look at your work to evaluate your portfolio the best thing you can do is optimize for the specific situation like i mentioned before.

So when you finish this and put it in your portfolio you should mention which camera you intended this for and also display some renders accordingly. 1p weapon should have a 1p camera view of the model with a lot of close ups and a 3p weapon render should have the render around the distance a 3p camera would be. That way an employer will accurately see how your work is displayed in game.

just some tips i've picked up

Yury

Thank you for the tips, tac0m! Yeah there's too much polys on my handle I already optimised it and also some other areas that are not going to be very visible fom the FPV camera

Oniram

lookin better. could we see a shot of this in fpv?
try to still avoid long skinny triangles if you can. they dont do too well with shading.

these are areas to consider still reducing



(i left out the grip because it was already mentioned.. but i agree with it. )

Yury

Yeah, sure. Here's a FP view and some more updates with optimised LP model
For the first person camera I use vertical FOV with 60 degrees angle same as for CryENGINE3

Polys: 2 599
Tris: 4 624

Yury

Alrighty, low poly is done. I think I can start unwrapping

Polys: 3 620
Tris: 6 480

SPYFF

Mmm, tasty! Wait for bakes and texture, great work Yury! Otlichno!

mr_ace

i think this is far too low poly for a next gen fps weapon. Virtually none of the edges are bevelled, which is really important for getting good smoothing and displaying your normal map well. The Scar in crysis with the acog scope on it weighs in at about 8.5k triangles, but you have to bear in mind the crysis guns are heavily fps optimised, so the front facing triangles are all deleted, and and small detail on the other side is removed too, so if it were fully modelled out it would be significantly more. Not to mention crysis came out in 2008 so by no means is the benchmark these days.

Personally, I'd say you should be aiming closer to 10k to 15k triangles. It seems a shame to make such a nice high poly model only then to make such a brutally low low poly model. Check out Jfletchers thread here to get a better idea of poly density. You can see the foreground elements that are going to be seen up close in an fps are very dense and are bevelled a lot, while less important parts like the mag are pretty sparse.

Yury

Hey, SPYFF! Спасибо

mr_ace, well I wanna see how low I can go in terms of poly count and get away with a decent normal map bake. For me it's a learning process, I'm still new to normalmap generation from high poly models. I always can go back and add more polys to it

Yury

I lost it! My model is gone! My stupid HDD died a couple of days ago and I didn't back it up. So much time was spent for nothing.... well except I got some more experience on modeling, but still.... :(:(

Computron

I know dat feel brah.

SPYFF

now i sad a bit...

Yury

Actually I got lucky this time at least with this model. Apparently my friend had an early version of this model where I was still working on high poly it's about 90% done. So I need to finish it again and start on low poly one more time. As for my other 3ds max projects.... they are gone

Nasser

Ahh, that sucks, man. It's vital to always remember to always backup your work! Anyway, can't wait to see your completed low-poly, keep up the great work.

Yury

Thank you. Yeah now I'll back up all my data twice, just in case. It will take a while, but I will definitely finish this model. I'll post some updates ASAP

SPYFF

Just one idea: save your max files in Dropbox/Skydrive or etc. live-sync folder

Yury

Thanks, SPYFF! I already thought about Dropbox

Computron

better yet, set up your project directory inside your dropbox folder.

cptSwing

Yeah. Dropbox has saved my ass quite a couple of times already, with their versioning system and all.

Phrexeus

I have SyncToy auto backup every day to my backup hard drive.

Dropbox is a good idea, but not for the whole project folder because of the 2GB limit (my projects are often into the GBs with all the .psd textures and high poly exports).

Very nice gun, glad you didn't totally lose it.