AK47

stefan_armand · May 2016

Hello! This is an AK47 I just finished creating (mostly) using Blender and Substance Painter. It has 6970 tris, and I created it especially for use in Unreal and Unity. I just started work on animation, but its not an aspect I know very well, so it will take some time. Hope you like it.
model

jwills · May 2016

Hi Stephan, This is not a bad first attempt, I can see you've got a decent understanding of the 3D pipeline and software tools.

Since you made this for Unreal engine im going to assume you were going for a realistic look. With that said I feel like you could really benefit from looking at some of the pro's work and aiming for that level, luckily the AK47 rifle is a very popular choice and is never in short supply for reference. Take a look at this artstation link, really strong asset, nice modelling and texturing.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/n2o81

The main things that strikes me are
1. matching the shapes of the AK, for example, your handle is quite blocky, whereas an Ak's handle is alot smoother and rounder, otherwise it would be very painful to hold

collect loads of reference photos and try your best to match the shapes and details such as screw heads and bolts.
2. Texturing - Really look into using Substance Painters Texture Baker to bake normal maps,AO maps, curvature ect, this is the first step into utilizing painter properly and making the most of its smart materials and masks and you can start building up some really nice looking textures

Apologies if this seems a bit harsh, im no means and expert at all, but I feel if you rolled back to the modelling stage a made a nice looking High poly , this could be a great looking asset. Just my two cents

dpadam450 · May 2016

Your scratches are way to thick, long and deep. If you look at just the magazine, it has those thin vertical bumps as a physical characteristic of the magazine, but you have a giant scratch that seems to have take a chunk across the whole magazine horizontally. That isn't ready as just a tiny surface scratch/ding from a rock or throwing it on the ground.

Same with the wood. Those big scratches make it seems like the material is much softer than it is. I've never done wood in substance before but I think you could use a much more interesting wood texture that has a better looking diffuse.

Also, what is your texture resolution? It looks a bit low / texture doesn't look very sharp.

jwills · May 2016

Hi Stephan, This is not a bad first attempt, I can see you've got a decent understanding of the 3D pipeline and software tools.

Since you made this for Unreal engine im going to assume you were going for a realistic look. With that said I feel like you could really benefit from looking at some of the pro's work and aiming for that level, luckily the AK47 rifle is a very popular choice and is never in short supply for reference. Take a look at this artstation link, really strong asset, nice modelling and texturing.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/n2o81

The main things that strikes me are
1. matching the shapes of the AK, for example, your handle is quite blocky, whereas an Ak's handle is alot smoother and rounder, otherwise it would be very painful to hold

collect loads of reference photos and try your best to match the shapes and details such as screw heads and bolts.
2. Texturing - Really look into using Substance Painters Texture Baker to bake normal maps,AO maps, curvature ect, this is the first step into utilizing painter properly and making the most of its smart materials and masks and you can start building up some really nice looking textures

Apologies if this seems a bit harsh, im no means and expert at all, but I feel if you rolled back to the modelling stage a made a nice looking High poly , this could be a great looking asset. Just my two cents

jwills · May 2016

Hi Stephan, This is not a bad first attempt, I can see you've got a decent understanding of the 3D pipeline and software tools.

Since you made this for Unreal engine im going to assume you were going for a realistic look. With that said I feel like you could really benefit from looking at some of the pro's work and aiming for that level, luckily the AK47 rifle is a very popular choice and is never in short supply for reference. Take a look at this artstation link, really strong asset, nice modelling and texturing.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/n2o81

The main things that strikes me are
1. matching the shapes of the AK, for example, your handle is quite blocky, whereas an Ak's handle is alot smoother and rounder, otherwise it would be very painful to hold

collect loads of reference photos and try your best to match the shapes and details such as screw heads and bolts.
2. Texturing - Really look into using Substance Painters Texture Baker to bake normal maps,AO maps, curvature ect, this is the first step into utilizing painter properly and making the most of its smart materials and masks and you can start building up some really nice looking textures

Apologies if this seems a bit harsh, im no means and expert at all, but I feel if you rolled back to the modelling stage a made a nice looking High poly , this could be a great looking asset. Just my two cents

stefan_armand · May 2016

Thank you for the replies! That AK example looks very nice, true. About the handle, indeed, I noticed it too, but kind of late in the texturing process. I will see what I can do to make it look more comfortable without breaking too much.

And I projected the normal maps using a high poly model, and then baked from the normals the curvature, etc . Maybe its not always so obvious because I had a lot of errors initially and had to correct said normals quite a lot. But I will try to work a little to make it more reflective somehow.

And about the scratches, I was wondering if I maybe made I should work on them some more. I will play around with the height and roughness. But the magazine deep scratches I like, I don't think I'm gonna mess around with them too much.

AK47

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