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QBZ26 Gen 2 Carbine

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Amsterdam Hilton Hotel insane polycounter
Haven't done a game-res gun in some time so here we go.

I think I want to do both a base version and an "operator" one with some attachments and paint and stuff but no promises.

C&C welcome. Praise also welcome. Even insults welcome. This is a free comment zone

Concept by Weihao Wei: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/YGZR3

HP, done with the proboolean / dynamesh workflow I detailed here http://polycount.com/discussion/168610/proboolean-dynamesh-hardsurface-workflow-tutorial/p1





Test bakes at about 18k tris. I squeezed it all into one 4k map, for a production project I'd use a few 2ks for the sake of performance with texture streaming, but for personal work it's just more convenient to work in one file.




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  • jaker3278
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    jaker3278 polycounter lvl 8
    This is going to be good, watching with interest. Having a look at the concept I personally would go with the Tactical model with the angled for grip , holotech sight and peq unit more the merrier, shows more of your skills and shows you can handle multiple objects etc. 
  • Starkist
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    Starkist polycounter lvl 9
    Sick work as always!! Do you create the low poly by cleaning the proboolean object as you describe in the dynamesh process thread?
  • Amsterdam Hilton Hotel
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    Amsterdam Hilton Hotel insane polycounter
    Yeah I'm still working about the same way as described in there.

    I try to keep density parametric across all operands as much as possible, meaning using cylinders so you can change the side counts, turbosmooth on poly objects so that you can ramp down the subd, and chamfer so the segments can be dialed down. If you do this consistently then you don't really end up having to manually decimate anything or retopologize.

    There's still manual work stitching up n-gons, Sometimes Turn to Poly is good enough but sometimes it triangulates things awkwardly. I also add control edges manually to make the normals more precise.
  • Polygoblin
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    Polygoblin polycounter
    haha I wasn't going to post a useless comment like "damn great work, as usual Ben". But you said praise also welcome. Killer
  • Deforges
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    Deforges polycounter lvl 11
    C&C welcome. Praise also welcome. Even insults welcome. This is a free comment zone 

    Hey Ben, Just wanted to say your models are tacky and I hate you.


    nah looks cool, looking forward for more.

  • FourtyNights
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    FourtyNights polycounter
    @Amsterdam Hilton Hotel Just curious, since you're one of the true professional hard surface artists here, are these vertices usually for controlling the shading of low poly? Even though they are on a flat surface and has no influence to the silhouette of the high poly. Just to avoid awkward topology with long and thin triangles, am I right?

    I actually used this "technique(?)" on my recent lantern model. Especially on those holes there, because otherwise I would've had long and thin triangles by collapsing those edges:
    http://i.imgur.com/FEEImxO.jpg

    And here it's without wireframe. The shading isn't pretty, BUT normal map baked onto that perfectly by looking really good on Marmoset, so no problem. Everything here is on one smoothing group, no hard edges, to avoid gaps in the normal map, and also I didn't have to split UVs more than I needed because of the lack of those. http://i.imgur.com/zUyZVrv.jpg

    But I'm just always thinking with optimization by taking every wasted poly away which aren't affecting to the silhouette of high poly, but I think it's okay to leave those "shading controlling vertices" laying around for the sake of less gradients in the normal map, right? This "issue" is also something which isn't highlighted enough well in the technical sticky threads. Correct me if I'm wrong though.

    Pointed out few things on the flat surfaces of your model which wondered me (But I think those edge loops on the magazine are really not necessary though). There might be more of these, but at least you get the point:



    Or is this me just nitpicking? :D

    EDIT: "I also add control edges manually to make the normals more precise." Oh, you actually stated this just before, lol. But anyway, just wanted to know more about this. Optimization to the max vs. controlling the low poly shading.

    BUT, I can see the benefit especially on mipmapping when textures get to lower resolutions where your original low poly shading starts to push through low rez normal maps.
  • MurderzMedia
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    MurderzMedia polycounter lvl 4
    Bolton strikes again!!! Nice gun mate.
  • Pedro Amorim
  • Amsterdam Hilton Hotel
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    Amsterdam Hilton Hotel insane polycounter
    @FourtyNights

    If you want to optimize for tricount alone then you could do without many of the supporting edges I put in there, and some parts that are connected could even be floating. I like to use the extra edges because it makes the normal map have to do less work to correct the mesh normals, meaning less gradients. This is helpful if the normal map ever needs to be downsized, and for edge-finding algorithms, and for the unfortunate cases where tangent basis differs in the renderer from what you baked in. It also reduces skewing in the bake caused by the cage being pushed out along vertex normals.

    I think that cages and bakes should never be manually edited because those edits come back to haunt you if revisions ever come down and you need to re-create them. I always want to be able to auto-push a cage from the LP, do a new bake, and have maps that are "ready to go." So if there's ever a very long plane with some interior details (especially near edges) it can be smart to add extra geo to help preserve them. Otherwise you can end up having to combine bakes or paint out a skew map or whatever. Test bakes help you identify where these areas are.

    I don't really specifically optimize for minimum triangle count. I think in COD:AW we had a 60,000 triangle gun. Every game, engine, and client is going to be different but when the client is myself I don't worry about it too much.

    There's also a few places where I just forget to delete pointless edges. These guns have a lot of features on them and sometimes you develop perceptual blindness after working for a bit. I've fixed this area since but it's a good example:


  • FourtyNights
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    FourtyNights polycounter
    Thanks for explaining, AHH. Now I know it's not always that critical to leave some supporting edges here and there if it helps to keep both the shading of the low poly and less gradients in the normal map.

    But yeah, I've had moments where I forgot to delete some unnecessary loops, and the model was already UV'd and baked. The frustration was there, but of course I had to go back to fix it and redo UV's from that certain part and bake again. Luckily we have MT3's baker which is just amazing for quick iterating and baking/re-baking. No exploding or external cages. :)

  • Amsterdam Hilton Hotel
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    Amsterdam Hilton Hotel insane polycounter
    WIP texture update

  • jaker3278
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    jaker3278 polycounter lvl 8
    Looking good ! edge wear is very believable, are you hand painting it? 

  • aaronmwolford
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    aaronmwolford polycounter lvl 8
    Looking good Ben and a super clean model. Some of the metals on the receiver look a bit muddy, but I assume this is still early WIP. The dents/pitting on the metal looks really nice too. It may be the render, but it looks like you could use a slight sharpen on everything. 
  • Amsterdam Hilton Hotel
  • Amsterdam Hilton Hotel
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    Amsterdam Hilton Hotel insane polycounter
    jaker3278 said:
    Looking good ! edge wear is very believable, are you hand painting it?
    There's an automated level of wear and then painting and hand-adjustments over it

    I think the base version is nearly wrapped up... still thinking about doing some attachments for an alt version




  • jaker3278
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    jaker3278 polycounter lvl 8
    Looks very slick, reminds me of COD:AW with the level of crispness and the lighting setup you have. Its going to sit very well in your portfolio thats for sure. Can i ask what HDRI you are using i'm always on the look out for good ones, If i can download it somewhere that would be cool. 
  • Klawd
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    Klawd polycounter lvl 7
    Awesome work! Love the texturing, particularly of stock, grip, and magazine. ;) gj
  • Amsterdam Hilton Hotel
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    Amsterdam Hilton Hotel insane polycounter
    jaker3278 said:
    Can i ask what HDRI you are using i'm always on the look out for good ones, If i can download it somewhere that would be cool. 
    It's called Cathedral_03, I think it's from a free pack Joost did, check his gumroad. Looks like this


    suppressor model tonight


  • Amsterdam Hilton Hotel
  • Bek
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    Bek interpolator
    Looks really good; you're really making the most of the normal map. If I had to nitpick (and I really do in order to say anything critical) I'd say the edge-wear on the inner parts of the rear post seem a little over-exaggerated, or perhaps follow the edge too exactly — I wouldn't expect those inner corners to be as damaged, but if you have ref that shows otherwise I'll shut up. The fat edge wear does look good though, and from a distance, which might be of greater value. Some of the renders have odd noise in them too (look at the lower part of the rear post in the ironsight view pic); is that tb3 GI noise?

    Another thing I noticed is on the concept, below the bolt, the inset there has the serial number; on yours it looks like the magazine plastic material is showing through, at first I was wondering if that was meant to be a faked hole to see the mag for some reason, but that doesn't seem right. But if it's not a fake hole why is it rough plastic? If it's an inset to support the mag surely it would be steel.

    AND just because I'm a total bastard; slight eye twitch at the center vertex on those cylinder caps on that suppressor; what is it about 3ds max that causes this to happen to everyone :p I assume it caps cylinders that way by default, because if they're being manually added in, I need to know... why? I know, it's only two extra verts, but it doesn't need to exist in the first place. And, at least with modo, if you push out a cylinder capped like that, say when making a cage, it's slightly distorted, but flat if you leave it as an n-gon. That example is a fairly exaggerated push, so I doubt it would ever really matter when it comes to skewing from the bake, but still... Perhaps 3ds max has better behaviour here though. That's my ultra nitpick/irrational hatred out of the way anyhow.
  • Prime8
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    Prime8 interpolator
    Excellent stuff as usual!
    The workflow looks like fun, I don't have Zbrush to try it though.

    My only critiques are not critiques, more a question of taste
    First the markings, I would prefer the Chinese version as in the concept.
    Second, the iron sight has a very strong horizontal line, makes it look a bit bulky. Breaking it up a bit might help, something like this.
    Bit late in the process for this.




  • Amsterdam Hilton Hotel
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    Amsterdam Hilton Hotel insane polycounter
    Prime8 said:
    My only critiques are not critiques, more a question of taste
    First the markings, I would prefer the Chinese version as in the concept.
    Second, the iron sight has a very strong horizontal line, makes it look a bit bulky. Breaking it up a bit might help, something like this.
    Bit late in the process for this.
    I think you're right. I may go back and rework this stuff

    Bek said:
    Some of the renders have odd noise in them too (look at the lower part of the rear post in the ironsight view pic); is that tb3 GI noise?
    Yes, it gets kind of bad at grazing angles like in FPV

    Bek said:
    Another thing I noticed is on the concept, below the bolt, the inset there has the serial number; on yours it looks like the magazine plastic material is showing through, at first I was wondering if that was meant to be a faked hole to see the mag for some reason, but that doesn't seem right. But if it's not a fake hole why is it rough plastic? If it's an inset to support the mag surely it would be steel.
    The lower rec is mirrored so I couldn't get any text in there, I just texturized it to look like a grip point or something. I might do a text sheet so I can float more writing and icons across the gun on cards.

    Bek said:
    AND just because I'm a total bastard; slight eye twitch at the center vertex on those cylinder caps on that suppressor; what is it about 3ds max that causes this to happen to everyone :p I assume it caps cylinders that way by default, because if they're being manually added in, I need to know... why? I know, it's only two extra verts, but it doesn't need to exist in the first place. And, at least with modo, if you push out a cylinder capped like that, say when making a cage, it's slightly distorted, but flat if you leave it as an n-gon. That example is a fairly exaggerated push, so I doubt it would ever really matter when it comes to skewing from the bake, but still... Perhaps 3ds max has better behaviour here though. That's my ultra nitpick/irrational hatred out of the way anyhow.
    I used to avoid fan caps for cylinders for tricount reasons, but now I use them because 3ds max seems to use contiguous edges to inform vert normals, at least for pushing a mesh out (for the cage). So at least in 3ds, using the fan cap instead of a ladder cap ensures an even projection because the outer verts all have the same angle to their inner cap edge.



  • ComradeDispenser
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    ComradeDispenser polycounter lvl 3
    up your multisampling to avoid noise on local reflections
  • Amsterdam Hilton Hotel
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    Amsterdam Hilton Hotel insane polycounter
    I take all shots with 2:1 render resolution, 4x GI shadow resolution, 16x or 32x supersampling.

    Toolbag itself has artifacts with grazing angles that are not resolution dependent.
  • Amsterdam Hilton Hotel
  • Maxilator
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    Maxilator polycounter lvl 8
    Looks very good, but there is something about the material that rubs me the wrong way, It might be that I find the scratches too concentrated on the edges, Perhaps the underlying metal revealed by the wear is a bit too light in the albedo.
  • Amsterdam Hilton Hotel
  • Amsterdam Hilton Hotel
  • Bek
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    Bek interpolator
    Very cool. Again nitpicks; maybe that U shaped deep scratch on the mag is a bit odd considering it continues over the extrusions and around the tapering at the front. I'd also consider just disabling the GI to get rid of that noise; does GI even really make a difference for a prop like this? Do a quick on/off comparison. When I tried it in the tb3 trial I don't recall thinking much of it, it's probably more for small scenes.
  • Klawd
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    Klawd polycounter lvl 7
    Such attention to detail! Great job as always @Amsterdam Hilton Hotel !
  • Amsterdam Hilton Hotel
  • gfelton
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    gfelton polycounter lvl 6
    Those metal textures are giving me the hardest surface
  • Amsterdam Hilton Hotel
  • jaker3278
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    jaker3278 polycounter lvl 8
    Just a quick question, how do you generate your normal map information? do you use bitmap to material and generate them or do you use quixel? 
  • Amsterdam Hilton Hotel
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    Amsterdam Hilton Hotel insane polycounter
    jaker3278 said:
    Just a quick question, how do you generate your normal map information? do you use bitmap to material and generate them or do you use quixel? 
    I'm still using xnormal + photoshop. I'm a dinosaur. Don't copy me on this.

    I use substance designer / painter at work and sooner or later I'll switch over to that at home as well.

    Sorry for no-update bump, next post will have some content
  • Youshi
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    Youshi polycounter lvl 3
    jaker3278 said:
    Just a quick question, how do you generate your normal map information? do you use bitmap to material and generate them or do you use quixel? 
    I'm still using xnormal + photoshop. I'm a dinosaur. Don't copy me on this.

    To be honest, still use Xnormal on occasion, I'm not sure if it's me but sometimes i get the freakiest things in Substance bakes, sometimes I bake in both and overlay them and take the best of both worlds hahahah.

    I also much prefer AO bakes in Xnormal, they're not all that great for procedural work, but they work better as actual AO maps, but again. This might be just me.
  • gfelton
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    gfelton polycounter lvl 6
    Youshi said:
    snip
    If you have Toolbag 3 give that a shot. It's really really good at baking. Also xnormal is really good to keep around since it always works. ;)
  • kohg
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    kohg polycounter lvl 8
    gfelton said:
    Youshi said:
    snip
    If you have Toolbag 3 give that a shot. It's really really good at baking. Also xnormal is really good to keep around since it always works. ;)
    Toolbag baking tools are great. Stoped using substance for baking, but still xnormal for height maps since it doesn't seem to work in toolbag.
  • SaintSellotape
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    SaintSellotape polycounter lvl 6
    How to put the camera in the marmoset to get a view from the sight?
  • Amsterdam Hilton Hotel
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    Amsterdam Hilton Hotel insane polycounter
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