Texturing feedback - AKM

Replies

• 
  Offline / Send Message

  sacboi godlike master sticky

  Dec 20 2025

  By "military wear and tear" assume means throughout its service life? Because at the moment as someone that had trained for years with similar grade ordnance + manufactured using the same materials which from my experience, can't recall seeing anything close to the level of damage applied, especially to those metal components on the receiver assembly, as well. 

  
  

  To start with, I'd recommend more research e.g  processes how these weapons were made - their materials - environments where deployed and primarily routine maintenance either in the field or otherwise.      

  1 · Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
• 
  Offline / Send Message

  poopipe grand marshal polycounter

  Dec 21 2025

  That  sort of research/thinking is key to getting a believable look. 
  if this is an 'in service' weapon for an actual military I don't think it would be allowed to get into this state - you'd revarnish or replace parts before it happened and I'm positive you wouldn't let anything get rusty (rusty bits stop gun shooting).  If we're talking about some sort of scrappy insurgents that scavenged the equipment and hide it in the woods that's a different matter entirely though. 
  
  Agree with Sacboi on the metals - spend a bit of time watching forgotten weapons videos on AK derivatives and you'll learn all sorts of stuff about how they were made and get some insights onto what flaws there are in the design - this is all food for decision making when trying to represent the materials. 
  
  The below picture is an ak74 I googled in what I would assume is acceptable condition for military use.  
  I've called out some of the interesting wear and importantly the materials it's made of which have a significant effect on how wear patterns develop
  These things are painted, not blued/parkerised/whatever which is important.
  The receiver is primarly made of thin, cheap stamped steel which is pretty soft - it will take scratches pretty readily but tend to lose paint less easily than harder surfaces
  The harder  steels used for rivets/charging rod and trunion will scratch much less easily and as you can see the paint will tend to wear or flake off long before any change happens to the underlying surface
  
  it's interesting to see how crude the surface machining is on the harder parts and that they simply painted over it 
  
  
  
  
  
  On a positive note the varnish wear effect on your lower handguard wood looks really nice - if that amount of wear was allowed to happen I'd expect the underlying wood to have gotten dirty/greasy and be a darker tone and i feel like the wear in the middle (hand holdy bit) is overdone but you've done a great  job on the transition between materials.

  2 · Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
• 
  Offline / Send Message

  akshattejas triangle

  Dec 21 2025

  sacboi said:

  By "military wear and tear" assume means throughout its service life? Because at the moment as someone that had trained for years with similar grade ordnance + manufactured using the same materials which from my experience, can't recall seeing anything close to the level of damage applied, especially to those metal components on the receiver assembly, as well. 

  
  

  To start with, I'd recommend more research e.g  processes how these weapons were made - their materials - environments where deployed and primarily routine maintenance either in the field or otherwise.      

  poopipe said:

  That  sort of research/thinking is key to getting a believable look. 
  if this is an 'in service' weapon for an actual military I don't think it would be allowed to get into this state - you'd revarnish or replace parts before it happened and I'm positive you wouldn't let anything get rusty (rusty bits stop gun shooting).  If we're talking about some sort of scrappy insurgents that scavenged the equipment and hide it in the woods that's a different matter entirely though. 
  
  Agree with Sacboi on the metals - spend a bit of time watching forgotten weapons videos on AK derivatives and you'll learn all sorts of stuff about how they were made and get some insights onto what flaws there are in the design - this is all food for decision making when trying to represent the materials. 
  
  The below picture is an ak74 I googled in what I would assume is acceptable condition for military use.  
  I've called out some of the interesting wear and importantly the materials it's made of which have a significant effect on how wear patterns develop
  These things are painted, not blued/parkerised/whatever which is important.
  The receiver is primarly made of thin, cheap stamped steel which is pretty soft - it will take scratches pretty readily but tend to lose paint less easily than harder surfaces
  The harder  steels used for rivets/charging rod and trunion will scratch much less easily and as you can see the paint will tend to wear or flake off long before any change happens to the underlying surface
  
  it's interesting to see how crude the surface machining is on the harder parts and that they simply painted over it 
  
  
  
  
  
  On a positive note the varnish wear effect on your lower handguard wood looks really nice - if that amount of wear was allowed to happen I'd expect the underlying wood to have gotten dirty/greasy and be a darker tone and i feel like the wear in the middle (hand holdy bit) is overdone but you've done a great  job on the transition between materials.

  hiee, thanku so much for these very insightful and detailed feedbacks!!, i just used parkerised steel for the entire gun but now i think am understanding the importance of material separation, even if it looks kinda same at the surface,
  
  also about the story, so this is supposed to be a vigilante's weapon, in this alternate universe that am making, basically a mechanical rifle that is immune to ai and viruses used as a resistance against corrupt govts,  passed on from generation to generation, something that would be found with someone in an organisation like the taliban, like seized weapons after the soviets left, 
  
  this is the kind of maintenance that I am going after ... 
  
  
  That being said, the thing u said about rust makes so much sense and i will definitely polish those parts more
  
  

  0 · Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
• 
  Offline / Send Message

  poopipe grand marshal polycounter

  1:56AM

  If that's what you're aiming for then I think you've mostly nailed the wood. 
  
  I'm fairly confident in saying that an AKM would be painted - I think only the milled receiver guns would have been blued .  You should double check that though cos I'm also confident in saying that the various soviet aligned states that produced AKs all produced them differently. 

  0 · Share on FacebookShare on Twitter