Old timey guns-- crits are awesome

mbullister · Sep 2009

Hey guys, long-time lurker, first(ish) time poster.

Working on some weapons for a Lovecraftian-themed 3rd-person mod a friend is trying to start up. It's my first real experience with hard-surface modeling, and the first time I've tried to get deep into normal-mapping.

These are all still WIP, but all crits are appreciated!

First weapon I started on, and furthest-along

Destination for both of these is UE3.

Less old-timey than the rest. Working on this for a personal project.

Shoulder strap still needs to be modeled out, and the bipod screws aren't textured.
I'm not really sure what's going on with the cheek guard-- I think I should probably just rebake that. It's also a bit more polies than I'd like.

Please tell me what you think.

Kitteh · Sep 2009

If these are for third person, 2048 is way too big and even 1024 is a stretch. Your polygon counts are also very high for third person.

The diffuse textures seem a bit too... textured. The Thompson receiver looks like stone, and the 1911 looks like marble.

downarmy · Sep 2009

love the mlg good job!

mbullister · Sep 2009

Kitteh wrote: »

If these are for third person, 2048 is way too big and even 1024 is a stretch. Your polygon counts are also very high for third person.

The diffuse textures seem a bit too... textured. The Thompson receiver looks like stone, and the 1911 looks like marble.

Thanks, that's a really big help.

The triangle counts were born pretty much out of ignorance. I looked at the UT3 models, and the third-person models are between 1.5 and 3k, so I'll aim for that.

I'll drop the resolutions down to 1024 for everything. I'll see how it looks at 512, but I'm concerned that I won't be able to keep the detail I want (text especially) if I bring the normal and diffuse that low.

Once I've got the UVs sorted, I'll take another crack at the metal, see if I can get that working better.

praxedes · Sep 2009

You could apply the text as a decal over the top of the main texture if you drop the texture resolution? Depends on the UV layout I suppose...also, possibly cheat the barrel resolution by losing edges from the middle sections and keeping the higher res cylinders for the ends where the viewer can see the curve. Finally, look at areas where the geometry isn't contributing much, like the divots at the base of that slatted cover over the M60 barrel base- they could be baked into the normal map and get pretty much the same look, and lose a fair few tris- just a few thoughts to try help!

Looking good! (and I love Cthulhu!)

~P~

dejawolf · Sep 2009

the models looks good, but the textures looks like you used a cloud filter, then quickly went over with some scrape brushes. especially the grip on the beretta needs more attention, it doesn't have enough contrast there.

mbullister · Sep 2009

dejawolf wrote: »

the models looks good, but the textures looks like you used a cloud filter, then quickly went over with some scrape brushes. especially the grip on the beretta needs more attention, it doesn't have enough contrast there.

Nope, that's some 100% genuine hand-painted failure right thurr.

Brought the Thompson down to under 3000 tris and added the charging handle, though it probably needs to go lower since it's going to have a big fancy drum magazine. Brought the textures down to 512, and I think the quality is acceptable:

Still need to rebake some of the AO and a bunch of the normals.

I'm thinking it might be worth trying again from scratch on the textures.

Thanks for the feedback! I'll try to get some reworked stuff online in a day or two.

Kitteh · Sep 2009

That looks pretty good now (although the normal map definitely needs some more smoothing on the edges of the receiver and stuff)

00Zero · Sep 2009

for the metal, you need a dark color map and a bright spec map.

Old timey guns-- crits are awesome

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