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unreal/quake style fps gun

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polycounter lvl 12
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Racer445 polycounter lvl 12
found a fan colored version of the ut flak cannon concept art and decided to turn it into a lazer/plazma gun

heres my high poly so far

jr4jgk.jpg

Replies

  • emugod
    nice! i like the ironsights on it :D!
    got a count?
  • kite212
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    kite212 polycounter lvl 15
    effing love it man, looks great so far, keep it up, cant wait to see more!
  • PixelMasher
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    PixelMasher veteran polycounter
    nice work so far, this looks like its gonna turn out awesome.
  • vj_box
    looking good,but i kinda feel different with all the flat shapes,even though its high poly.
    do you get what i mean? may be due to the sharp edges,i guess.
    think over it

    Vj
  • A_GAME
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    A_GAME polycounter lvl 11
    I love it! Mind throwing up your wires?
  • Harry
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    Harry polycounter lvl 13
    the rear sight still bothers me bro
    all the other details have no obvious purpouse so its impossible to tell if theyre fucked for any reason. Having an old style tangent sight which doesnt actually have any sight picture breaks suspension of disbelief bro.
  • byder
    Looking great!! Like the fact that you indented the metal for the screws :D
  • MLinderholm
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    MLinderholm polycounter lvl 12
    I like it! My main crits are that I get the feel that it's kind of 2 guns welded together in the middle, and the iron sight at the back is cool, but without a front part it looks strange.
  • PixelGoat
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    PixelGoat polycounter lvl 12
    It looks nice and all... but Imo it is waaaay to "square" looking. Lots and lots of really sharp angles. Makes it look like alot of boxes pasted together. Like a really lowpoly gun, but in highpoly. Try to smooth out some of the forms maybe? give it some curving shapes.
  • EarthQuake
    THIS ISNT REALISTIC AT ALL, IT LOOKS NOTHING LIEK AN AK47
  • marks
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    marks greentooth
    except the rear sight, which looks like a bastardization of an ak47, m4 and a thompson ;)
  • Sandbag
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    Sandbag polycounter lvl 18
    lets not let bitterness get in the way of decency EQ. No one posted that in your thread that wasn't sarcastically defending you so show a little respect in this guy's. It's not ironic or funny, it's a waste of space and a really lame joke.

    On Topic:

    The modeling looks clean (except for those circular indents near the middle/front of the gun) though wires would be nice. Is this intended to be a one handed weapon? I dont see any place to put a second hand to balance the device. Although there's some nice stuffing going on there, it's mostly just a lot of shapes thrown at each other for the sake of having shapes. It would be nice if you pared everything down to a few pieces and worked on the overall shape and silhouette and THEN went in and started adding details and tubes and wires and such.

    Some things to consider for details/parts to add would be:

    -ammunition counter (or in the case of a plasma or laser rifle maybe a battery charge?)

    -ammunition source

    -reload mechanism (think of the animators, with nothing to reload and no mechanism to activate that new batch of ammo the device will be very still and boring. In the case of a sci-fi gun you have every opportunity to add movement/moving parts like rotating coils building up electrical charge, blow off vents to get rid of operational heat, etc)

    -Forward grip/handle/hand well , as stated above it could use a place to put your other hand to balance the gun since it looks pretty heavy.

    -clear barrel or firing mechanism, right now I'm not sure where the gun fires from, making that clear would be nice and would make a logical point of origin for any muzzle flashes, laser beams, etc
  • timwiese
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    timwiese polycounter lvl 9
    I like it, it definitely has a more home made feel to it. As though who ever made it, took parts from anything they could find to make a badass weapon.

    I think the only thing that looks off to me is that where your front grip is, it is too far back on the gun to offer any real support to the person holding it.
  • dolemite
    I think the forms don't read well, but the details are great. The design just reads as gibberish to me.
  • Ninjas
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    Ninjas polycounter lvl 18
    stuff in the middle is not doing it for me-- here is the pistol version:

    RevoPaintover.jpg
  • whats_true
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    whats_true polycounter lvl 15
    The back lash on that thing must be nuts. Without the shoulder rest, I find it hard to be holding that thing at ease~
  • TheWinterLord
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    TheWinterLord polycounter lvl 17
    whats_true wrote: »
    The back lash on that thing must be nuts. Without the shoulder rest, I find it hard to be holding that thing at ease~

    I dont think you need to worry about the backlash if its a laser gun. (but i dunno) Nice stuff Racer. I like Ninjas pistol version also :P
  • AimBiZ
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    AimBiZ polycounter lvl 14
    Looks really good though I think you should go for the more "pistol" version. It's an UT3 inspired gun but making it comfortable to hold wouldn't hurt, perhaps moving the handle up a bit.
  • Sandbag
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    Sandbag polycounter lvl 18
    take that pistol version (which is still pretty monstrous), add a handle to the top, and strap it to a big ass backback battery?

    paintoverGun.jpg

    Seems like something like that would suit the proportions you've got going on.
  • killingpeople
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    killingpeople polycounter lvl 18
    This thing looks massive. I really dig the forms. The handle looks uncomfortable.
  • Evan-0-Matic
    Sandbag wrote: »
    take that pistol version (which is still pretty monstrous), add a handle to the top, and strap it to a big ass backback battery?

    paintoverGun.jpg

    Seems like something like that would suit the proportions you've got going on.


    This idea really puts the gun into a 'working form'...i would love to see a revision with these ideas in mind.

    And i also agree about the barrel(s)...where are they exactly? And i would love to see some more renders at different angles and maybe a wire too.
  • Harry
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    Harry polycounter lvl 13
    See it looks better without the tangent, because it sticks out as a 20th century feature and fucks up the feel of the thing

    oh but wait i just want it to look like an ak47 because im a dumb fuck
    WHOOPZ
  • EarthQuake
    Sandbag wrote: »
    lets not let bitterness get in the way of decency EQ. No one posted that in your thread that wasn't sarcastically defending you so show a little respect in this guy's. It's not ironic or funny, it's a waste of space and a really lame joke.

    Chill out man, racer is cool with it. Unlike you jive-ass mother fucking TURKEY.
  • vik
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    vik polycounter lvl 13
    I prefer the pistol version as well, looks way cooler, also the original gun looks like it would be impossible to hold/use.
  • 00Zero
    hahaha. what is it with guys and gun threads? such heated debates.

    anyway. i really like the shapes you have in your gun. i agree, that thing in the back and the thing on the top to hold it would make it way cooler.

    you have a nasty seam on that circular part.
  • Racer445
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    Racer445 polycounter lvl 12
    Hey thanks everyone for the crits. I have rounded and smoothed some stuff out as well as editing the sights and removing a few useless boxes. Otherwise I am pretty happy with how the design looks. The pistol edit is really cool but not my thing, and adding a top handle and a backpack is a great idea but that will be saved for another project. :)

    Sandbag, the barrels are the bottom two blaster thingermabobs. Keeping this true to quake there would be no reload animation. Think about the plasma gun in quake 3. I'll do a test pose when i finish the low poly to show exactly where the hands go.

    00zero, the "seam" on that big circle in the middle is intentional. It's temporary and will be redone in photoshop though because how it is now is not how I want it.
  • Racer445
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    Racer445 polycounter lvl 12
    k did my low poly today. ended up with deleted backfaces and 8510 tris.

    here's some wires. much of the extra geo and loops were added for smoothing.

    2rfejoj.jpg
  • X-Convict
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    X-Convict polycounter lvl 18
    There's a lot of cylindrical shapes that have too many sides and a lot of small detail (tiny insets on some of the cylindrical pieces) that the normal map should do for you. Those edges can be allocated elsewhere if you need them. Looks pretty decent otherwise, just clean up that mesh a bit.
  • Racer445
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    Racer445 polycounter lvl 12
    my problem is that the silhouette on those cylinders will look blocky with a lower number of sides and the only way i know to fix that is using more sides.

    brought it down to 7900 tris btw :D

    edit: 7500 now
  • Thewiruz
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    Thewiruz polycounter lvl 16
    EarthQuake wrote: »
    Chill out man, racer is cool with it. Unlike you jive-ass mother fucking TURKEY.
    Adult?
    I like the gun but make it a bit more smooth,better when generating a normal to.
  • odium
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    odium polycounter lvl 18
    The biggest issue I can see is that you have this model, and its quite high poly, but its never going to work with a normal map that good... You have so many hard edges in there, proper 90 degree angles on edges, and those are going to give you many, many head aches. So much so that you will find you will have to chamfer those edges, so that they render to texture better from the high poly.

    My other concern is that this is not 7900 tris at all. I haven’t seen a shot yet of this in tris, its all been nurbs/quads... Which means when you finally convert it into tris, its gonna shock you just how high poly it is. I hope I'm wrong and I've simply missed this in the thread some place...

    But yeah, so far:

    1) Quads/Nurbs, not tris, so you are using far more polies than you think you are.
    2) Harsh angles like 90 degrees wont work well with a single smoothing group at all. You can get around it by splitting the UV up where these angles meet (Bad) or using multiple smoothing groups (Slower, uglier), but the best way is to add chamfer edges along those sides, which will result in a much nicer smoothing group and normal.
    3) Far too high poly in spots, those tubes and round parts? Way too high poly. The normal map could take care of that no problem. look at some of your wires and bolts? What exactly are they adding? Nothing much...
    4) You just aren’t thinking about this in the way you should be. Its a "First person weapons" and yet a LOT of your detail/polies will be hidden from view when in "first person". The entire lower half of the back wont be seen, but you have stupidly high poly counts on those bolts there. The tubes on the top/front are hardly visible at all, but you insist on making them really round.

    Anyway...

    These are my views and thoughts, and if I'm wrong on that whole quads/nurbs thing and you know this already, with these pics just for show, then please ignore that. But these are a few points that I feel are lacking or needed saying, regardless.
  • [Deleted User]
    1. He's counting tris. You don't have to triangulate a model to do that.

    2. I am surmising from what I know about him that he's going to split the UV clusters and there won't be edge problems.

    I'll let him deal with the rest but I don't think those crits are particularly valid.
  • dfacto
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    dfacto polycounter lvl 18
    First: the pistol is better than the full gun

    crtiracerlx6.jpg

    And the problem gets worse on the full version I think. The sides are boring until the end piece which will be barely visible, and the top looks about as un-UT as possible, with pointless iron sights, with adjustment knobs of all things, pinned to the top of it.

    Essentially you've crammed a bunch of detail in and then made it all invisible to the player, which is wasteful. Also you have so many hard edges that you might as well forgo normal mapping the majority of the gun, because it's really going to be more trouble than it's worth. I have a feeling you'll find yourself hand painting normals a lot with this baby.

    Kinda late unless you want to redo it though.
  • odium
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    odium polycounter lvl 18
    Kaskad wrote: »
    1. He's counting tris. You don't have to triangulate a model to do that.

    2. I am surmising from what I know about him that he's going to split the UV clusters and there won't be edge problems.

    I'll let him deal with the rest but I don't think those crits are particularly valid.

    So hes going to fix one issue by adding another...? How do you define "Valid" then, because while splitting it all over the place can work, its also going to actually be slower to render thanks to more smoothing groups, maybe not by much but its still an issue. Even if you apply a single smooth over the entire model, splitting it will still smooth it based on UV coords, and thus splitting the smoothing up...

    Which brings in the issue of it looking ugly as sin. If you texture a box, you want to make sure that the edges in your face, the ones that will be seen most of all, are joined together on the unwrap so that you can a) give them a snice, smooth gradient over the normal and b) keep the texture flow consistent, so that it doesnt have jarring transition from surface to surface.

    With weapon models, you dont want to just start splitting it all over the place unless you really are sure you can handle the slight uglyness and the slight texture error you are bound to have. While these things are small, simple things, they can actually make or break a model in terms of visual design and readability, and thats why i would lower the slices count on the cylinder's so that i can spare a few polies to add chamfer edges to the really harsh 90 degree angles, thus making it look better over all.
  • EarthQuake
    Sorry odium, but you are 100% wrong in this case. The only way to make normals come out on a model like this, that has smoothing groups is to split up the uv shells so you do not get rendering artifacts on the edges.

    And while never using hard edges on your low poly is ideal, it would add 3-4x the amount of tris to the model to get the same results, which would be unacceptable by anyone's standards.

    http://www.svartberg.com/tutorials/article_normalmaps/normalmaps.html
    Heres some more information for the uninformed^
  • odium
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    odium polycounter lvl 18
    Thats a bit rude of you. Just because you have skill doesn't mean you can act like your rule all, to be fair mate. I dig your models, but it all depends on where you use them. Having used your models myself (your one weapon you released) i know it was far from perfect in a few spots. You had to use object space maps to hide bad smoothing errors on your mesh, and when used with a tangent map it all fell apart sadly.

    So while you may think I'm wrong, you have to remember that polycount isnt always your enemy, and sometimes you have other aspects to think about. Our engine, for example, doesn't have a polygon bottle neck as much as it has a fillrate bottle neck, and sometimes its better to make a 1000 polygon model over a 500 polygon model simply because fillrate is more important to our engine.

    So straight out calling one method wrong over another because you don't use it isn't exactly fair.

    EDIT: I'm also very influenced by md5mesh you ahve to udnerstand. With MD5mesh, you have to stick to a certain style, with certain ways of doing things, or your model will look very poor ingame.
  • Joao Sapiro
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    Joao Sapiro sublime tool
    odium, seriously do you ever engage your brain before your mouth ?
  • moose
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    moose polycount sponsor
    cool shapes from the side, though i think it falls apart when in first person view. Like the pistol version more than the longer rifle type, feels more chunky and meaty!

    also looks like some of the early flak cannon models from ut, there's even a hangy tube :)
  • Ninjas
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    Ninjas polycounter lvl 18
    odium wrote: »
    You had to use object space maps to hide bad smoothing errors on your mesh, and when used with a tangent map it all fell apart sadly.

    LOL
  • EarthQuake
    odium wrote: »
    Having used your models myself (your one weapon you released) i know it was far from perfect in a few spots. You had to use object space maps to hide bad smoothing errors on your mesh, and when used with a tangent map it all fell apart sadly.

    Yeah, it was a hack job on my part, which further goes to prove my point, that you need to set up your uvs differently, if you want them to work well with smoothing groups. For this to work well you also need to your renderer to not split the edges on your cage mesh, the latest version of max does this.

    The model you're talking about is literally the reason I looked into any of this to begin with, because of the terrible quality you get when using smoothing groups, but not separating the uvs as well. Which is absolutely the wrong way to go about doing it (setting up different smoothing, without consideration for the uvs, and transfering from an OS to TS map), but i just wanted something quick and dirty.

    Also LOL @ complaining about poor smoothing on a model using OS maps, dude c'mon, smoothing is irrelevant when you're using OS, thats one of the key benifits to using it in the first place.
  • Cojax
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    Cojax polycounter lvl 10
    EarthQuake wrote: »
    For this to work well you also need to your renderer to not split the edges on your cage mesh, the latest version of max does this.

    ooo I didnt know this. Thats what I get for not using Max to render normal maps for IDTech.

    Keep laying the smack down EQ.
  • Racer445
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    Racer445 polycounter lvl 12
    Decided to work on this again today. Here's a preliminary bake with some quick AOs.

    oo7eu.jpg
  • timwiese
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    timwiese polycounter lvl 9
    Nice job with the bake! how many polys is the low poly? I am really interested in what you do with your texture on this gun, should be interesting to see. keep it up!
  • OBlastradiusO
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    OBlastradiusO polycounter lvl 11
    Cool but to me that gun still looks uncomfortable to hold mainly because of the handle part looks too straight and it has no rifle butt for kickback. Other than it still looks pretty cool and good modeling job.
  • vj_box
    looking good,cant wait to see the textures!

    Vj
  • Smirnoffka
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    Smirnoffka polycounter lvl 17
    431565090_f80b231f5a.jpg?v=0

    Looks great! I am very much liking the design of the gun, hopefully the texture can hold up to the standard of the rest of the model.
  • OBlastradiusO
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    OBlastradiusO polycounter lvl 11
    EarthQuake wrote: »
    Yeah, it was a hack job on my part, which further goes to prove my point, that you need to set up your uvs differently, if you want them to work well with smoothing groups. For this to work well you also need to your renderer to not split the edges on your cage mesh, the latest version of max does this.

    The model you're talking about is literally the reason I looked into any of this to begin with, because of the terrible quality you get when using smoothing groups, but not separating the uvs as well. Which is absolutely the wrong way to go about doing it (setting up different smoothing, without consideration for the uvs, and transfering from an OS to TS map), but i just wanted something quick and dirty.

    Also LOL @ complaining about poor smoothing on a model using OS maps, dude c'mon, smoothing is irrelevant when you're using OS, thats one of the key benifits to using it in the first place.



    Excellent tips here, but what do you mean by"renderer to not split the edges on your cage mesh"? Excuse my ignorance on this matter.

    EDIT: Also earthquake thanks for this post
    http://www.svartberg.com/tutorials/a...ormalmaps.html

    This is some shit I didnt even know about.
  • HAL
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    HAL polycounter lvl 13
    Looks really nice racer, I'm looking forward to see your diffuse texture :D
  • SHEPEIRO
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    SHEPEIRO polycounter lvl 17
    Excellent tips here, but what do you mean by"renderer to not split the edges on your cage mesh"? Excuse my ignorance on this matter.

    EDIT: Also earthquake thanks for this post
    http://www.svartberg.com/tutorials/a...ormalmaps.html

    This is some shit I didnt even know about.

    new max splits the cage along the smoothing groups so that the cage is pushed out along the 2 norms, therefore not capturing pixels along the join and causing a seam, if the cage doesnt do this it pushes along the joined/average norm and captures everything

    nice looking bake, personnaly id consider adding a few chamfers in the region of the FPS camera to make it slightly more solid and a better sillohette
  • OBlastradiusO
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    OBlastradiusO polycounter lvl 11
    SHEPEIRO wrote: »
    new max splits the cage along the smoothing groups so that the cage is pushed out along the 2 norms, therefore not capturing pixels along the join and causing a seam, if the cage doesnt do this it pushes along the joined/average norm and captures everything

    Ahhhhh. Okay now..Im testing this info out right now. Thanks Shep!
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