ok started with the gaurd thing, created the basic shape then made the holes as cylinders cutting them to intersect correctly and then used mayas edge extrude to create the hard edge loop which i connected the mian body polys to







now to figure the otherside out

noticed the back is wrong, fuck i hate working on a single screen, not been looking at the ref enough

ok fixed the back and sorted the scale issue i had from cutting the top of the image in the model sheet whoops



anyone know a better soloution for the toplogy here to get rid of the pinches

thats me for the evening, hope to speed up, i need to practice this shit more

Looking good. Learning something already.

Nice! Can we a see a close-up of the control mesh for those little star-inset screws?

I like your shader too

Hey Shep.

very nice start, I too would be interested in taking a look at the star shape.

In regards to your problem id be tempted to just make to cuts along the line....if it creates too much of a pinch move to option 2, constrain the lines and move the points now at the front mid way between the upper and lower poly ring,in effect creating a gradual relax.





If that still looks bad then I fail .

John

cheers bronco, ill give that a go, i thought it would pinch too much but ill try it and see, and ill post the wires from the star screw tonight

bronco tried your suggestion still not great, still pinching in the same way

OBJ?

tried that and the pinching is... er different,

OBJ, aint got a host anyone reacomend one

anyway off t' pub for pint and blues

ya I tried it out and it won't work since the surface its leading to is bent. I think, based on talking to EQ about this, more geometry will be needed to achieve this. I asked him to come in and throw 2 pennies in this thread for us.

you need to connect the loops on the front to the verts on the side

Shep, try dropbox. Its what i generally use, even tho i pay for hosting =D

As far as your problem, i would add a couple more loops to define the curve around the hard edge, just to give it better structure(round them out too of course, not straight like i have them here) and then Gradually taper those edges out to more of a centered position, to somewhere you feel you can end the loop without getting artifacts, or simply carry the loop around back.



You can see what i mean about "smoothing out" the edges going away from the hard edge in this example pretty well:


Also as a general note, i think you're making your hard edges too hard overall. I think it would translate to a NM a bit better with a little more softness in the edges. Esp considering how small the object really is, but that is something that we'll cover with a more in depth workshop.

Cheers Shep, Brom and EQ.

Ihazard:- im not sure but you could get away with that on a flat surface and add an extra verticle loop to blend out any artifacts from doing that...but since the top section is a slight curve I think it would create a different artifact in the mesh.

I was kinda halve way correct there assuming EQs method turns out Ok...its one of those, it looks simple but really it isn't problems.

Anyway im gonna have to do a thread of my own on this now in the next few days me thinks.

John

cheers for the input guys,

EQ- yeah id been thinking that the loops were too hard, the way i work i went on the shading in the refs to determine the softness ( distance between corner loops) but totally agree that it wont be enough to be captured in a normal bake and therefore slightly worthless. will add more goem on my next go, not really bothered about finishing the whole piece as such it would be much better for me to get one peice technically perfect than move on.

right done the sheild,

sorted the pinching, cheers EQ
softened the edges a tad, maybe too much cant decide
made the otherside

OBJ-http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1324504/1.obj

I was gonna say you seem to have some vertical pinching on the edge of the sheild where is starts to curve along the rest of the sight, but having checked out the .obj all seems good so it looks like a material,render issue that looks like that area is creating a pinch when its not.

The other thing I did to your. obj was add an extra loop around the curved part on the far end of that last render,on the shield. since on your render you got a render artifact that just needs tightening a touch. only a very minor crit (if this was normal map you could paint that out) but since your going for perfection I couldn't resist.



Im not a fan of your edgeloops that cut off....I know thats all debatable and its something I do if its on a flat surface, but I find max tends to also become unstable if you start having alot of cut edges lying around and then his smooth.

looking good though dude .

John

btw theres not that much of a curve on the front of the inside section, see here: http://www.impactguns.com/store/media/eotech_510_aa.jpg

since im working in maya edgeloop cutoffs are much neater and give better results, adding tris often produces more tension where two edges meet at an acute angle.

could you show me the render artefact, im not sure i get it so it could be a max/maya difference, or it could have been my blind eyes

Ihazard- different model mate

Shepeiro what are you use it cut in like booleans

hard labour ;-)

no if i need an accurate mechanical shape i will create that seperatly then tie it in to the main mesh

very nice shep! I like were this is going