Hello Polycounters,

I'm new here, and I though I would post my latest model as I try to get involved in the community, as well as introduce myself. My name is David, I live in sunny Florida, and have about a year left in school before I hit the job market and try to break into the industry.

I'm planning on baking this into a low poly model sometime in the near future - I just don't have time right now. For the most part, everything is built to function as the actual gun would, as I was doing it for a project in my animation class.














Critiques of any kind are welcome, I hope to get to know some of you here, and post work as often as possible.

Well, welcome to PC (: The highpoly look really awesome! Can't really find anything to crit on i'm afraid. I wanna see that lowpoly now!

Awesome attention to detail!

you modeled the internals? +2 awesome. looks perfect to me

now that is slick! way to go man!

Did you rifle the barrel?
Haha, good job with all of the detail, knurling, and edge sharpness variety,

the left side of the cylinder stop looks a bit odd, like its not pronounced enough,
But overall it looks really nice.
could you post what reference you are working on? the M1917 came in a few different varieties afaik.

Thanks for the comments!

Shrew, you're correct, there are a couple problems on the cylinder, and if you look closely you could probably find a bit of pinching and sloppiness here and there. This was my first real sub-d modeling experience, and well, I learned a bit as I went along.

The references are a bit of a mix, mainly between the original model and the 1937 Brazilian reissue. Some of the internals are taken from the colt M1917 and other N-frame models. I'm not a big gun guy, so I sort of just picked and chose what I thought worked best, and it's not a perfect replica.

solid stuff, looks very clean and neat. love how it all just flows together so well!

Well, better late than never. Here's the low poly with the first baking pass.

There are a few areas that have some strange poly usage, like the "modeled in" screw on the lower front area of the grip, you'd never really see/notice this so its best to just let the normals do the work here. Also it looks like its just a cube? If you're going to put the effort into modeling these sort of details, atleast make it a round shape like it is in the HP, not a simple cube.

But then the cylindrical shape where the grip meets the base of the gun is overly faceted and jagged, this is really obvious and noticeable, and would benefit from more sides. You could optimize the cut out section in the same cylindrical shape here, as it has very little depth in the high and would likely look better as just detail in the normals(for now it looks too faceted again). Its not always better to do *more* shape detail(cut outs etc) like this if it means doing it poorly, often times more simple, but rounder geometry is going to look better in the end result.

The area where the hammer is recessed is also lacking in sides, and this surely would be the area closest to view in a game, this should be the most detailed area on the weapon. But bellow that, the grip(which would likely be occluded by a hand) has quite a bit more roundness to it. Its important to prioritize where detail goes in a logical manner.

It would be nice to see a first person view to see how well the detail works from that angle.

This may seem like nit-picking, but getting control over these sort of issues is what will make a good model into a great model.