Heavily Modified P90 "Savage Hunter"
The p90 savage hunter is actually an airsoft gun that has been fitted with extra rails and an m4 mag. It looks interesting and challenging, and I have not modeled many guns so I figured I would give this a go.Second subD model. First time to create a LP, bake, unwrap, or texture.
Here is a WIP so far of the handle. I tried to keep most of it one mesh, since thats the way it is in real life, but it made the wires crazy pretty quickly, perhaps that wasnt the best approach. On the handle the text on my model is actually extruded outward, but it actually needs to be extruded inward. I dont know how to cut that into the model without making the topology completely nuts. I guess it needs to be done as a texture?
WIP
Wires
Wires are very hectic, id like to condense it somehow but at the moment every loop I checked over is needed, for holding a shape, or adding hardness to an edge. A friend was telling me to leave some ngons on flat surfaces or collapse 3 edges into 1, not quite sure how to do that.
Reference
Showing the handles relationship to the overall gun
Replies
To do the text you would do it "floating" you model a shape with an outline and then an indent, and just place that near the mesh.
Thanks for stopping by EQ. I like that mentality, because once the HP is baked on the LP what difference does it make what the wires on the HP looked like as long as it smoothed correctly? My only concern with disregarding the wires on the HP completely is for portfolio needs though. Wont companies want to see the wires on your HP?
Also regarding your text suggestion, is this what you mean? Here I have a blue box representing the gun, and a plan resting in front of it with some text extruded into it, or having the plane float over the box. Is this what you were talking about?
And about the topology you shouldnt worry to much about it in your high poly, the only rule is making it look good and saving the topology part for the low poly where it actually plays an important role
http://img691.imageshack.us/img691/8463/pcak.jpg
That shows basically how it works.
@Tigg, thanks for the tips and image!
Update, silencer WIP
Its a mixture of two silencer types from different P90 savage hunters I found. Namely the cap end from the left reference, and the holes from the right reference.
Good work so far, looking forward to more
@SeanEG, yah it definitely looks unique, in a good way. It looks like something that could be in Crysis to me.
NITRO Rail module sytem WIP
reference
It seems there are a couple different versions of this rail system, the one I used for my reference mainly is longer horizontally, but I kept it shorter more like the one on some of the original pictures I posted. I may lengthen it, but I am uncertain yet. Also the capsule shaped cutouts on the bottom of the cylinder for the module are way too long, I need to fix that for sure.
wires
Yah Initially they were slanted during blockout, I dont know what happened to it. I will have to fix it, thanks. Frustrating.
Thanks.
Yah 2 major problems with it, I will have to cap those holes back up and delete some topology and remake the holes. I will revisit that later, in the mean time I will move on to other parts.
Crits
Thanks! If I do a beveled inset shape for the holes in the rail module how will they be see through once baked in? Playing with the alpha channels on that part when texturing? I am still very new to UVW unwrapping, creating the LP, baking, and texturing.
In general for this shape I would have modeled it in a lot more "solid" manner, because where it is on the model, you likely wont notice all the inner detail from a first person perspective(most of it will be occluded).
But there is one thing to consider when doing alpha stuff. To get the correct alpha shape baked from a high with a hole in it, you need to disable pixel padding, otherwise the edges get "spread" into the hole.
So you can do two bakes, one with padding disabled and one with it enabled if you need it for another part of the mesh.
You can paint the alpha by hand, but this is time consuming and not recommended.
Or you can not actually do a real hole, but just a "fake" indent hole, and apply colors to the "hole" part and render an RGB mask. This also allows you to really quickly use floaters to create holes, even if you need alpha.
[edit]Fake hole floater:
I would do this if I was using alpha or not, so I get a nice mask to make sure the "hole" is entirely black in both diffuse and spec. I would use RGB colors generally, because on a more complex mesh I would have more material types. For something simple like this b/w is fine.
The funny part is If I were just doing a p90 regular, I would be about done right now but I still have alot to do!
Reference, my own airsoft P90 from 5 years ago, too bad all that remains of it is this picture
Like A, not B.
This is just a small chunk and not accurate to the ref, but the concept applies to most of the shapes here.
Also, keep in mind that this cylindrical shape is uniform and even throughout the entire front/rear grip area, only changing in the couple spots where there are cut-outs. In your mesh it has a lot of variance.
The curves here in red are all the same uniform, smooth shape. Its basically just a simple half cylinder extruded to create this shape, and then 1 supporting edge(like in the first image I posted) to retain the edge there.
Here are some additional crits I made myself. Feel free to agree/disagree, or point out other problem areas.
also a user on next gen hard surface was generous enough to crit my actual .max file and optimize the topology so it wasn't so dense.
1. Block out your shapes with simple, clean geometry before getting too heavy with your supporting loops and such. I know this can be difficult to do as it isn't as fun, but it will make your life a lot easier.
2. Look into floaters for you small screw type details. Right now you're cutting in a lot of excess loops, when you can just float these details and keep your base mesh lean.
3. Really study your refs, pay attention to every bevel, every curve and try to nail those forms.
4. Watch out with that last image, its "optimized" but now lacking crucial loops in some areas and looking too soft/melty. There is no need to optimize a high like this really, especially when it looks worse than before. You should only worry about how dense your cage is when it becomes troublesome to edit. But if you pay attention to the first 2 points here, this should be less of an issue.
@Frell, thanks appreciate it!
@RoosterMAP, thanks, will be done shortly hopefully.
You got some wonkyness here and there that you should look over. And as my paintover shows you have modeled a part a bit wrong, easy fix (:
COLOR="DeepSkyBlue"]/////[/COLOR should be flat.
I agree with the screw comment, hell all these screws need to be floaters, as for the blue diagonal lines towards the stock of the gun you are saying its flat? I am not sure I agree with that, all the references I have it rounding back there, and thats how the actual P90 I used to own was shaped as well. Or am I misinterpreting you? Or are you talking about how the extruded part is slanted a little bit, if thats the case I did that for the bake to pick it up better.
ref again
wires
Looks very solid!
Ah yes, you are correct, it should be moved up a bit to match the other edge. Thanks for crit and compliment.
Also I need to scale up the size of the flashlight, its a bit small compared to the ref atm. Also need to scale up the size of the laser wire and the laser sight + mount.
For the bake, you've got some skewing on the one side, after you optimize(or remodel would be faster since its just a cylinder) the mesh, I would add a small bevel along the edge on the end there, that should help sort out the skewing. Take a look at the stickied "waviness" thread to learn more about skewing and such.
The fine grip pattern you have is too sharp/fine in the highpoly, you dont have enough texture resolution to represent it, I would re-model that area so it has less indents, and is softer so it will read in the final bake.
I added control loops on both ends of the cylinder as it shows in the normals tutorial by EQ, yet I dont see much of an improvement if any.
EDIT: Yes the pink cylinders are indeed test subjects, not final by any means.
And in the new bake it is improved. What does the geometry on the back of the silencer look like? If the cap is deleted there, you only need a bevel/loop on the front(I say this because the first bake only had skewing towards the front).
Also yeah, your silencer isn't round, I didn't notice it much before, but see it clearly now.
(the top one is the good one, bottom two are showing "bad" methods).
PS: I bend, then add supporting loops after.
also note, that his holes are bevels, not extrudes.
From a FPV perspective, you would *absolutely never* see the front of the barrel, unless there is an animation of the player looking down the barrel or something, it just wouldn't happen.
In third person, you would have a very low LOD, again the inside of the barrel would never be modeled.
I'm all for modeling cool shit, but you have to actually be able to see it, or else its simple wasted effort/geometry.
Notches:
You may even use less sides, 96 or even 64, depending on the texture resolution. Remember, you need 1 pixel at least to represent an angle in the normal map.
The problem here is that you have un-even geometry, to do this, you need an evenly spaced grid.
This isn't perfect and still results in some slightttt smoothing issues, but shouldn't be noticable when baked down. Important thing is A. enough geometry, B. Even grid, C. How insets flow with grid.
Oh i missed this before. This is just confusing. Using or not using smoothing groups will have no effect on a properly set up bake(IE: averaged cage) so its useless advice, or bad advice(suggesting he set up a poor bake just to avoid adding some supporting geo).
Right, so the use or non-use of smoothing groups on the low is inconsequential to whether or not he adds supporting geometry to his low.