EDIT:

LATEST IMAGE:

FINISHED! Also made some animations:

M4 VLTOR - FPS Weapon Animation - - YouTube

ORIGINAL POST:
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So I've had an m4 blocked out for like a year and I never went with it. Some weeks ago I decided to actually make a high poly of it and finish my first ever real high poly weapon.



Every 3d artist gets one! At some point in our lives that lightbulb in our head comes on we say to ourselves "you know what the game art world really needs? Another M4!" Well here's mine!

Here is where I'm at with the high poly so far:





It's mostly done but there are some missing bits (for instance, the clamp thing-a-ma-jigs on the mounts and the rear folding sight), and bits that I want to clean up so the aliasing wont be too bad. (Like the adjusting things on the aimpoint scope, changing the grippy bit (yeah, get ready for more jibberish because I can't think of the names) to much thicker indents.)

I'm not too anal about accuracy (as long as it looks nice overall and clearly resembles the right parts, I'm making my own adjustments where I want to) but if you could let me know what you think and throw some comments, suggestions/crits that would be cool. I'll be making a low poly out of this too, and will consider doing a little bit of animation. I used to really enjoy animating first person weapons ages ago and It will be nice to play around with it.

I have made some adjustments to make life a little bit easier though, like making the rail in a way that will allow me to bake it in fewer polygons and avoid aliasing, and I made the barrel freakin' long so it would actually show up in the first person view (also the barrel will most likely be re done as it's very bland at the moment.

Thinking about adding a flashlight to the bottom rail but it might be a bit much.

A couple things:

-I'm very aware of the bad edges along the bottom of the rail in the middle and will be fixing them
-Magpul looks a bit off at the moment, may change that
-Some edges may get softened up because I realise they may not come out too well in a bake.
-Some of the floaters will get replaced / modelled into the mesh (like the ones on/near the stock)

Updates soon!

edit:

Also, thinking a bit far ahead but I think I'll probably go with snow camo, nobody ever makes snow camo weapons anymore.

..Maybe

something screwy is going on with your top rails
it looks like a normal map and not real rail indentations

would be nice if lonewolf dropped by to crit you. he's done a lot of gun stuff and super detailed M4 already

I'm doing that intentionally though, As I want to bake them down to one mass. If people find it too weird I may change it.

Originally Posted by JFletcher

I'm doing that intentionally though, As I want to bake them down to one mass. If people find it too weird I may change it.

Why? when its such a prominent detail from FPV, and, if you're sure you wanna do that, you could bake it solid without the "fillers" anyway...

the mesh is clean and nice! i like it!

I dont think your rail solution will bake realistically. What i did with my m4 is i just made the rail on the high poly as it should be, and then baked it down on to one single piece, and it looked very good.

Hipoly model looks really nice. Presentation looks great too, anything special about your rendering technique? The grip could use some texture though, like this.

or maybe something a bit fancier like this?

Wow looks great so far, how did you UV such a hp model?

That there is a nice chunky looking AR. I second the snow camo, not something you see too much of.

You know what'd be cool? Doing a crazy awesome painted diffuse for this thing.

Originally Posted by Endr

Wow looks great so far, how did you UV such a hp model?

who said he UV'd it?

Looks great but yeah I'd change the grip even though it's covered by the hand.

What you have now looks like the Tangodown, (http://www.cgwgun.com/images/products/TDBG16.gif)

Just looks slightly blocky IMO.

Also, hard to tell, but can you post a front/rear photo as the receiver/grip area kinda looks a bit thick. Maybe it's just the perspective.

The front grip is really too thin, it'd be quite not comfy after a while. ( http://tactical-mod.ca/media/catalog...gfg-folg-1.jpg)

Lastly, I think the forward area (Barrel and flashhider) could use a bit more details

Aimpoint and Magnifier are crazy good looking!

Originally Posted by Olli.

I dont think your rail solution will bake realistically. What i did with my m4 is i just made the rail on the high poly as it should be, and then baked it down on to one single piece, and it looked very good.

Do not agree at all, then you're getting totally random ray hits as you have large gaps in the model. What he's doing makes a whole lot more sense. He can also easily create a color mask from the bits modeled into the cutouts, and make those areas black in the texture. Personally though I would exaggerate some nice fat bevels there, as just placing a little box in there means not much interesting edge detail.

Generally I would model the rails into the lowpoly myself, but you've got scopes and sights obscuring much of the rail so its not a big deal. On the other hand. you could simply model in the rail cutouts that will be seen and optimize the ones that sit under the attachments, shouldn't add much at all to the total tri count. I always try to model rails in properly unless I have a really low tri budget.

Overall the model looks great, nice clean and accurate modeling. I would like to see some fatter edges, exaggerate some elements for a little more pop and to have a bit more variance on your edge widths in general to differentiate the different material types, but thats getting pretty nit-picky.

Your gun looks awesome ^^
I'm calling zebra print on this, would look awesome ;)

So... you can just do everything then?

Reference photo's???

That looks fantastic. I agree that maybe you have left some areas sparse of detail - the right side of the gun, and the grip particularly - but you have great shapes everywhere it counts, ie. what the player will actually see of the gun.

Saved to inspiration folder!

You're the guy who made that Mario/Luigi intro screen thing, which makes you a badass. Keep working!

Saw this in the WAYWO thread and was going to suggest to add the folding mechanism of the one scope but I see here that you know that

I agree with EQ too, but I bet you could get away with just baking the rail cutouts. The ones you modeled are not too steep/deep. I've seen some in-game weapons that do this and you can't tell they're flat in FPV.

Looking awesome though! Can't wait to see how you texture style comes into play with a realistic weapon.

Awesome work so far man! Nice to see you changing it up from characters. Got an eye on this. ;)

Originally Posted by LRoy

So... you can just do everything then?

+1. Yeah, wutt :0

Anyway, I think this looks real nice as far as technical execution goes, but I'm not a gun person so I can't crit much on functionality/accuracy or anything. Keep going!

I wouldn't say this is 'another' m4,because this one is sexy as hell a couple of things I noticed, the front grip looks a little skinny, the mag pull looks a little short (doesn't extend up the clip enough), and as mentioned your grip could use some more detail. I'm no gun nut though so my points may all be invalid! Nice work

the mag has a weird bend or am I mistaken?

Thanks for the feedback guys.

You are right about the grip, I will change it to something a little more interesting. I'll probably pick one with grooves in it as I like the larger details.

@ nicafornica

yeah one of the sides are a little too straight at the moment.

More soon-ish-maybe-kinda.

Anyone know what's going on with this edge after a turbosmooth?



it's not a double edge either, the 2 meshes are the same.

did you crease it?