pistol for hl2

[shadowSn1p3r]

IchI are those "your" VTM's?

yep, those tuts are his. he made them.

 

[mindless_moder]

well itchy im sure ur first few models were just gold yeah ?.
as far as i know unless ur a child prodigy u will always have a considerable amoutn of inaccuracies in ur models that you will not be able to point out even tho they maybe quite major .
i sugest you work a lot more and try to browse around some crtique forums and notedown stuff that artists have said about work ...it will help you gain a good eye for detail .
try http://the3dstudio.com http://cgtalk.com

 

[socK]

I really didnt know anything about 3dsmax, I could sorta model some stuff, but once I watched IchI's VTM's, the world came into focus and I became one with the polygons. I was working on a famas a while ago, I think all my pictures got wiped though, unless I threw some up on the clan ftp, all be gone. :'(.

Keep on workin' at it, I look foward to seeing future work. :thumbs:

 

[Yakuza]

yep, those tuts are his. he made them.

Well IchI, I give you mad props man. I think i can speak for just about every one and say that we really appreciate your hard work.

 

[ChrisArt]

Il throw my few tips in here

Never Boolean a low poly model (or any model at that )
Never use mesh smooth on game models except characters

When modeling a gun have 15 to 20 pictures of the gun, one full frame side and full frame front and back. Remember to get pic of both sides since guns usually have different looks on each side. Then you need angle shots, front/left etc. then you should look up on some gun sites the measurements of the gun but its not allways needed if the side pic is big. Work from the side pic and have all the pics avalible to you to check on all the time to get the proportions right.

Start with a box, then make the bottom part first. Remember a pistol is 2 parts and the top part is the smallest.

.......................
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; top

.................. bottom
;;;;....;
;;;
;;;

hope this accept spaces (probably not)

one point to really look at is the width of your weapon, since you be working from a side point of view make sure you got the width right or the gun will look really weird.


Get this: Meshtools (search on google)
the best low poly edit tool ever, with this you can select lines and divide them. Really great when working on low poly details. Allways start rough and use meshtools to detail it out. A good rough gun model is about 60 - 70 triangles (30 polygons) and then you detail it out to about 1000 - 2000 triangles (500 - 1000 polygons) For really details push it to 3000 triangles (1500 polygons)


And keep working at it! and youll be great. No one starts out perfect, I started out crap! my first model was two boxes with a picture texture not even unwrapped hehe.

 

[Mikademius]

Amen to some of what Chris says. 15-20 ref pictures. I'd say 100 and a week of study (but that's me) If you work in sideview and you don't have the front/top/bottom (whatever gives the volume) you will never get it to be 100%, but for most cases you can get it to work ingame. I wouldn't start with a box, I'd start with a single polygon and extrude edges, not faces... or add vertices depending on the mesh. I rarely do lowpoly so I'd go edgeextruding. for low-poly, I'd add vertices.

 

[mike8213]

Well so far the only advice he's gotten is from Hazar, everyone else is just critisizing without giving any real advice. I do agree, your model looks horrible. If you havn't really studied up on how to model then I'd give you props for it a little. Your pistol just blends in together everywhere. It's like it was carved out of soap, with a fingernail. There are actually to many numerous things wrong with it to go on about, go to IchI's vid tutorials and complete those, then retry this WIP and you'll be astounded by your own improvements.

 

[Mikademius]

I think you need to read all the pages. What Hazar said was:

Some areas along the barrel need to be flat instead of rounded, if you're following the reference.

I think we have contributed with help too, especially the VTM Itchy posted etc...

 

[desty]

Mechanics and gun parts are very precise objects, therefore the modeler should try to get as much control as he can, and that is sub-object modeling. For that reason - don't use tools which do things you can't fully control, like SubDs (mesh smooth in max).

desty

 

[IchI]

Tbh, go easy on yaniv. Imo I was wrong to say it was crap and I can see where he is coming from. The fact that you started saying things cause his attitude. Sorry for the disruption and I hope everyone can get along fine.

I'm sorry.

 

[babywax]

I prefer to use mainly extrude face when modelling, and only sometimes extrude edge. Adding vertices is of course extremely useful though.

 

[yaniv]

ichi -> are you only modelling lowpolys? cuz ur a real expert in that.
most of the times i dont do mods so its hard for me.
high poly @ box mapping is what i used to.
who knows...maybe somthime we will join forces ..hehehe (-:

 

[ChrisArt]

Keep in mind Yaniv that if you want to do a good high poly gun master lowpoly first. Well that is just my opinion of course, because when youve made a low poly weapon you can easy add more detail to it and make it high poly without sacrifising polygons. If you can make things look really good without using to much polygons you are on the right way.

 

[Mikademius]

I'm sorry I couldn't manage to get the examples I promised ready sooner. Just wanted to show you what I was talking about when I mentioned sharpening corners/edges when using meshsmooth.
Notice the lowpolyversions on top and the smoothed versions at the bottom of the images...

 

[mindless_moder]

here is all the advice u will ever need

"
well the basics steps are

If ur subject is based of off real life

1) acquire a numerous amount of erference pictures of the subject in various angels but of the same model and type this will help u while modeling and texuring.
usualy to get the most accurate modeling results people use blue prints which they add on to planes in max

refs:

http://images.google.com this search engine helps you get images of the subject
http://www.altavista.com this is similar to the google one but is more advanced and lets u get movies aswell

and finally the blue print sites

http://www.suurland.com/
http://www.onnovanbraam.com/ on this site u get blueprints and in the tut section check out the tutorial for setting up the prints in max.

2) after u have the refs ready start choosing ur modeling method this ranges from box modeling to splining etc....choose something u know well.

3) after modeling is finished u may want to try and render it and post it on sites to obtain critique about the model. this helps you in ur observation skills as through doing this u develop the skills and find that later u wont even need to have to post a wip or render for crits because u can observe the details and problems urself.
often people who arent that close to the project will give u helpful insights

post on sites like

http://the 3dstudio.com

and the hl2 forums ur always welcome here

there are also many rendering tuts out there, one was made recently by a member called sidewinder

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=25461

which shows the basics of lighting after which u just hit f10 and render it

4) steps 4 and 5 is where most people lack and where people should pay the most attention as it is an integral part of the model and i suggest u to no ignore it like the rest of the first time modelers.
this is unwrapping there are a huge host of unwrapping tuts out there they all detail on the same method you should go through these.
unwrapping is basically making ur 3d information in a 2d form so it can be painted.

tuts:
http://www.halflife2.net/forums/sho...360&postcount=8
http://waylon-art.com/uvw_tutorial/uvwtut_01.html
http://merlin.zsnes.com/tutorials/mapping/
http://www.inicia.es/de/lorenmarti/tutorials_01.htm
http://www.gamedale.com/tutorials/details.php?id=20
http://www.mikesteven.pwp.blueyonde...dtutorial01.htm

5) step 5 the horror of every modeler and artist out there where fear takes the from of the evil "TEXURE".
lol this in my opinion is the most hated step and my most loved as i am a texture artist. this tep can only be learnt if u are determined and altho there are a lot of "skinning" tuts out there u need to develop ur own style.

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/sho...&highlight=skin

http://www.planetquake.com/skindom/

i have more refs if needed pm me

i hope there arent any broken links and i hope this helps
oh yeah one last thing

the donts

1) dont photoskin
2) dont steal other work and claim it
3) dont waste time on snazzy gi renders for wips and crit posts.
"

 

[armanguy]

it is crap but no need to say it just say he needs to take alot of tutorials and practice before he can be a modeler.also dont expect to get a job in the gaming industry wit that attitude.