Thompson

[ben hobden]

Started this yesterday, and once I started I couldnt stop. I feel pretty comfortable with hard surface modelling now, its the only side of maya I feel I could say I was a definite intermediate at. I have some areas to finish, there's a reload pin on the side by the trigger I want to add, aswell as the trigger, and a couple of small parts like that, but I wanted to show what i've done so far, cause I'm pretty pleased, and its not often with maya I get that. I want to texture it too, but i still have no confidence with laying out uvs and the thereafter, so while I'm still 'up', heres what I've got...

[ben hobden]

and another

[ben hobden]

another...(is there a way of putting all pictures in one post?)

[ben hobden]

and last one...

[tweetytunes]

very nice - but it looks as if the upper part of the gun barrel needs some work (the barrel looks like its got a bend in it - which I`m sure would make the gun unusable in real life.

Don`t stress over UV mapping. Its really easy to get you head around it if you just sit there and do it and this gun looks like a very nice model to try and learn on.

But keep it up - looks good so far

[Chirone]

what tweety said

and no you can't attach more than one picture in one post
if you want to do more than one you have to get yourself your own webspace and link to it (or do what others do here and use image shack(?) and link stuff from there)

[Acid44]

looks good to me other than what's been mentioned, but i have to say, i absolutely hate 3d guns, not because they're guns, but because there's so much corners... the mesh never makes any sense to me because im so used to doing cars :p

[ben hobden]

I fixed the bend in the barrel. It looks better for it. Thanks for pointing it out. I was aware of that from pretty much the beginning,I started on the barrel. The bend is in the picture I was using as a reference, but now I've taken it out. It does look better.

Now I'm coming to texture it. Ive added the trigger. Stupidly I had modelled the whole thing, being largely, well, completely, symmetrical, and there was an odd number of divisions across its width. So i had to add an edge loop around the middle of the entire thing to be able to break it in two. Ive extracted the two parts that are going to have wood textures.

I was working through jays sand speeder tutorial the other day, and Im sure that when I pressed '3' to get a smooth version of the poly, when I rendered, it rendered the smooth version. With this though, when I press '3' for the smooth, when i render it, it renders just the basic '1' poly. Am i imagining this?

I practiced with a cube the other day and realised you cant texture the basic mesh, and then smooth it. So should I map the smoothed version(i.e, press the 3 key), apply mesh>smooth, or convert to sub-d.?

[ben hobden]

Update. Apart from the obvious seam stretching at the bottom and some dodgy spec map marks around and abve the trigger area, I was fairly pleased with this.

[ben hobden]

adjusting some bump bits..

[Minstrel]

the wood looks good, but the metal textures need work. Also, the shadow on the back needs more tweaking, if you are using raytracing you need to crank up the number of rays, if you are using dmap you need increase the resolution of the shadow.

[ben hobden]

what would you suggest with the metal? I think it looks a little matte. i've played with the specular settings and eccentricity as a blinn material but it doesnt much help. I switched it to an anisotropic, and that definitely gave it a more 'wet' look, but too much so I think. bIm redoing the basic colour map to get rid of some of those white marks and lines

[ben hobden]

without the white marks in the colour, but metal still looking too matte?

[R-Tillery]

It looks good but have to things I see on it that don’t look right.
1.Like where the clip meets the trigger.
It needs to be all one piece. It looks as if it was welded on the trigger. Maybe a bevel around that part will pull it together.

2.the barrel of the gun looks warped? Maybe that’s what you’re looking for but to me it’s stands out.

But in all it looks cool.

[ben hobden]

The barrel looks warped? The metal part of it was squashed in at one end in the beginning (see first few pictures), but I straightened it out since then. Do u mean the wood part of it? Im confused also about which part in the trigger area you mean. do you mean the actual trigger itself?

[ctbram]

Looks okay but you need to work on your lighting for the renders. Much of the gun is just black with no discernible detail.

[R-Tillery]

The way the clip is set on your gun looks like it wont come off. Like if it was one whole piece. No gap between the trigger and the clip.

And the barrel comes to a point at the end of the gun yours looks like it one thickness all the way across and not smooth, like some one to a hammer to it.

The whole gun looks like it was one polygon extruded out of one block.

http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/2686/thompbluelight2iw1.jpg

[ben hobden]

I get this more and more at the moment. I listen to other people and then....damn it. The barrel did squash in towards the end when i first made. I got some comments that it looked odd, and i thought it was strange when i was modelling, so i went back and took it out. The whole thing was built pretty much out of one block. The barrel and underneath wood bit are seperate, but the rest of it is one thing. Isn't that a good thing?

I see what you mean about the clip and the trigger areas merging.


Im just liking the fact at the minute that ive got through two projects having modelled, uv'd and made bump, colour and spec maps. This is really the first time I have, so I feel I have a new/better understanding of the whole process. Three weeks ago, bump and spec maps, uv layout, e.t.c, was still hit or miss for me. Ive taken alot of confidence and learned alot from making this. Ive followed it up with something slightly smaller. The thompson took me on and off about 2 weeks. This below, so far, has taken me three days

[Chirone]

hey nice revolver

you know, if you knew you were right before with the funky dent in the thompson you should have said so with a reference like R-Tillery said

does a revolver have that inconsistent type of bump on its handle (i don't know correct terminology for guns...)

[honestdom]

nice work ben, you are definitely improving.

keep it up!

[ben hobden]

chirone. cheers. yeah the bend was in the reference, but i thought it strange, so when the first two crits i got pointed it out as odd aswell i just went with it. And to me it did actually look better. But now I think I've changed my mind!!? I'm worried that if i start changing the geometry wont that mean re-mapping it all. I guess that would be a good experiment for me to try.


hammer. cheers hammer. I think so. I've started seeing the different aspects of maya like the colours of traffic lights, with red being beginner and green being advanced. I was red on everything except hard-surface modeeling( im still scared of character/organic stuff), which was getting towards amber. Now uv mapping and texturing are starting to get a bit more orangey too!:confused:

Heres the ref for the Smith and Wesson