Modeling a Scifi Pistol

Development Rendering
1

1st of all this is the first model I have tried to import from blender, Tomorrow I’m going to need to reexport it again, I didn’t change the name for any of the UV Maps so they all merged into one :P.

I have spent a while on this little pistol(it has over 32,000 tris, a bit much in my opinion i’m probably going to try to optimize it by adding in an LOD or 2)
I should also note its not currently textured what so ever.(and I have normal mapped it, but the UVs have merged so I can’t apply it :(…
After I finish with that I’ll rig it, then import it again and animate it…

Day 1:
Capture.PNG
Most of model is done… Not textured, Imported into Unreal

Day 2:
This is just the base meshes of the gun for you guys to compare(no material, no normal or bump in blender with just a simple sun light, smoothed shader)
Day 2 Gun -------------------------------------------------------------- ** Day 1 Gun**
GoodGun.png Capture.PNG

Alright, I think the Day 2 gun looks better, what do you guys think? Furthermore some stats Day one gun as shown in the photo had 5,800+ tris while Day two gun had 2,500 tris

Day 2 Gun with the rest of the stuff added
GoodGunwithout_sights.pngGoodGun.png
Some further stats… The sights have 2,000 tris, The ammo Pack has about 500 tris, and the main gun without the ammo or sights has about 5000 tris. Together it comes to around 10,000 Tris.

After taking those photos I think I need to improve how the barrel connects to the main body(lighting is also very bad it makes it look like there is a harsh edge, when their really isn’t)

Just for fun this is the high poly version(47,000 tris)

GoodGunhighpoly.png

As you can see the normal map(generated from the high poly), when made should make the trigger area look better, the barrel smoother and give a nicer grip for the sights slot

A quick change to the model and lighting(Low Poly, 10,270 Tris)
GoodGunimproved.png

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I’ts quite hard to see the details on your pistol but I can tell you that 32,000 tris is way too much for that model, that’s the tri count I would expect to see on the average assault rifle.

you should try reducing the tri count as much as possible before thinking about making LOD’s for it, also how many UV’s does it have because you should be able to just use one for each separate mesh which would usually be one for the main body of the gun and another for the mag(maybe an additional one for the sight/scope if its changeable).

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Yeah I agree… I think I can easily get it around 10,000 before Lods(with Lods I’m aiming for around 2,000)
I think I will do as you suggest with the UVs and combine them into 3 different UVs.(The scope is aimed a being changable, and it looks quite nice without it)
As for the photo ill upload a better one tomorrow :slight_smile:

EDIT:

I might need to rebuild the guns main body though… I don’t really like how it looks and it doesn’t seem to have good topology.

4

2-5 k tris for a gun mesh is acceptable :smiley:
Also make sure to dont use too many material slots -> more draw calls = not so good for the performance

5

Thanks for the advice, but because im aiming for this gun to be used in an FPS i’ll keep it around 10,000 tris for lod 0 and then cut it to around 5,000 for lod 1, and 2000 for lod2…

Also updated the main post :slight_smile:

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Day 3:

Alright Today I have finished the UV Map, However i’m having a bit of trouble trying to bake a normal map from the high poly to the low poly, everything I do just doesn’t look right… Ive tried a few methods, Blender baking both cage baking(which has so far had the best results) and using a high res to low res bake using multi resolution modifier(which didn’t work). I then tried Xnormal, never used it before and will never use it again(I hated it), tried using a method in substance designer 5. It didn’t work either. I’m going to do some more research into creating Normals and hopefully get one made by Day 4.

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What exactly is not working? Does the normal map on your mesh looks wrong or do you get any errors when you bake it? :slight_smile:

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Day 4:

As you can see i’ve done the materials for the gun sights( Its PBR, using the Metallic Workflow with Opacity added) idk how its going to look in Unreal 4, but it looks great as of now.

save1.PNG sight2.PNG

… Normally the normal maps don’t look quite right, either its too low res(im using 1080p for the normal maps, which shouldn’t be too bad[note I tried adding a blur in but that often removed the edge effect I was going for, after an hour of testing I gave up]) or the map just doesn’t work, it spazes out… I personally think my technique for normal mapping just isn’t that good, and I really need to improve my skills.

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This tutorial will explain you how to create a good normal map: ?v=vze2wnl6duY :slight_smile: