It’s been a little while since I’ve posted in the forums. Getting back into the swing of 3D modeling things in Blender. I’m about 9.5 hours into modeling a Benelli MP95E. Chose this gun because my finger landed on it in my big book of handguns and revolvers.
Here’s a progress shot of models I’ve set aside in different layers as I’ve progressed. Everything’s unwrapped already and texturing is the next step to go.
Progress update! Still working on textures. To get the grain on the grip, I’ve created a second UV unwrap, and I’m baking that down to the main UV unwrap, making things look a bit nicer.
I think it’s looking quite good! Something about the design of it reminds me a bit of the Magsec 4 gun on the old N64 “Perfect Dark” game. One thing that feels a little weird is how small the width of the magazine looks compared to the width of the barrel. That might be how it’s suppose to be though, so I don’t know. It could be the camera’s perspective making it feel that way too.
Do you plan on putting the model on SketchFab as well?
Hey, thanks for your reply! The gun is slightly goofy, magazine to barrel considered. It’s a .22 caliber gun, so the clip’s not super huge. As far as the Magsec 4 looks, I can kinda see that. There are some variants of this gun with added weights that get a look similar to that.
Not sure if I’m placing it up on sketchfab yet.
Here’s a few shots of the model in it’s finished state. 9.5 hrs of modeling, 12.5 hrs of texturing. 2988 tris in the gun, 202 in the clip. Here’s a couple of the final renders.
Im not A pro but it think instead of smoothing all of the gun you should use smoothing groups for Hard Surface Model it will Improve the Mesh Quality drastically And also Use Normal maps this will help you to make it more believable
heres a Video about Smoothing Groups
Go to Minute 3:00
and a Q and A to fix Topology when working with Edge Split
Ah yes, the clip’s much easier to see now. That is funny how large the barrel is for a .22. I haven’t done as much hard surface modeling, but for whatever it’s worth, I would say those wireframes and the modeling look quite good for 3000 triangles.
Just to add to what Neo_Maister said, if you weren’t wanting to add more vertices in the final render, another option for getting some of those edges sharper might be to use Blend4Web’s vertex normal editor found here: https://www.blend4web.com/en/downloads/ (at the bottom of the page) Although, using the smoothing groups is easier if extra vertices are okay. As he had said, I think baking a normal map from a high-res version that had sharper beveled edges would also help to give sharp edges.
Thanks for your comments, I appreciate it! I actually do have normal maps in place, but I’m not 100% on why they’re not rendering as strong as I’d like in Blender. Here’s the combined one that’s in use on the model above:
As far as dealing with vertex normals and smoothing groups, I have many of the edges marked for that already. I’ll go over the video links to see where I can improve on this. Also, I didn’t know that Blend4Web had that tool rolled into their package. I’ll check it out.
Yeah, that add-on is a neat little thing I had found out about not too long ago. It can be quite useful for some game assets.
About the edge splitting, it was mainly just some of those metal shapes from the back sight, down to the middle of the barrel feel a bit bulbous and inflated instead of like metal. Although, that could just be something to do with, what I’m guessing you’re using, is the Blender Internal renderer making it feel that way. I guess that might be why you can’t see the normal map detail very well too…
Getting back into the swing of 3D modeling things in Blender. I’m about 9.5 hours into modeling a Benelli MP95E. Chose this gun because my finger landed on it in my big book of handguns and revolvers.
