Ok, so this is my second model. I’ve been blending now for going on 3 weeks and I’m starting to become painfully aware that a structured mesh from the get go is a must. Anywho, this is my attempt at a Desert Eagle pistol. Add subsurf to the rubber grip to see what I was going for. .blend and pics below 
How can I clean it up?
Wow, a very nice start we have here.
I like modeling guns too, and I have to say you go well into the details.
Can we have a small AO render to get an idea of the overall model?
Nice job so far ;).
You must excuse this AO render. I honestly didn’t even know what you meant, so googled, found the AO button and enabled it. That was as far as I got. But I hope it will make due. The black grip uses the “rubber” material available for free from the official repository the gold is just a yellowish/orange color I picked, nothing more. This is where I get stuck though in my modeling. I’ve modeled. Still not complete I am aware. But I’m not sure how to get the effects I want. When I try subsurf to minimize any mistakes and smooth curves it no longer looks like the strong hard shape metal holds. But without it, the jagged curves (8 section circles, etc…) are obviously visible.
Thank you for the compliment. Keeps me motivated.
If you want a different bg color, then please tell me how to change it 
it looked good at first, but when I took a closer look, there were actually a lot of problems. having any sort of geometry on the inside isn’t clean - remember, faces are only used for defining a surface
also, make sure you use the do-clipping option on all of your mirror modifiers, and no vertex should cross that mirror line (you have a few on the green piece that do that)
i might try and upload a file later showing what could help clean it up
I would be very grateful for anytime you spent trying to help me out. By your post count it seems you must be a veteran around these parts and I really need advice from someone like you. I really picked up blender 3 weeks ago and have been trying to self teach it to myself. I am starting college in Jan for CG animation. I started to ramble
anyway, I will take what you said into consideration. Hope to see your response 
gasp the evil default blue background! ok, go to Shading(F5). Then click the button that looks like a world, and click the top left color box and you can change it from there. I would suggest a white color, or a light grey. AO is in the same place, just look for the “Ambient Occlusion” tab and click the button, and then choose choose Approximate in the drop down option. It looks a bit better, and takes less to render.
didn’t make it perfect, but if you look close, you’ll see that i basically made everything a solid object - so there’s a definite outside and inside for every object
and unless i missed something, there shouldn’t be any floating vertices or faces/edges on the inside
i hope this helps 
50CALhelp.blend (89.8 KB)
Ah Ha! Well I decided with the black background. White kinda hurt my eyes. I turned on clipping, and reconnected a few vertices that I accidentally disconnected.
New render.
Any ideas on how to smooth it out while not loosing my hard edge where i need them?
new .blend as well
Any ideas on how to smooth it out while not loosing my hard edge where i need them?
in the .blend i posted, you’ll see i used an edgesplit modifier, which should do that after you change it to set-smooth. use ctrl E -> mark sharp if it doesn’t give you hard edges where you want
That grip is RIDICULOUSLY wide, just saying. The Slide of a Desert Eagle is a tad skinnier than that, and your handle (in this image) looks much better, but a little too skinny.
Thank You! I do see what you mean by making everything a solid piece. And I will keep my eye out for those nasty edges 
Thanks again! I will be building off this modified one
And you have just confirmed my thoughts on redoing the black grip. I will change it to be the original grip, one that doesn’t wrap all the way around. Hopefully I can get to some of that now.
Thank you for your input :yes:
I didn’t see that actually, thanks for pointing it out. I will now head to google the edgesplit!
I second Jeepster’s comments - internal geometry is not a good thing.
To find internal geometry, I would suggest setting the model as smooth (look for “set smooth” in the editing panel), and then zooming in on the areas that look weird - those are likely to have internal geometry issues. If you think you’ve removed the internal geometry and it still looks odd, press ctrl-n and then press the button in the box that appears to have Blender recalculate the normals for the faces.
If you’re looking for good video tutorials, then try here: http://blenderunderground.com/video-tutorials/
edit: I read another thread before posting this and you guys talked a bit more so now my post is a bit outdated.
Ah well.
hehe, Well I am glad you took the time to!
Ok, well here is an update. cleaned up the mesh and removed about 8 edge loops I found I didn’t need. Also filled in the back top area a little more where Hammer will be located. Attempted to add some detail around the trigger. Also slightly edited the groove that runs the length of the bottom of the barrel. Also updated the grip with a temporary fix. Notice it no longer wraps all the way around. Still undecided on what kind of grip I want to use.
Thanks everybody for the comments!
new render, new .blend
Ok, I decided to redo the bottom. The grip obviously no longer fits it properly, but that will be tackled next.
Is this a better mesh than before???
The older one was much better, just needs a little vertex tweaking, the new one has far too many vertices, you’ll have a very hard time managing them.
