I’m working on a model inspired by this concept by Fernando Correa. The model is pretty much complete and unwrapped, I’m debating wether I should add more elements to the front part. For now I will focus on the texturing phase…
If you have any ideas on how to improve it along the way, I’m happy to hear it.
Well i think that it feels more like a water gun than a actual gun, my advice is to make the barrel less thick maybe add some more details to it as well and add a trigger to the gun as it doesn’t seem to have one, overall great job!!
The proportions are definitely different from the original concept, but I felt the exact proportions in the 2d drawing didn’t really translate that well into 3d. (The stock for example is significantly smaller in relation to the grip, which could make it akward for a person to hold.)
And the trigger is right here:
I started the base material for the barrel.
I’m starting to get an idea for where I want to go with this, but I’m not really happy with it yet…
The first full assembly of the metal material is complete:
There are still a couple of things I want to add and I need to adjust some parameters, but so far I’m pretty happy with it. Digging through the node trees is gonna suck though…
I like the proportions, it looks unique and really reads like a fatty laser diode.
I added the laser diode to the front element and started texturing the metal plates connected to the barrel.
Current list of things I need to fix:
The metal plates are still looking too flat and the albedo luminance variation is too strong.
The barrel needs rust where the metal plates connect to it
I want to add some kind of burn marks around the laser diode.
Scratches on the inward facing sides of the metal plates might not make so much sense…
Roughness map needs more work
Added burn marks to the front and rust around the metal plates. I also refined the material for the metal plates, but I still need to work out the balance of the different elements as some parts are getting lost a bit.
Finished a first version for the hose running from the power supply.
Too shiny… makes it look a bit like leather. And the height map needs to be balanced better.
I adjusted the metal plates a bit and added the material for the screws.
I also finished up the material for the hose. (At least for now.)
Wow. When you’re done, could you do a breakdown or something of the nodes? Because I can use nodes, but I really don’t know how to get anything like this…
it’s really nice - I love how it looks like it has a cooling system 
The laser diode reminded me of HAL9000, so I added a little something as a final touch to the barrel.
I didn’t find any good fonts I could use and I suck at handpainting, so I went the good old-fashioned photo based route and scratched it into a plastic box I had lying around and made alpha masks in affinity photo.
Yes, I’m thinking about doing a full breakdown of all materials once I finish the project.
So… I started texturing the grip at the bottom of the barrel and I may just have found a new way to scatter dirt and scratch maps across models without visible tiling or seams.
Regular Tiling:
Modified Tiling:
You can see what it’s doing when using a brick texture:
Pretty neat.
Completed the grip thing below the barrel. I’m not sure about the color yet.
I gotta say, I’m a little surprised by just how much you can actually do sometimes without even using UVs.
Working on the next material…
I was going for a hollow, relatively light metal - something like aluminium.
I’m really starting to have trouble with preview renders. At this point the cycles live preview is pretty much useless and eevee isn’t liking these materials either. Slows things down, but I’ll get there - one node at a time…
I finished the material, added some painted damage to the front, another dirt layer and balanced everything better.
I did another test render with proper lighting to check how the model as a whole is looking.
I’ve been working on this box piece at the bottom behind the barrel. The outer plastic almost drove me crazy. For some reason I couldn’t get the material to look right until the third attempt. That combined with slow previews was annoying, but luckily I realized later that I could just bake proxy textures for all my components to make eevee able to handle the material while I assemble it.
Still needs some fixes, but so far I’m pretty happy with it.
