Here’s my latest and most ambitious sci-fi rifle concept!
I’ve been working on this for a while, and I really had no idea how to even start it so I’ve got a fairly long Modeling support forum thread on it already. If you’re interested in seeing how it started out and how it got to this point here’s the link:
http://www.blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?339015-Working-with-Cylinders-and-Torus
The first attempt is hilarious in retrospect haha!
Here’s a better look at the contouring along the bottom where the body meets the rear hand guard and trigger frame. It’s a little sloppy and I want to fix it so it’s a smooth curve from the vertical to the horizontal but that’s what it is right now.
I don’t know why but I really like this triangular piece that resulted from flattening out the front end.
Also, I’m not sure it it’s going to be a particle beam weapon, or an infrared laser rifle, or a neutron beam rifle.
I’ve taken to thinking of it as The Angry Anteater for it’s uncanny resemblance to this jerk:
Also, possibly, Snuffleupagus. A grim double entendre which alludes to both the trunked Seasame Street character and the fact that this thing will snuff you.
Aesthetically, I have to say that I don’t much care for it. To me, it looks like a cross between a trombone and a raw giant soft pretzel. That’s a matter of taste, though, so don’t feel like you need to change your design on my account.
Functionally, I can see a couple of issues. First and most importantly, that rounded butt is just NOT going to settle comfortably and consistently into the shooter’s shoulder. It would be awkward to use that way. Second, the foregrip–the vertical element just forward of the trigger guard–is a bit on the thin side, and won’t fill the user’s hand properly. It should most likely be about the same thickness as the main grip.
The general layout of the weapon reminds me strongly of the FN P90. You don’t have the user’s forward thumb in the same hole as the trigger finger, though–a huge improvement in my eyes. 
The flat triangle you mentioned looks like a good place to put targeting optics such as a built-in laser sight or something that links to a HUD in the user’s helmet/goggles/cybereyes.
It’s a weird-looking gun that doesn’t appear to draw on conventional firearm design at all. HOWEVER, unlike many such designs, it looks like (with a few tweaks) something a human could actually wield effectively.
Keep at it and let’s see where it ends up!
Okay, I’m going to leave my first post there to show the history of my thought processes.
Having just read the thread you linked, I have to apologize. The butt on the design you’re going for looks just fine. I also see that you’re planning on adding an optical sight, avoiding the common mistake of making a cool gun that can’t be aimed.
I can understand wanting to make the Skin modifier bend to your will, but maybe subdivision modeling really IS the way to go on this?
Aha! Yeah, that is a good point. Good enough to be a tad difficult for me to address.
I’ll start by saying this part was not originally designed to be a dedicated grip. My idea was more of a hand guard. Which, when you look at the gun, begs the question, “Well… if it’s a hand guard and not a grip… where the hell do you put your other hand???”
Um. On the hand guard haha! But I like to think it doesn’t need to be designed as a dedicated grip. For example (I’ve looked up some quick google images) think of the Mac-10, although you’ll never see anyone using it, ever, in any movie, tv show, or video game wherein the weapon is featured (which I hate), it actually does come with a folding stock, standard. With that stock folded forward I’m sure you can use it as a forward grip, but if you’re using the stock as a stock… there’s no where to put your other hand up in the front of the gun. So when using this weapon’s stock you would otherwise grip the weapon just like you would a pistol. One hand on the grip, the other hand on the first hand ex:
Now this is obviously not the same type of weapon (in terms of general format - that’s a sub… machine… pistoly… thingy - this is a full sized bullpup rifle) so consider for a moment, the TAR 21 (which is the best example I could come up with, and it was hard to come up with one, at first I was thinking of the Steyr AUG but that comes with a built in foregrip, damn - apparently they are kind of important aren’t they?). It’s a bullpup rifle with a hand guard and a very short front end beyond that hand guard (although still nowhere near as short as my front end). There’s just enough flat surface in front of that hand guard to fit a hand horizontally, and I mean just enough. But with such a small front end, and your hands so close together, I could easily imagine someone sliding their hand back and holding onto that hand guard anyway kind of like this:
He’s sort of halfway in between there, but imagine if he slid his hand a little further down. One could hold onto that hand guard like it was a grip even though it’s clearly not an ergonomic grip.
That said, I have considered (out of necessity as this design kind of screams it) turning the hand guard into a dedicated, ergonomic vertical foregrip. There were two reasons I wound up not liking that idea so much… or maybe not liking the idea of implementing that idea haha! The first is my sort of aesthetic ideal? I really wanted that part to be one smooth continuous rail branching off from the body of the gun forming a hand guard and then weaving it’s way all the way back to the stock where it curves back around and becomes the main body of the gun in one continuous loop.
Granted there’s no particularly good reason for that. Once it stops being a hand guard the bottom rail is highly stylized and otherwise largely pointless. But then that’s exactly what my first sci-fi gun lacked! Style. And that’s why it came off looking like a fucking laser glock (if you’ll excuse my language - point is, it’s not very sci-fi at all). So I thought style was an important part of making this gun recognizably unrecognizable? Which is why even though it makes more sense, and it does, for once I was willing to sacrifice a little logic for the purposes of looks, aesthetic, design, style, whatever you want to call. Normally I’m highly opposed to such things. But look what being too technically accurate got me before: laser glock. If you’re wondering I described it a little in the last update to my (linked) modeling support thread again to contrast against this design. It’s the reason why I made this the way I made this.
The other reason I didn’t want to make the han guard and “official” foregrip was more practical… It’d be really hard! At this point I’ve already made so much of the gun. And normally, who care’s right? No problem just stretch out that front end and make some room! But with this godawful thing! Given the necessity of smooth curves and transitions, which I think are absolutely critical to the design at this point, you can’t just stretch something out a little. If you stretch one substantial part out substantially, you then have to go back and basically re-scale half the gun just to make that one adjustment mesh as smoothly with the rest of the gun as it did before! Which basically means you have to rebuild half the thing! At least that’s what I’m terrified will wind up being the case if I try it! And I would have to stretch out the whole front of the gun for this because if I just make the hand guard thicker there won’t be any room for the thumb on the inside of it since it looks like just the right amount of space right now.
So yeah, sorry for the excessively long, ranty response to that one paragraph of your post! It’s something I’ve thought a lot about so I had to write a lot to explain? I’m still not done 
So in the end I come to two possible conclusions. Either trying to find a way to make a grip work anyway or rationalizing why it’s not necessary.
On the “make a grip work” hand. I figure I could do that by not making it a fully vertical grip? In other words, by shifting the position of the grip down on the handguard, like this:
Or. Errr. Something like that.
That’s a really sloppy mock up, but you get the point, widening it out at a lower point where it won’t require me to stretch out any other part of the gun, and I can just taper it smoothly off the rest of the rail so it’s not completely disruptive of its flow.
On the “rationalize the way that it already is” hand, which I prefer by a wide margin bwahaha! I figure a couple of things. For one, maybe the operator doesn’t hold onto that rail at all! Maybe the operator holds this gun just like that picture of the Mac 10: one hand on the pistol grip, the other hand on the first hand, like an actual pistol and that hand guard goes around both hands! But as soon as I say it immediately realize, nope that’s out, because if that were the case there would be no need at all for the second hand guard hanging off the front of the gun like an elephant trunk or a semi. Oh god no. Belay that last. You know what I mean. The second hand guard. Point is that’s proabably not how you hold the gun (although you could, operator preference and all). Which brings us to the second thing I figure.
In a contemporary firearm having a dedicated ergonomic grip for the forward hand is really important. Because modern firearms are kinetic energy weapons (I love saying that) that accelerate physical projectiles to high velocities generating significant recoil. Recoil that has to be controlled to maintain accuracy. So you need to have a really good, well, the most solid grip possible on the front of the gun to keep it pointed where you want it while shooting. Obviously.
But in a sci-fi, perhaps electromagnetic, energy weapon where there is no physical projectile there would be… dun dun duuuun! No recoil! So it wouldn’t be nearly as important to have a really good rock solid grip on the front of the gun!
In fact, counter-intuitively, the opposite might be the case!
The following is mostly extraneous feel free to skip everything between the lines!
I was actually in the Navy myself. And I was originally trained for marksmanship with an M14. The M14, mind you, has an open slidy… thingy… (hey I was in the Navy not the Marine Corps.) on the side of the gun. When you fire a round this open slide type thing attached to the bolt slides back vacating an open track on the right side of the gun. If you’re actually gripping the gun with your forward hand, your fingers are right on top of that thing, so when it slides back your fingers fall into the track, and when the bolt drives back forward the tips of your fingers get… somewhere between crushed and severed by this thing as it slams back into the front of the track where your fingers now are because you were gripping the gun. So you can’t do that. You actually have to not grip the gun, so you’re taught to fire it with your palm and fingers flat and the gun just laying on top of your hand but not actually holding it. Now that doesn’t mean it’s good to not grip the gun that just means the M14 has spectacularly shitty ergonomics because it was designed in the 50s before anyone knew ergonomics was a thing. In any case the open palm rest thing is fine as long as you’re laying prone on a firing range under ideal conditions plinking targets. But when you’re theoretically in the field one day maybe possibly probably not because you joined the navy unless you volunteer for it specifically, running around trying to dodge bullets and ducking for cover, you’re going to need to be holding onto the front of that gun to control it. Otherwise it’ll just be bouncing around every which direction even if your’e not trying to shoot it (which may or may not require holding still anyone, although you won’t likely have the chance to hold still even if you should for marksmanship purposes because this is the field and the whole goddamn field manual just went out the window) you’ll be muzzling everyone around you with that thing swinging around. You really need something you can grip!
Well, later in the Navy when I got more advanced combat/tactical training with wayyyy better weapons like a variant of the M4 called the MK18, it was geared entirely toward close quarters combat (because it’s the Navy) we got vertical foregrips on our guns and it was pretty clear that gripping that foregrip firmly was paramount to controlling the ehhhh… nominal recoil under sustained automatic fire. So just logically speaking and based on that training and how annoying the M14’s ergonomic situation was I always thought having a grip and gripping it firmly was pretty important.
After I got out I wound up being roommates with someone who turned out to be an ex Army Ranger, and occasionally we would wind up talking about such things. Well, turned out, this guy HATED vertical fore grips! I was like, “Oh, wait… no, you must be mistaken I think you meant to say that you love vertical foregrips. They’re great for controlling recoil in automatic fire.” He conceded the point on recoil but he explained where marksmanship is important (which is almost never at close quarters but pretty much always outside of close quarters) the vertical foregrips present a problem. People instinctively/reflexively grip them firmly. Well, as you know, if you squeeze something as tight as you can it will cause your hand/arm to shake visibly. Well if you grip something firmly that still causes some mild wobbling, mostly imperceptible to the naked eye but still more than enough to throw a shot off target at a range of you know, 100 yards or so and beyond of course. So when you give guys in the field vert grips they grip them and their accuracy goes to shit. And then you (being this ex-army ranger guy) try to teach them, no you’re shooting worse now you only do that when you’re dumping a mag on auto (worst case scenario, probably closer range) when you’re shooting under normal circumstances in single fire at longer range you leave that thing alone and just lay that rifle casually over your open palm. They get it consciously but as long as a grip is there… their hand is going to tend to find its way onto it and then squeeze. Apparently they’re actually bad for marksmanship because gripping is (kind of) bad for marksmanship. That surprised me in a big way but that’s not what I was really geared toward myself.
Good lord I do love the sound of my own keyboard don’t I? Well… If anyone is still here, and I hope you are, the point is it turns out that gripping isn’t necessarily all that great for marksmanship and it’s mostly only useful for controlling recoil. Welp this is a gun with no recoil… and line-of-sight precise, I guess, angle of attack since one can’t really say “trajectory” without a projectile. So maybe grips largely don’t matter in this context and having the least tense handle on the weapon possible is best for business so to speak. So no need for a grip, just a nice spot to casually place your other hand for some support with no need for hanging on tight?
Again, I’m so sorry for how long this is. Moving on. Anyway, I’m gonna keep juggling the alternative ideas of low slung grip vs. no grip at all, let me know what you think!
Wow, I never noticed it before but that P90 does have your thumb and trigger finger in the same hole. Haha! I don’t know how big of a deal that is, but it doesn’t seem ideal either. Super compact though I guess? I don’t see the P90 in it myself, to me it’s too long and the pistol grip is too upright while the P90’s seems like it’s swept straight back (how do you hold that thing!) guess that gives it a lower profile in the prone? That said though you are onto something, I’ve always like of liked the look of those weirdo guns like the P90, the F2000, AUG, etc., etc. so I’ve drawn ispiration from them and hell, maybe this thing is a bizarro mutant crossbreed of them all? I think I see a tad more F2000 in it myself.
Come to think of it I have noticed a lot of the weapons with whole hand guards don’t bother with trigger guards as well and that’s been something I’ve avoided.
I want to give you some sort of internet sci-fi award for “cybereyes”!
That’s a good idea, I could imagine some sort of sensor package there with laser sight emitters (visible and IR) and maybe one of those reflective convex lenses like you see on thermal imagers! I’ve been thinking for a while that I wish I had one facing the other way because it’d be a good surface to put some sort of data readout for the operator. Like, remaining charge (ammo), range counter, etc… But I haven’t done it because it would chop up that smooth curve you have on top of the gun. I could put it in the back of the sight though or in the sights holo display. But then what would you do when you don’t have a sight?
(emphasis added)
Thank you! That’s everything I ever wanted for this gun! And yes that’s also what I would go for haha! I do want something believable after all.
No apology necessary, it’s not like it was offensive commentary, it was all pretty relevant input considering I didn’t show the work on the stock and sight. But yeah dude, it is Work in Progress, not Work in Done haha! Oooh, ohhh, let’s not speak too soon about that butt stock just yet.
Here’s where we stand as of now for reasons explained in infuriating detail in my linked Modeling Support thread.
Haha! I bet there is a lot of that going around: unaimable sci-fi guns! But sci-fi gives you a lot of leeway to magic things away. For example you mentioned earlier targeting data linked to an operators visor. That’s a cool idea. Even with no visible sighting devices at all someone could just say the weapon has integrated gyros that allow its on board computer to track it’s own position and orientation in three dimensional space enabling it to determine exactly where the weapon is aimed and jack that data into a headset with an aim point reticle displayed in the operator’s visor. That’d be better than lasers because it would be completely undetectable and wouldn’t require pesky manual aiming for the operator! SCI-FI! But I’m a practicalist at heart so I always like to have good ole’ fashioned irons built in. Optic sight in case of computer failure, irons in case of optics failure, multiple redundancy!
Anyway that does bring me to the point. I’ve been sort of struggling trying to come up with what this things ironsights are gonna be like and where the hell i’m going to put them. Not really struggling, but as I’ve been working on everything else I keep coming back to the fact that the version without optics needs some sort of irons and then continuing to work on other things since nothing comes to mind immediately. But now I’m running out of the other things I need to do. So I’m going to have to get to that part eventually. In spite of all my best laid plans and best made efforts.
Ah, subdivision modeling. I just wrote a huge rant on it (although not as huge as the grip rant I’m posting here) in my modeling support thread. The gist of it was that it looks like a good idea but for the mathematically uniform curves and tapers I was aiming for in this model I don’t think it would’ve worked. Ultimately the examples I’ve seen using extrusion and subdivision look mostly flat on the sides rather than fully cylindrical. It just doesn’t have the same “flow” I like to think this does and I think the only way I could’ve made it exactly this way up until this exact point is the skin mod.
That said though subdivision still looks like a pretty good way of making the butt stock square on the outside. But then again now the butt stock situation has become a lot more complicated which is why it’s only half a butt stock as you’ve seen already. I’m thinking that’s not final but I’m having a hard time figuring out how to complete it without creating other issues in the overall design. See the modeling support thread for full description and let me know if you’ve got any ideas please…
For what it’s worth, whatever turns out to be the case in the end, I think I did a hell of a job clumsily bludgeoning the skin modifier into the general shape that I wanted this thing to be.
What do people think of the stock? cringing as I ask
If you are trying to texture it, then i would recommend you to watch few videos and learn how to effectively use Smart UV Unwrap,Project from view with numpad. 7,3,1 and navigation 4,6,8,2 are the keys you will need to handle. I think that you can understand it pretty well after watching this tutorial. You will learn lot from this tutorial. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PJL0eAuZ_E And as i said, it is original and I like it. Really!
Thankyou! I downloaded that tutorial, so I’ll watch it later and see what I can do with it. I do know basically how to use unwrap, and while this is one of the most difficult models I’ve made it seems like it’s very simple to unwrap. My first obstacle to learning how to texture was that my other models are more… cube based? With lots of different cubes so when it unwraps it’s all completely mixed up. I still have no idea how I’m going to go back and get everything in order on those older models. And with no continuity to the unwrap it’s impossible to paint it.
Anyway, this looks really simple. I don’t even mark seams, and smart projection still gives me a really clean continuous clam shell like unwrap, here’s this side, there’s that side. Once I learn how to paint in photoshop this one should be easy. In any case I’m sure I can learn more from that tutorial so I’ll check it out. I don’t really know how to use project from view, or what to use it for so I’ll definitely pay attention to that part.
Thanks for the compliments!
I wasn’t trying to put my own model down in your KIT thread, I was just saying, this model is just not on the same level as that. I mean, I’m sure your’s is in the tens of thousands of verts, if not hundreds, and the texturing and everything. It’s a flat fact that I’m not there yet. But yeah, I love this model, I think it turned out great. It’s just a basic shape as of now though. There’s actually no detail on it whatsoever. Nothing to make a normal map from. No texture of any kind. Not even a trigger haha! I need to detail it a lot, add controls, a loading port of some kind, other stuff probably, surface detailing to bake a normal map out of, etc., etc., etc.
Anyway, now that I’ve got you here!
What do you think about the grip issue I was discussing with ZeroPoint. I want a lot more input on this before I move on. I think I have a logical basis for not making the handguard a grip, but ZeroPoint does really have a point. And I’m not sure about the stock just yet…
the delicate looking breed of a tavor and a F2000. Not bad looking so far
Thanks Mas!
I really didn’t want it to look too similar to anything that exists, but those are pretty cool…
I’ve been trying to figure out where to put a ejection port for whatever kind of magazine this thing is going to take. It’s hard to come up with a location and controls that are accessible and quick enough to be tactical. Especially given the bull-pup format.
And now I need to learn how to make a normal map too 
Someone HELP!
Apologies if you’ve already mentioned this, but where does the mag end up going? As far as the whole vertical grip discussion, if you really wanted one on there, you could take the L86 approach and have it behind the trigger, it could possibly attach to the top and bottom of the stock. For a normal map, you can download Crazybump (they have a free trial for like 30 days), draw out the normal map in black and white in PS or Gimp, and then import it in CB and convert it to a normal map.
Actually this isn’t a traditional “firearm” so it’s not going to have the kind of mag that I think you’re thinking of. But rather, some kind of hi-tech battery packy thingy? I’m not even sure exactly what it’s going to shoot. Energy beam, plasma bolt, I’m not sure yet. So I have no idea what the "magazine is even going to be. I’m thinking about making a version that’s actually a rail gun, that would have something like a bolt action and a manual breach load.
Anyway, as of now I’m assuming some sort of panel opens up and a “mag” plugs into a small port inside, panel closes so it wouldn’t be visible externally.
I just mentioned in the comment above yours that I’m having a hard time picking spot to actually place that, and coming up with ergonomic controls to operate it.
Huh, there’s an idea. The grip might be a little awkward but I might be able to work something out…
So this is an alternative to high poly modeling and baking normals???
ive youre going to use a “battery” then you wont need a ejection port. but as an option you could put a battery loading spot (like on a M320) on the right side behind the barrel, and just have it burst open and eject it when that thing fires.
Yeah, I didn’t mean an ejection port for shells, I meant an ejection port for the “magazine” its self. I looked up the M320, that’s actually a really good idea! I want this weapon to have really good ergonomics so I’m really trying to think of everything when it comes to the mechanics of operating all the controls and reloading. So if the barrel swivels horizontally on a vertical axis to open a breach on either side of the gun like that grenade launcher does: it couldn’t open toward the inside (non firing hand side) because that would be toward the operator’s body as they hold the weapon and their chest would block the breach. So it would have to open toward the outside (right side for right handed operators, left side for left handed). But then the only way the operator could reach the breach would be with their firing hand, which means they’d have to take their firing hand off of the pistol grip to reload, and I really don’t like that because it’s actually going to slow them down.
So I’ve been thinking about this M320 idea and I’ve come up with a variation that I think will make it a little smooter to operate. If the barrel swiveled in the same way but on a horizontal axis so the breach opened upward instead of to the side, kind of like a break barrel loading shotgun…
Please excuse the bad PS edit but this should give you an idea what that would look like:
This would make the weapon ambidextrous, I could have the spent “mag” eject away from the operator over their firing side shoulder (a clean eject… if it ejected downward it would get hung up on the bottom rail, roll off to either side, and probably either hit the operator’s elbow or torso which could be dangerous if it’s really hot which it probably would be), and the operator could reload with their non-firing hand (so they’d be ready to fire faster).
But now that I’m looking at this thing I immediately see a couple of problems. First off, basically the part where the operator puts their face is popping up into their face when they reload. So, to reload they’d have to take their face away from the weapon and/or lower it, which would ruin their readiness and slow them way down. Ideally you don’t want the operator to have to do anything except push a button, pop in a mag, and push another button at the most to reload. They shouldn’t have to change their stance, mess around with the gun too much, or even really have to take their eyes off the sights when they reload, so that they can pop the mag in and be back to firing as quickly as humanly possible. You know. So they don’t get shot while reloading. It doesn’t really work like the action movies and video games where the action hero always seems to stop what he’s doing, point his weapon up in the air, turn it to the side, and look at it while he reloads it. I don’t know why they do that but it really pisses me off in video games when I get killed while my character is going through all these lengthy, unnecessary, exaggerated animations instead of just maintaining their combat stance popping in a mag and being back to firing in .5-1.5 seconds max like they should.
/rant
Anyway, the other problem is that rear facing breach and how far back on the gun it is. The whole point of the bullpup format is to maximize the length of the barrel while minimizing the length of the gun, by moving the barrel back into the stock. So whether this is a laser or a rail gun or a plasma blaster or whatever, the barrel has to go all the way back into the stock. Which means whatever it fires originates there. So…
there’s a reasonable expectation that whatever it loads should load there right?
Well, if it is electronic maybe not. It could be pretty plausible for some sort of battery to load up in the front and just have wiring run to the back where it powers the emitter or whatever. But then if it’s a plasma blaster, then it maybe isn’t so easily plausible to have a tube full of plasma running the length of the weapon from front to rear. Plasma’s hard to contain, I’d imagine doubly so for weaponized plasma. So I think in that case you’d expect some kind of plasma container to be plugged directly into the rear of the barrel.
So it might very well have to be loaded all the way at the back in that hard to reach spot. But, especially with the non-firing forward hand, it would be really difficult to reach back behind a rear facing breach at the far rear end of the weapon to push something forward into it.
So I think the breach will actually have to be forward facing. Which is basically what I was trying to do the day before I made that last post…
This is what I was trying to achieve then and I think it’s the best format so far?
Again, sorry for the poor PS edit but I think it gets the idea across. This assumes a left handed operator just so you can see the ejection port. In which case the ejection port will be on the left side of the weapon. When the ammo runs out the “mag” is automatically ejected out of that port over the operator’s left arm/shoulder and the loading breach pops open (downward) like a trap door in the middle cutout. With the breach facing forward it would be MUCH easier for the operator to reach with their non-firing hand, keeping their firing hand on the pistol grip, finger on the trigger, ready to fire the instant the next “mag” is loaded, even before the non-firing hand is back on its grip if necessary. Just immediately when the breach closes.
Then several “mags” could actually mounted under the top rail of the weapon right next to the breach, the same way you sometimes see shotgun shells mounted to the side of a shotgun for quicker reloading.
What I was struggling with when I was working on this was where to put a charging handle. Now, whenever this thing runs dry the mag (I’m going to stop putting quotes on that for convenience) is instantly, automatically ejected (like Maslofski suggested), and the load port pops open simultaneously presumably both operations being carried out by a heavy spring load that’s released when the ammo runs out. So how does the operator close the load port and reset that spring load?
They could just push the door closed. But that seems a little awkward due to the positioning, they’d be pushing up with their finger tips with their arm folded back toward themselves, I can easily imagine them not pushing all the way up, or hard enough to close it properly.
So I think the best thing would be a handle they could get a positive grip on and pull hard to really slam it shut decisively and reload that spring pressure in the process.
But where to put the handle? When I was first modeling this before I really considered exactly how it would load, I imagined the handle would be up forward above the pistol grip but now with the loading port where it is, that would require the operator to shove in the next mag, then reach all the way back forward again to operate a charging handle at the opposite end of the gun before they could fire. That would probably be just as slow as requiring the operator to load with their firing hand anyway. So I need better positioning, but I still haven’t figured that out. Or at least I hadn’t when I was making that last edit. In the process of writing all this I think I figured it out. New edit!
Alright, so moved the reloads to the bottom rail, added a charging handle just in front of the loading port. After the mag is inserted it’s pulled forward closing the port loading the mag ready to fire. Although it might be blocking the port a little. So maybe I’ll have it offset on a 45* angle toward the outside (same side as the ejection port) rather than right at the bottom.
What do you guys think of that???
So this is an alternative to high poly modeling and baking normals???
Exactly. It’s useful for really detailed objects that you don’t want to waste polys on, and if you do it right, it can actual look extremely convincing. Not the best example, but here is a tire with a very complex tread that I normal mapped to save polys.
As far as the charging handle idea goes, it really limits the grip inside the stock (if you were planning on doing that), as the charging handle would presumably take up a good amount of the top rail, and the reloads on the bottom. You could position it on the bottom of the entire stock, although that could be a little uncomfortable, considering the height difference between your two hands while firing. If you DO want the grip in between the two rails, you could put the charging handle on the left side of the gun (in the same position, just moved onto the side of the gun) (like you suggested as I just realized) Having all of the exterior parts so closely packed into the stock could actually be really good, because you wouldnt have to move your off hand very much to reload, and depending on how far you have to push the charging handle forward, you could charge the gun with your thumb as your move your hand back onto the grip.
Well that sounds a lot more efficient than modeling all the details, baking the normals then simplifying the model! And it looks really good, thanks! Is there a free program I can use to do this so I’m not relying on a limited trial. It’ll probably take some time before I learn how to do it well.
You just gave me an idea. If I do put a grip there, I could move the charging handle back to the bottom and actually have it pop out of the back of the grip when the breach opens, such that after the operator loads their hand would cycle the charging handle as they put their hand back on the grip. By which I mean, just by putting their hand on the grip…
Ok, so I’ve worked on the load mechanism for this thing and this is what I came up with:
I made a cylindrical load thing (whatever it is), an open breach in the side of the stock, and a hinged loading port on the bottom.
Unfortunately the load port could never close like this, at all, let alone with one of these cylindrical magazines sitting on it, it just wouldn’t clear the opening as it swings closed!
