Joshua Gardener's Art Blog

Firstly i did make a low poly model prior to this, i took the model i used earlier and stripped it down, trying to minimize the poly count, however... when trying to unwrap the UV's i realised a had a lot of problem areas that was consuming alot of time to go through so i have opted instead for a slightly "messier" route. Here are at least the screenshots from the attempt to at least show i did something prior to this; Shame this didnt go far, i managed to get it down quite a bit by shaving off edge loops and faces. So the other route; Firstly in Zbrush i had to merge down my model so it was all one component and then decimate it down. this was quite.... rough on my model, mainly because of the shaping, so this mangled the shape a fair amount, but i was able to export this to maya and then start quad drawing over the top of it to create a simple version of my model. so by this point i've completed anothe...

So after a couple of failed starts at this, This is the portion of the model where i am applying texture to the model, this effects that make the model appear like they are made from a specific material. For this i have exported all of my parts from my model as their own OBJ files, and then started importing them in. For now i just started testing the application of an alpha to my main piece of the gun. to get the right kind of effect i used an iron texture (mainly for the brush like strokes through the material) but the texture wasn't quite right so i had to alter it slightly to meet my needs. In the surface section there is an option for noise, and that allows for the application of alpha's onto the model, by playing around with the scale and strength of the metal texture i managed to get some of the brush stroke effect onto the main piece, giving it an effective metallic feel.   For the importing I selected one and then created subtools for it, allo...

Short on words for this post, the process here was to UV unwrap my higher poly model so that i can import these parts into ZBrush to texture individually. UV unwrapping is rather like doing the reverse of those paper craft boxes you got when you were a kid, instead of folding the edges and connecting edges of the paper to make a box, you're instead separating zones of your model in order to flatten it onto a 2D plane, this is more important when you need to map things like textures, colours or text onto the model. The method i am using here, works from the automatic unwrapping, then selecting edges that i want to combine and sewing them together, for the bits that came out well, they ended up nice and tidy like some of these, and means i can nicely apply a texture onto them, as well as count on them mapping well. As a note not only do you sew edges and unfold them, but also use the layout option to make them take up the optimal space on the UV editor. ...

And now, the third (and pretty much final) part of creating Jeanne's guns; at least as a base model, i still need to texture them, but one step at a time. To start with by duplicating and merging the stock components that i had made prior i can start making the more cohesive shape.  This also required a slight bit of experimentation as to the width and alignment of these parts with each other, so i might move or modify these bits as i progress. Additionally on the extended face, i indented more faces like i did earlier to capture the indentation that is reflected on my reference images. evaluation the model from other angles becomes essential with a model such as this, both paning in the perspective view and the other camera views have been essential in figuring out how the model is progressing and if it is balanced (especially for an artificial object like this gun) for now that will do, and i'll flip around to the magazine and grip of the gun, worki...

This will make part 2 of my asset production; back to me darting around making various small parts for the gun as this feels less daunting to do that crafting the whole thing at once. plus breaking down a challenge is always more effective to making goals and meeting them. At this point i darted to the stock (I think) of the gun, and making this rather odd shape at the top, using cubes and extruding carefully to make the flow of the shape. afterwards it ends up like this, this I will come back to when i decide to model other parts of this segment of the gun  In regards to the construction of the barrel, due to how block like the shape of it is i was able to construct it through using another polycube and adding edge loops to extrude the necessary ridges. Likewise since the tubing of the barrel was very simple in design, i just used a cylinder to create a barrel that went into the gun. Although a little placeholder i also worked on the gem panel of the...