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[Bad Sector]

...trying to make a gun model in Blender for... whichever of my engines uses it first :-P

[Zaphos]

I can't make much out, here ...
Are you looking for feedback?  Is it a double barreled shotgun?  A futuristic hand-cannon?  Is that a hand attached?
Do you intend to use textures?  Does it really need to be quite that low-poly?  (Or is that your game's aesthetic?)  Is that image generated from Blender?

[Bad Sector]

I can't make much out, here ...

Don't feel alone, someone told me that from a first look he though that this image shows a sink :-P.

Are you looking for feedback?

If you have some, yes please :-P.

Is it a double barreled shotgun?  A futuristic hand-cannon?  Is that a hand attached?

It's actually a double barreled short-shotgun. It doesn't exist in real-life (probably). The fact that it reminded you of a shotgun is a nice sign, although it's not a shotgun. It's close though :-).

Really i was thinking about it as i making it :-P.

And yes, there's a hand attached to it (now that you mentioned it, in many games the guns are found in the ground rotating around - i just imagined that gun rotating around with the hand attached to it :-P).

Do you intend to use textures?

Yes. But i have to mark seams and unwrap it first. And try to not make them look like shit (are there any tutorials/guides around about not making shitty textures for 3D models?).

Does it really need to be quite that low-poly?

I assume, it could use 10x the amount of polygons (the gun-and-hand model is it's 262 triangles). But i don't feel comfortable with high-res models :-P.

(Or is that your game's aesthetic?)

No i just can't make them highres :-D

Is that image generated from Blender?

Yes :-)

[Zaphos]

I can't make much out, here ...

Don't feel alone, someone told me that from a first look he though that this image shows a sink :-P.

Well, a sink is probably just for the lack of textures ...

Are you looking for feedback?

If you have some, yes please :-P.

Check google images for pictures of shotguns.  Your barrels look too large to me, and you seem to be missing the structure underneath the barrels.  The handle also looks more sharply sloped than normal.  I'm not sure how much of the difference is because it's a different type of gun, but I think you'd have a more convincing model if you went closer to what an actual shotgun looks like.

And yes, there's a hand attached to it (now that you mentioned it, in many games the guns are found in the ground rotating around - i just imagined that gun rotating around with the hand attached to it :-P).

I'm not sure if it's just because everything is so shiny, but it's hard to really make out a hand structure in there.  I'd probably have to see it from a different angle to understand exactly how it's wrong, but it looks like it's probably not physically accurate.

Do you intend to use textures?

Yes. But i have to mark seams and unwrap it first. And try to not make them look like shit (are there any tutorials/guides around about not making shitty textures for 3D models?).

Sorry; don't know any good tutorials.  Textures are my weak point ... I always get other people to do make them.

Does it really need to be quite that low-poly?

I assume, it could use 10x the amount of polygons (the gun-and-hand model is it's 262 triangles). But i don't feel comfortable with high-res models :-P.

For a model that's going to be that close to the player at all times, I think it really will be worth it to invest the extra time to make a high(er) poly version.  Mostly just so that you can get smoother cylinders.  I believe blender supports subdivision surfaces, so you might try just apply those to see if (a) they look okay and (b) they don't take you over your polygon limit.
That said, if the rest of the game art is also going to be done by you, well, you probably can't use nice smooth subdivision surfaces for everything, so perhaps you should try to make low poly something that's a part of your aesthetic instead.  You could perhaps draw inspiration from this: http://www.kennethfejer.com/lowpoly.htm

[PoV]

That monkey head is soooo dead.

[papamook]

I can't make much out, here ...

Don't feel alone, someone told me that from a first look he though that this image shows a sink :-P.

Dude that made me laugh, then I glanced back at the pic and I too can see the sink!

But do you think it's ethical to have the slightly disgruntled chimp defecate into a sink? I don't.

[Outer God]

looks to me like a sawed-off shotgun.  they're a type of shotgun with a shorter barrel to improve handling.  and yes, they exist.  the Devil May Cry series uses sawed-off shotguns.

i recommend using turnarounds for complicated/precise models such as people, guns, cars, etc.  ok, maybe not so much for guns, but yeh, just google for reference images if you want your shotgun to look more realistic.  it's still easier to work with turnarounds, and there are plenty of sites that provide them, especially for mechanical objects such as vehicles and guns.  i used to know a kick ass resource site.  if i remember it, i'll post it here.

as far as texture tuts go, try google.  you'll be surprised at how technical your search can be.

never tried blender.  is it easy to use?  oh, and ur monkey/skull head looks pretty cool.

p.s.

just something that might interest you, but as a rule of thumb, try to keep your polygons 4 sided.  3 sided polys are ok, and sometimes crucial when modelling, but you'll find that 4 sided ones deform better or about the same when animating.  avoid 4+ sided polys...unless the object is static.  ummmm, does blender count polys primarily as triangles?

[Bad Sector]

@Zaphos:
Well, i didn't mentioned it, but i do like lowpoly models :-D. I have seen these models before (especially the cube people), thank you for giving me a more "permanent" link to them :-P.

@Outer God:
I thought that sawed-off shotguns have larger barrels. Hm, anyway. So the moral is to use reference images :-P.

Blender is easy to use, for me at least. I know many people who learned it quickly (me included) and many others who still have problems making a cube. It probably has to do with it's non-common interface :-). As a rule of thumb, if you ever used Max, you'll have major problems using Blender. I don't know why, but Max seems to perform great damage to people's minds when it comes to using other 3D software :-P.

The monkey head is not made by me. Where most other modelling programs have a teapot, blender have a monkey head :-)

Yes, i try to keep my meshes made by quads (although at some points i put a triangle here and there if using a quad looks badly - like in some corners). Blender doesn't count polygons as triangles (ok, i haven't tried much :-P). I converted the mesh to triangles and exported it as a "raw" file which saves the triangle coordinates in a text file with one triangle per line. All i had to do is to count the lines :-P.

I assume there is a faster method in there - i just didn't checked :-D

EDIT: Ok, i found some reference images here and i did this:

The mesh (306 triangles):


Note that unlike the reference images above, this one is single-handed. I prefer to do it this way because i find it fun to have a two shotguns akimbo mode :-D

EDIT2: there is no trigger because you cannot see it :-P.

[Bad Sector]

betterified :-p

334 tris.

[Zaphos]

betterified :-p

350 tris... a little too much for the hammer :-p

It looks pretty good now!  Somehow the lack of a trigger visually makes me assume the trigger is located under what's been modeled, so it looks a bit like he won't be able to fire, but aside from that I am out of nits to pick.

[Bad Sector]

I reduced the tris from 350 to 334 :-P.

I don't know about the trigger. In this gun (one of my references) the trigger wouldn't be visible from that angle, yet there is a video showning a guy firing it (he used his second hand to hold the gun, but mine is about to be smaller).

Also in Blood 2's shotgun (one of the most memorable shotguns to me - i loved it), there isn't any visible trigger (well there isn't any visible hand even...).


Now that i think about it again... how can the trigger be visible from that POV?

[Zaphos]

Hmm, on second thought, I think I'm just wrong.  Sorry about that 

[Outer God]

you might wanna add a trigger for fancy reload animations or pistol whipping ala perfect dark, i think it'd be almost visible for those.  then again, you can always animate it so that it won't.

but that's definitely a sawed-off shotgun.  actually, your barrel looks massive compared to your reference image.  nothing wrong with that though...or with modeling free-hand.  it's the end result that counts.

i always find it strange how some people refer to triangles as their poly count.  maybe it's just me.  and damned autodesk.  guess i'm stuck with max for life.  but i hear maya is fairly similar to max.

oh, and here's the site: http://www.the-blueprints.com/

[mike]

guess i'm stuck with max for life.  but i hear maya is fairly similar to max.

Well, yeah. They are pretty similar.
Either way, though, Autodesk now own them both so I'm wondering how long they are going to continue support for both of them.

-Mike

[Bad Sector]

That's a very good site, thanks!

I'm referring to triangle count as polycount mostly because that's what is going to be fed in the graphics card :-P.

[fish]

stick with max.
maya is garbage.
i have to work with it all day everyday and its horrible.

[___]

Aw... I like Maya =(

[Zaphos]

Aw... I like Maya =(

I like Maya too!  Except how it crashes and breaks in so many inexplicable ways.
But I've heard Max is similarly troubled, so it's a wash?

[Bad Sector]

I can't use anything else than Blender :-)

[Outer God]

lol, yeh, max tends to crash out of the blue as well.  i'm pretty sure autodesk won't scrap maya since many people still use it.  the latest version (last i checked) uses whole body IK, which is a pretty cool feature, so they're still going strong with it.  if they're smart, they'll continue supporting both programs.

and bad sector, if you need help getting started with turnarounds, just create two planes aligned vertically parallel to one another and rotate one by 90 degrees.  then move em into place and add the turnarounds to the planes as textures.  make sure the planes are the same dimensions as your image file.  if you need one for the top/bottom, just add another plane.  hmmm...you prolly knew that already.

so that's why people keep counting in triangles.  i forget everything's made of triangles.  drives me crazy.