Assignment Part 2

Hello there!

:: S e l f C r i t i q u e ::
Before I start with the model progression, I would make it clear that I am DISPLEASED with what I had to submit as my assignment. Mainly due to the fact that I decided against modeling the details and not actually using actual textures similar to my gun model - the gun looks way too unrealistic and the details (like the horse) does not make it very motivating to model. As a result, I've came out with a black skin for my gun to make it look more intimidating and look more like a gun. In the above image, I have included the use of shaders and lighting.

I would say that I've finished 90% of the entire model, 10% consist of the additional details and textures. Parts such as the barrel could have been extruded inwards from the slide, but due to not planning ahead, I had to separate the pieces - which I deeply regretted because I feel that is really bad modeling.

In my previous post, I said that I would start from the slide and proceed on to the body, but after research, as shown below, I decided that it will be better to start from the grip and proceeding onto the grip. I wasn't really happy with the edgeflow of my slide, as I didn't really plan ahead - therefore, when wanting to add the barrel, it was really difficult without remodeling the entire slide.

Other than that, I think that the body was pretty well done, my wonderful lecturer helped me a little in the body, teaching about reversing normals and solved most of my problems with the body. Generally, the edge flow is good. However, for the slide, I kind of rushed a little and felt a little dejected because of the details etc and the inability to extrude the barrel from the slide.

Oh yeah, a little problem with the size of the slide as well, at the end, I had to add two cube fillers to fill in the sides so that people could not peer inside the model from the back. I'm pretty negative about my model, but then again, I did have my fun.


:: R e s e a r c h ::
For my research, I've gone around youtube to search for other people modeling other guns. Most of my research done is not to actually how to model a gun, rather more of how a gun topology and edgeflow should look like.

First:


In this video, it shows a person modeling an AK-47 in timelapse, I noted that he started with the grip (I also started modeling from the grip) and from then onwards, I paid attention to the edgeflow and how he manages his topology. However, in this video, I did not use a polygon cube to start modeling.

Second:


This video is slightly more related to how I did my model. The method of duplicating the model then doing one side using planes is how I did my model. I found out that using this way is easier but more time consuming to come up with a slightly more detailed model with lower polygon count.

:: P r o g r e s s i o n ::
Now, here I will start on how I derived my model. Due to me... being too engrossed in some areas, I'd admit that I may skip some important steps but I'll try to explain using text. Well, let's begin shall we?



This is after I imported my ref image. Note that I only used the side view only, that's probably why my model isn't very accurate. I started by creating a new plane and placing it facing as shown above.



Now, I moved the vertices to form the outline of the grip of the gun and to mimic the tilted shape of the grip handle.



In the picture above, I extruded the edges to form the bigger shape of the grip. From here, I will timeskip and show the outcome after I finished the grip using the aforementioned method above.




In "1" mode

In the "3" mode

Here is the almost complete form of the grip. I did not join the bottom because I will be adding the bulged part as a separate object. So how did I do the curved area? Simple. It is just the tilting the of the edges on the different axises in the perspective view and then switching back to side view to check the accuracy. Slowly, but I came up with this.




Continuing.. I extruded the trigger guard from the grip using the faces and then deleting the unwanted faces that are left inside the model.



Now, I extruded an edge from the chassis and to form the slide. From there, I extruded the face sideways to form a depth for the slide and not just a piece of "paper". Soon after, I extruded the faces from the top of the slide and curved it as shown above. The slide is nearly done.



When joined, this is how it roughly looks like. However, we are not done yet! We have not created the holes for the hammer to fit in.



Now, to create this hole, just deleting the faces is not just it. I had to create some thickness of the hole as well. Well, what I did was extruding the top edges and then merging the vertices with the bottom vertices.



I added the hammer into the model. I did not take the steps on how I modeled the hammer, but I started from a square and manipulated the vertices to form the shape. To get the hole, I used a cylinder and scaled down the subdivisions to about 5 and then Boolean>difference it. From there, I had to use edge loops to control the shape of the hole by joining it to the nearby vertices using the interactive split edge tool.



I finished the last part of the hammer. And as you can see, I've already added the textures to the model(metallic material x). To do this part of the hammer, I merely just followed the shape given to me in the reference images and extruded from a polygon cube.



Lastly, I added the grip frame by using the same method as I did doing the chassis. Also, I added in the small details such as screws, trigger etc - and with that, we are basically done!





All these were taken with lighting and shaders(including the first image of the post).