3DEE-3 Blaster Carbine

TALON_UK

Hi there guys,

Long time modeller, but new to these forums. Thought I'd post a few images on the latest little project I'm working on, an EE-3 Blaster Carbine, as made famous by the notorious Bounty Hunter Boba Fett, this is based on the second design of the weapon as used in Return of the Jedi.

I've just produced this for fun, but will most likely look at optimising it enough to use it as an in game asset for the Star Wars mod for Battlefield 2142 that I work on in my spare time, First Strike. If you want to find out more about this project you can check us out at our forums here:

http://www.fsmod.com/

I've not posted images of this weapon model publicly yet, so you guys are the first to see it. Once optimised for game use I'll look at texturing the thing and show you the work in progress on here. But enough of my waffling on, here are a few pics of the untextured mesh.

Enjoy.

chris.smuggy

That looks amazing!!! So inspired by the detail work people do on here. keep it up.

Armondikov

Looks pretty badass. I assume it also comes in a left-handed model?

TALON_UK

I guess, just bolt on the correct stock to pistolgrip attachments and away you go. Funnily enough I'm left handed, but I've always fired weapons right handed, probably so I don't get ejecting hot brass in the face.



Not so much an issue with a blaster though eh?


Thanks for the kind comments.

Armondikov

True. But given that it's a blaster, it's like some energy weapon of some description. So is there a reload option? It doesn't seem to have a powercell type thing, which I presume would be both essential as a real object and as a game mechanic. Infinite ammo is just cheating.

TALON_UK

Indeed, I'll have to think about that with this weapon, in most of our weapons on First Strike we work in reload animations where there is an obvious opportunity to do so, such as with the E-11 (Stormtrooper blaster) and A-280 (Rebel assault blaster rifle) which both feature magazines which can double as power cells/packs, and with some of the more exotic EU (Expanded Universe) weapons that we make use of which have obvious reloading possibilities, but I have to be honest, sometimes where it just isn't practical we don't bother, and we don't have reload animations for any of the pistols. The weapons all require reloading and will run out of charge, they just get automatically reloaded by the appropriate droid which features that function, or if a squad mate has deployed an ammo box. A little inconsistant I know, and a bit of a cop out, but whadaya going to do?

With the EE-3 seeing how it is based very much on a revolver, the real reloading mechanism wouldn't really be appropriate for the type of weapon it is. So if I do plan to build in a reload animation I'll have to look at other possibilities, perhaps have a power cell slot in where the hammer is situated, or in the pistolgrip or something.

TALON_UK

Bit of a necro post this, but not. Looking at finally finishing off this old girl, can't believe I built it back in 2012! :eek!:

Where does the time go? Well anyway, this summer amongst the other bits of software I've got to keep up to date with I thought I'd have a look at Substance Painter for texturing and have a dabble with PBR (Physically Based Rendering). And what better subject to test it out on than this old EE-3 Blaster Carbine? The software is pretty sweet, takes a little getting used to, and I'm still working through video tutorials and all that, but I can see this being a really powerful tool, especially for texturing organics. I won't get into the technical nature about what it does, here's a vid:

Needless to say it is a pleasure to work with and really intuitive, though I can tell so far I have barely scratched the surface of what it can do. Here are my WIP efforts so far:

Armondikov

And for ~Aï¿¡95 that's not bad at all!

TALON_UK

Aye, and it is just too powerful a tool to ignore, especially with most next gen games engines now doing this PBR thing. I remember when all you needed was your primary 3D package (3DS Max or whatever) and Photoshop and you were good to go, but now you need that and an additional package to get the best out of organic modelling (Zbrush), another package to help optimise UV Unwrapping, and now this to really take texture generation to the next level. You don't have to have all these additional packages necessarily, but employers will most likely want you to have skills in them. At least these packages aren't as extortionately expensive as the big hitters like Photoshop and Max/Maya are.

Substance Painter is definitely quite reasonable and I'll more likely than not pick this up after my trial runs out.

evil_genius_180

How the hell did I miss this one three years ago? I love Sci-Fi guns and there's no better franchise for them with the range of styles it has than Star Wars. Boba's gun definitely screams: Black Market mod!

The modeling looks fantastic as always and you're doing a fantastic job on the textures as well. :thumb:

Armondikov

Well, as a hobbyist I'm not too fussed about what graphics employers want, I'm just impressed by the shiny toys! (Unless academia falls through and I decide to re-train, but I feel I'm way behind the learning curve on many levels)

Still, the tech we have available now to produce graphics is starting to get into the realms of Clarke's Third Law. The last time I was this impressed by a bit of software it would have been Marvellous Designer, which is definitely worth checking out if you have an interest in clothing and have the rig to run it.

stonky

Don't know how I missed this the first time around - looking great, always liked that rifle!

TALON_UK

Using different techniques for the scope's development, loving this package more and more the more I use it. One thing that is quite annoying though is the fact that you need a curvature map to help generate smart textures which will give you wear on appropriate edges etc, but you only get those when you generate a normal map apparently, which isn't currently necessary for the workflow of this asset, so I'm going to have to find an alternative method to help me generate these maps and utilise this powerful effect. Anyhow, here's the update.

[UPDATE:]

Looking more into this I found a way to generate a workable curvature map. I got a hold of the opensource software Meshlab, imported my meshes into that and there is a filter that can create colour curvature information and you can then bake that to a texture. You then have to take that into Photoshop and separate out the blue and red channels to layers and blend them together to create the greyscale image you need for a Substance Painter curvature map. Bit of a ball-ache, but the results when you have a reasonable looking curvature map make it worth your while.

Will post some pics of the texture now with the better curvature map later for you to compare.












Just the stock to go now.

Armondikov

"Bit of a ball-ache" sounds like an understatement there. Though the effect looks worthwhile.

TALON_UK

The above images had my first attempt at approximating a curvature map, but the two shots below feature my new improved method of generating them that I mention in the "Update" to my original update above. Note the edges of the scope mesh that would be appropriate to have wear showing the base metal through the paint above and you'll see the improvement between the two.

evil_genius_180

Dude, that looks fantastic. :thumb:

TALON_UK

Cheers for the kind words guys.

Here's the thing pretty much done save for a few minor tweaks here and there which I'll probably feel the need to apply. Please give crits especially if there is anything that stands out to you as an issue. Might look at adding the paint edge wear to the main gun object too, but I don't mind it without it, might also smooth out some of the bump details to make some of them subtler in some areas, but generally pretty happy with the way this turned out.

Another thing to note if it is not apparent already, with the PBR the lighting on the object is generated from a background image to give as realistic true to life as possible lighting on your asset. I have the background turned off, but the lighting is still in effect. For my last render this update I've thrown in a different background so you can see the difference in lighting using this method.

evil_genius_180

I can't see any issues with the mapping or textures. It looks good to me.

DCB

Nice Talon. Substance Painter is pretty cool. As you say, all the major 3rd party game engines, Unreal, CryEngine, Unity, use PBR now, and most proprietary/in-house engines (like EA's Frostbite) have switched as well.

Btw if you haven't already, you might want to check out xNormal, a free app for baking out various maps like normals, ambient occlusion, cavity, etc. from high poly meshes. Very useful. Even if you don't use something like ZBrush for generating high poly sculpts, for non-organic models you can often get away with using whatever subdivision surface your 3D app supports.

TALON_UK

Cheers guys. Yeah, that'll be the next step once I'm happy with the texturing results, export the work out of Substance Painter and get this bad boy into Unreal.

Thanks for the tip DCB, so xNormal deals with curvature maps too? I'm aware of that package and it does look pretty good, so will have to look at it more closely and see if it is a route I want to take.

DCB

Yeah it does curvature maps. Pretty much any map you will need for texturing. You'll need a high poly mesh and a low poly mesh in order for it to work though.

TALON_UK

Ahh, that would be an issue then, as the workflow for this asset currently doesn't involve a high and low poly mesh. Though it will at some point I guess.

DCB

Yeah I was thinking more for future stuff. As I said, it's not too difficult to slap together some high polys for non-organic models via sub-d.

TALON_UK

Cheers again for the tip, somehow missed that bit in your previous post about SubD.

DarkSapiens

Wow, amazing model and amazing results!

Though I must say, the main gun object looks too smooth and shiny in comparison, now!