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.
Posts
Not so much an issue with a blaster though eh?
Thanks for the kind comments.
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.
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:
Substance Painter is definitely quite reasonable and I'll more likely than not pick this up after my trial runs out.
The modeling looks fantastic as always and you're doing a fantastic job on the textures as well. :thumb:
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.
[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.
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.
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.
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.
Though I must say, the main gun object looks too smooth and shiny in comparison, now!