Making the Gun: The Devil's in the Detail
In this blogpost, I will tackle the details on the gun, as well as applying materials to it.
My first order of business was adding the front sight. I created it by adding a Polygon Cube, which I then subdivided height-wise into three pieces. By dragging the new top edges out and playing with them for a bit, the sight took on the right shape.
Next I created the back sight. I began with a Polygon Cube, which I subdivided, this time both height-wise and depth-wise. I extruded its left and right bottom faces, then adjusted its width and height to match the schematics. Once that was done, I created two more Polygon Cubes. I used these to perform a boolean operation on the original, finally getting the shape of the back sight.
The cylinder has a rectangular shape with rounded edges cut into its right side. I used the Bezier Curve Tool to create the shape, converted it into a planar and extruded it. Then I had to find the right angle to cut it out at, so that the cut would be fairly even inside the cylinder.
Once that was done, I moved on to modelling the screws on the grip. From the Curves / Surfaces Shelf I created a NURBS Circle. I converted it into a planar and extruded it as usual. I scaled and moved it into place, then duplicated it and moved the rest into place too. I deleted their backsides, as they weren't really visible. After looking at the schematics for the other side of the gun, I realized I would need screws there as well. I selected all the ones I already had, duplicated them and moved them into position on the other side. Then I changed their Y value to -Y, so that the correct side would face the outside.
After finishing, I noticed that the trigger and guard were not properly aligned. To remedy this, I went into Modify -> Align Tool. I selected the trigger, guard and finally the stock. Selecting the stock last means it's the key object the others will align to. Then I chose to align them vertically.
That was it for the modelling part of adding details. There was one more bit underneath the Cylinder on the schematics, but I could not see it on any of my reference images of the actual Scattergun, so I decided to skip it. Anyway, it was time to move on to materials! But before I did that, I wanted to clean up the Outliner, as it had become quite messy over time. I went into Edit -> Delete All By Type -> History to delete all the leftover Booolean operands. Then, I grouped up all the rest of the objects by type. Voila! Much better.
Modelling Details
My first order of business was adding the front sight. I created it by adding a Polygon Cube, which I then subdivided height-wise into three pieces. By dragging the new top edges out and playing with them for a bit, the sight took on the right shape.
Next I created the back sight. I began with a Polygon Cube, which I subdivided, this time both height-wise and depth-wise. I extruded its left and right bottom faces, then adjusted its width and height to match the schematics. Once that was done, I created two more Polygon Cubes. I used these to perform a boolean operation on the original, finally getting the shape of the back sight.
The cylinder has a rectangular shape with rounded edges cut into its right side. I used the Bezier Curve Tool to create the shape, converted it into a planar and extruded it. Then I had to find the right angle to cut it out at, so that the cut would be fairly even inside the cylinder.
Once that was done, I moved on to modelling the screws on the grip. From the Curves / Surfaces Shelf I created a NURBS Circle. I converted it into a planar and extruded it as usual. I scaled and moved it into place, then duplicated it and moved the rest into place too. I deleted their backsides, as they weren't really visible. After looking at the schematics for the other side of the gun, I realized I would need screws there as well. I selected all the ones I already had, duplicated them and moved them into position on the other side. Then I changed their Y value to -Y, so that the correct side would face the outside.
After finishing, I noticed that the trigger and guard were not properly aligned. To remedy this, I went into Modify -> Align Tool. I selected the trigger, guard and finally the stock. Selecting the stock last means it's the key object the others will align to. Then I chose to align them vertically.
That was it for the modelling part of adding details. There was one more bit underneath the Cylinder on the schematics, but I could not see it on any of my reference images of the actual Scattergun, so I decided to skip it. Anyway, it was time to move on to materials! But before I did that, I wanted to clean up the Outliner, as it had become quite messy over time. I went into Edit -> Delete All By Type -> History to delete all the leftover Booolean operands. Then, I grouped up all the rest of the objects by type. Voila! Much better.
Applying Materials
Based on reference images, I thought two materials would be good enough: Steel and wood. I selected all the pieces I wanted to be steel, right-clicked in the viewport and held until the option wheel was on the screen. I chose the Assign New Material... option, where I chose Blinn as a base. For steel, I only slightly changed its color to a darker shade of gray. For wood, I also used Blinn as the base, where I changed the color to a shade of brown. I also lowered its Specular Roll Off to 0.1.
The gun now matches the reference images very well, though I'm not sure if the model is as efficient as it has the potential to be. As such, I will take a closer look at how I can make the model more efficient in my next post.
The gun now matches the reference images very well, though I'm not sure if the model is as efficient as it has the potential to be. As such, I will take a closer look at how I can make the model more efficient in my next post.
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