Milan's Systems Modelling Blog

One final thing I have to do before I am done with the assignment is of course to combine the game and the gun I made into one! In Maya, with the gun group selected, I went into File ->  Send to Unreal -> Selection . Then I selected my Unreal Project and named the exported file. I was presented with some more export options, but I didn't modify them to see what happens. It seems the paint I applied to the gun couldn't be exported. Ah well! Then I switched into Unreal. Here I was presented with yet another window with options. Again, I didn't change any of them to see what would happen. After the import process finished, I got several errors: No smoothing group information was found in this FBX scene. After looking around in the exporter in Maya, I realized including " Smoothing Groups " was one of the options of the export. Checking this seems to have resolved the issue. ShockwaveGun_BackSight has degenerate tangent bases which will result...

Though I was done modelling and applying materials for the most part, I wanted to explore some of the other tools Maya has to offer. One tool that caught my attention is the 3D Paint Tool , found right at the end of the Rendering Shelf . The tool can be used to paint over parts of a mesh's texture with the color of one's choice. I was going to use it on the barrels of the gun. Before paint can be applied, the mesh in question needs to have a texture on it. This can be assigned through the Tool Settings , in the File Textures section. Once done, you can pa... just kidding. After applying a bit of paint, I noticed no paint was being applied to a bit of the mesh. That's why it's probably for the best to check the mesh's UVs first. I opened up the UV Editor . The part of the barrel I was trying to paint on wasn't properly unwrapped. This was easy to fix. On the top navigation menu, I chose Polygons and scrolled down to and pressed Unfold . Voila, ...

Today I'd like to take a look at how I tried making the gun model a bit more efficient than it was. Based on my research, the original Scattergun model in Team Fortress 2 consisted of: Verts: 923 Edges: 2627 Faces: 1711 Tris: 1711 UVs: 145 My gun, on the other hand, consisted of: Verts: 1093 Edges: 2104 Faces: 1029 Tris: 1891 UVs: 1414 Somehow, while having less Faces and Edges, I managed to have a lot more vertices than the model I'm trying to recreate! To improve the poly count, I began deleting unnecessary edges (i.e. edges that don't really need to exist, because they add no detail to the model). There were quite a few of these all over the model! For the barrels, I deleted their inner edges, then collapsed the middle face inwards to create a shorter hole. By doing this, I managed to reduce the model to the following: Verts: 884 Edges: 1331 Faces: 465 Tris: 1509 UVs: 1126 Now that's much more efficient than it was! Or at...

In this blogpost, I will tackle the details on the gun, as well as applying materials to it. 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 ...

In my last blogpost, I created the first half of the gun. In this one, I am going to detail how I finished the rest of it. The first thing I did was add a view of the gun from the back. This was to help me with modelling a thin panel which appears in front of the grip. A simple shape, created by stretching a Polygon Cube and Bevelling its edges. Once the panel was done, I switched the top Polygon Shelf out with the Curves / Surfaces Shelf . Using the Bezier Curve Tool I drew a rough shape of the grip. The tool didn't seem to behave like it does in Illustrator which I am used to, so I did not get the shape I desired straight away. After some googling, I found out I could go back and SHIFT + RMB click on individual points with little difficulty, editing their type and curvature. SHIFT + RMB clicking the curve also brings up the option to Open or Close it, which came in handy since I couldn't get the first and last point to connect in another way. Now it was...

In this blogpost, I am going to show you how I created the preliminary version of the first half of the gun model. Breaking It Down The lecturer advised us to first break down the parts of the model we're about to make into primitive shapes, so that's the first thing I did. The cylinder is... well, a cylinder . And the barrels are also cylinders, but they are hollow. Thankfully, Maya has a primitive for that, called a pipe . So to create the cylinder, I went into the Polygon Shelf up top and created a Polygon Cylinder .  I played around with its transform until it matched the schematics (and other reference images). Then I turned on Interactive Creation (Found under Create -> Polygon Primitives ) and created a Polygon Pipe . I dragged my mouse to adjust its width, height and inner thickness. Then I hid the previously created cylinder using CTRL + H, because it was getting in the way of the front view of the gun. I moved the cylinder into place, once ag...

To begin modelling the gun, I had to set set up my Maya modelling environment first. I opened the Scattergun schematic in Photoshop and cut out the side, top-down and front views of the gun from it. Then, in Maya, I used the Viewport Layouts tab bar on the left-hand side to switch into the four viewport layout, with top-Y, front-Z and side-X ortographic cameras as well as a normal perspective one. From the top of the side-X viewport I accessed the View menu, where I found the Image Plane  sub-menu and finally selected  Import Image . Then I selected the side view image of the gun. I did this for the other viewports and images as well. Of course, the images were all on top of each other now. I approximately readjusted their locations and rotations using the Tool Box options on the left, then I used the Channel Box 's transform attributes options for more precise positioning. Then I brought up the Outliner (scene hierarchy) from the Viewport Layouts tab bar a...

In this blogpost, I'd like to take a look at the gun I have chosen to replicate for Robotrooper: Simulation and discuss why exactly I've chosen it. Source:  https://teamfortress.wikia.com/wiki/File:Scattergun_item_icon_TF2.png The Scattergun The Scattergun is the default primary weapon for the Scout in Team Fortress 2 . As a model, I think it's of a reasonable modelling difficulty for someone with a minimal amount of modelling experience such as myself. It also has a lot of great reference images, including schematics made by  HVD Props  here on Blogspot!  Source:  https://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/File:Scattergun_1st_person.png I shall begin working on it soon. Stay tuned for updates on how it's coming along!

Today I would like to take a look at Autodesk Maya 2017 . I have previously dabbled a bit in Blender, but I am told that Maya's interface is a lot easier to get the hang of. Right off the bat, the interface of Maya seems a lot less intimidating than Blender's, as well as much more pleasing aesthetically. Mind you, I last used Blender in the summer of 2016, so the interface has likely changed since then! Unlike in Blender, Maya's scene seems to start out with... nothing. There's no primitives in the scene, only a grid and (presumably) some cameras. However, adding a primitive in is no difficult feat at all, as there's a handy menu up top that has a couple to choose from. Blender has a similar menu, though it's on the side and not initially open (and not as nice looking). One thing that seemed to be missing though was a scene hierachy, found in the top-right corner of Blender's window. It took me a bit of fiddling around to find it. Pressing the botto...