MA Games Design Blog - Lance Muir

  Project 1 Conclusion     So let's begin with the question, is realistic better? Well I think that this project was a good first step but it was only that, a lot more research and experimentation is definitely needed in order to answer this question, and I am still debating whether this is the direction I choose to take my master's degree in. First I want to break down what I achieved and learnt along this process.     So what did I learn? Well I always knew that the process of creating a high poly realistic model is one that is time consuming but rewarding. It takes a keen eye for detail and one misstep will result in either having to recreate a section of the piece entirely or continuing on will result in a less than realistic/ideal finished product . Referencing is key and nothing beats having the real thing in front of you to study versus images at odd angles or poor resolutions. Having said this it's very difficult to achieve for everything you want to mod...

  High Poly Pistol Final Renders     Just a quick post to show off the final piece rendered out fully using Substance painter's in built renderer which helps all the details from the texturing and the lighting pop out to their fullest.     Overall I am happy with how this piece turned out, while there are still some minor issues with it that probably only stand out to me and those who either know the 3D model workflow or are very familiar with the actual gun themselves, I still think it is a good step towards my goal and it always good practice in order to further refine my skills.     Given more time I would have liked to model the interior mechanisms and refine the overall shapes and accuracy of the design, however I feel that this model would stand up pretty well in a video game setting and would blend in with titles such as Rainbow Six Siege, Call of Duty, Battlefield, etc...

  High Poly Pistol Development     Moving on from the previous post I went through the full texture process, this was mainly adding in the engraved text on the pistol and playing around with the materials and experimenting to achieve the finished look.       While adding in the engraved text I decided to switch the colouring of the top slide to the black variant of the P9 to achieve a much more cleaner and consistent look. To explain how I achieved the text on the slide, I had to research what font type that Kahr uses on their guns and then see if I could find a version that was close enough to theirs, if not the exact same. After finding a font I was happy with I took it into Substance designer and created an alpha texture from it that I could then use in painter. The rest is pretty simple where I applied the text as a mask and added in a negative height blend in order to achieve the engraved effect, I did this with the rest of the text but using one ...

  High Poly Pistol Development     In this post I will be showcasing the texturing process and explaining the thought processes behind it for the high poly version of the P9 and why I made certain decisions. When I brough the model into Substance I had also prepared an even higher poly version so that I could use Substance's built in baking feature to impart the detail onto the model without increasing the poly count of the original model.     So these first screenshots are from the original base materials pass that I ran on the pistol just to see how everything looked after uv mapping the piece out and whether or not there were any issues like obvious seams or stretching textures, etc... I started off by using the metal brushed material preset on substance for any metal pieces, however the striations of the brushed material felt a little too strong so I decreased the density of the strands and the length and also increased the tiling size of the material. ...

  High Poly Pistol Development     Just another quick progress update to follow on from the last post with some more screenshots of the high poly pistol development process.      As you can see in the above screenshots I added back in the trigger, slide lock and mag release button along with the front and rear iron sights. These were all pretty simple to do and most were just using the base low poly version, the slide lock I had to remodel the right side as on the low poly version there weren't enough grip indentations which caused an issue when trying to increase the detail.      As well as this I modelled in the tactile grip sections on the front and back of the pistol grip section on the lower receiver. This was a case of modelling one version I was happy with and then just duplicating it down along the sections and placing them correctly so they fit within the ergonomics of the lower receiver.

  High Poly Pistol Development     In the next set of posts I will be documenting the development of the high poly or more "realistic" version of the same pistol I had been modelling previously. Since I had the base framework and the idea of the shapes down in my head it was an easier process, however to get the detailing that was left off the low poly version, I did need to redo some of the pieces from scratch. To begin with I started by remodelling the barrel as this was the easiest shape to achieve, as well as this I could build the proportions of everything else off of this and have them accurately sized to each version. A quick explanation I simply took a higher poly cylinder and resized it to proportion, then extruded it's end cap faces inwards to create the inner lining of the barrel. The next section of this was a little tricker when tackling the top slide. I tried to duplicate the low poly version and tweak that by adding in extra bevels and faces to bring up the...

  Low Poly Pistol Development     So this will be the last section on the development of the low poly P9 and in the next few screenshots I will have skipped ahead from the previous post a little. To briefly explain the rest of the modelling process I added in the front and rear sights as well as some extra little bits like the magazine release button on the side of the pistol. Again I was trying to solely focus on the main parts of the Pistol itself and leave out most of the detail itself. While looking unfinished I am happy with the process and what I have learnt along the way, that I can now carry forward with me in modelling practices. As well as this I didn't want to spend too long on a simple low poly model knowing I have the high poly realistic version that I want to model too.     As you can see from the above images this is the point where I felt the model had enough to be serviceable. Is it pretty? No. But does it look like a pistol and have features an...

  Low Poly P9 Pistol Development     Again more progress screenshots in this post as I develop the Low Poly mock up of the P9. The thing I am battling with most is the level of detail and what purpose it would serve in a model intended for a low poly game, I keep asking myself the question of how far I go and what details to add. I know that I may sound like a broken record at this point but since this model is being designed for a theoretical space there aren't any rules other than the ones I enforce on myself as an artist.     In the above screenshots I simply added in the barrel at the front of the top slide, I did later on extrude it backwards slightly to include the illusion of depth to the barrel and capped it off on the inside as I have seen done in many games as the player rarely sees the front of the gun, as such to save using unnecessary poly's it is capped so that there isn't just a hole inside the gun.     At this point with a good solid f...

  Hyper realism in games & 'Unrecord'     Whether you want to call it hyper realism or photo realism, there is a certain push towards ever more realistic graphics in videos games, especially in the FPS genre but not limited to that. There seems to be controversy and split opinions over whether this is actually a good thing or not and whether it can in some cases provoke violent or negative reactions from something being too realistic. This debate over graphical fidelity and realism has spanned many years, such is the case with the original Doom and other titles sparking criticism for being too realistic in it's graphics and a possible driving force for violence in young impressionable minds.      However the main thing surrounding a game's popularity and success is how fun it is to play, after all that's why they exist in the first place, in order to elicit enjoyment and fun for the player, otherwise games simply wouldn't be made as they are a very cost...

  Low Poly P9 Pistol Development     Just a quick post today with a few more development screenshots of the low poly P9 pistol. Again the main thing around the development of this piece and what I am learning about low poly is that it is far more complex that just making a simple model. The idea of constraining yourself within a low poly count and trying to get dynamic shapes and omitting some details while retaining others in the prop makes you really focus on what is important in a weapon's design at it's core, and even just in shapes themselves.     In the above screenshots I have once again further refined the shape of the top slide, mainly towards the rear of the part I added what look like machined bevels the run down both of the upper lengths of the slide and also creates these bevelled triangular corners at the very back of the pistol. It may be harder to see in a screenshot without texturing, however once textures are applied I hope it becomes a little ...

Low Poly P9 Development #2     Continuing on from the previous post, I have continued to develop the low poly model of the Kahr P9 using the references images I had collected originally I soon realised that I lacked a more internal view of the mechanics and the parts that come together to make up this pistol as a whole.       Not too long after searching on google I came across a field strip of the P9 by Pew Pew Tactical, in which he expertly disassembles and reassembles the P9 in full. Other than the obvious learning experience of being able to see the parts separately which helps greatly with modelling the contours properly and getting the details down in my head, it also dawned on me how little there was to this weapon that is designed to be lethal. There's no expert electronics and yes the parts are machined to get them to fit together perfectly so they work as intended but it's such a simple construction for such a lethal weapon. Just an existenti...