The Making of a Beast: Modeling the M240

Hey mates, I'm Katarn, the guy who models the majority of the weapons for PR. The incoming community faction weapons are not modeled by me however, but I've had a significant hand in their readying for integration into PR. For example, the Russians.

The PR team's modeling process begins with a military advisor gathering a pack of references (usually hundreds of high resolution images of the weapon in question). Here's a sample image from about 100 that came with various variants of the M240:
[IMG]http://realitymodfiles.com/katarn/beast/reference.jpg[/IMG]

Then, I start out by grabbing the proportions of the weapons. This is usually done using the actual milimeter values of the length of the entire weapon vs the barrel. This usually gives a good reference of how big everything is. You'll notice on most of the renders put in this little memento that there is a cylinder and a plane above the model. That's what this is for.

I first start out by blocking out the various forms of the weapon before adding any detail:
[IMG]http://realitymodfiles.com/katarn/beast/01.jpg[/IMG]
This method allows me to get all the proportions and basic shape of the weapon before adding any detail. This is good because it means if I have something off, I don't have to move a bunch of details as well as the main form to compensate.

Then you'll see that I start adding some minor details. This is really just to keep me interested. The ones seen here are all identical, so you only have to create one and array them in incrementally increasing X positions. Basically, they're all in a straight line, exactly the same distance from one another.
[IMG]http://realitymodfiles.com/katarn/beast/02.jpg[/IMG]

There's no need to reinvent the wheel every time you make a model. A lot of the pieces between the Minimi/M249 and the M240 are similar. For example, how different can feed trays and the like be between weapons in the same arsenal? I grab some of the stuff from the M249 and throw them onto the M240 and make some minor changes to fit my reference images.
[IMG]http://realitymodfiles.com/katarn/beast/03.jpg[/IMG]

From here, I start really adding detail. I'm adding a heatshield and its mount to the barrel of the weapon. This only appears on the M240B (handheld) version of the weapon, so it's easily removable. Shadowing of this heatshield SHOULD NOT be textured onto the barrel, since it may be removed. The heatshield goes through a lot of changes even after this. Modelers should be able to find some smoothing and vertex errors on this object. Well, some of these are just unavoidable, burrowing cylinders out of curved pieces. I have to trust they are not severe enough to interfere with the texture.
[IMG]http://realitymodfiles.com/katarn/beast/04.jpg[/IMG]

I really start adding to the detail of the weapon. I add all the small details to the right side of the receiver, and adding the charging handle. The charging handle, although not particularly challenging to make, was a huge bitch because the initial object I made kept crashing 3D Studio Max (the program used to model this weapon), so I had to completely remake it after about an hour of trying to figure out the cause of the crashes.
[IMG]http://realitymodfiles.com/katarn/beast/05.jpg[/IMG]

Here is a full view of the weapon, with some work done on the muzzle and just overall fixing it up. Things to still add are the ammo box, belt, trigger, front and rear sights, and the bipod. I'm already pushing a lot of tri-limits, since it's already around 7000, but I can cut that down quite a bit. I'm still working on this model, and this is as far as I've completed it as of yet. More progress will be posted up soon!
[IMG]http://realitymodfiles.com/katarn/beast/06.jpg[/IMG]