[Weapon] M7 Grenade Launcher (+ M9A1 rifle grenade)

[lucky.BOY]

Um by welding I mean combining the two geometries into a single one, which means that you need to attach the objects together, and then, well, make them one piece of geometry, so that nothing intersects and there are no gaps.

@mries, the launcher uses a special powerful blank round loaded inot the chamber, which creates the pressure needed to launch the grenade. So to lauch a grenade with this setup, the grenadier would first need to open the chamber, ejecting the round that was in there (assuming he is mid-clip in a firefight), insert the blank round into the chamber, close the chamber, (attach the launcher onto the tip of the barrel,) mount the grenade onto the launcher, aim as best as he can (actual sight saw action only shortly before the end of the war, and it wasnt a very practical one too), and fire.

The reciol was very harsh so launching the grenades with the butt of the rifle positioned on the ground was the preffered way of doing it, rather then with the rifle rested against your shoulder

[KaB]

Originally Posted by lucky.BOY

Um by welding I mean combining the two geometries into a single one, which means that you need to attach the objects together, and then, well, make them one piece of geometry, so that nothing intersects and there are no gaps.

Like this ?





I'm not sure if I had to remove the blending effect around the cylinders. I thought it could bring a better high poly result, I actually really don't know. However it made me do some really tiny tris when joining the two cylinders, won't it cause troubles for the next ?



Here are some renders : #1 #2

The small lower screw seems to have smooth issues, should I seperate its lower part (vertically talking) from the blending effect on the smooth groups (this would fix the smooth issue for sure) ? Sounds like the blending effect could become quite useless for this one then, right ?

Edit : Also when I joined the big cylinder to the rest on the smooth groups, it took this weird shading effect, is it considered as an issue ? http://i.imgur.com/2n1xJqm.jpg

[lucky.BOY]

Um I'm not really sure what you're trying to so here, that "blending effect" I showed you in pm (for everybody else, this Highpoly tut 2 - Imgur ) was meant for the highpoly, not for lowpoly, which I take it you're working on the lowpoly here?

Get rid of that "effect", get rid of those extra edges and smooth it properly (ie. make a hard edge where there is a 90? angle between faces). That will get rid of your small tris problem You will get that effect from the normal map, which will baked from the highpoly.

Other than this, I think you are putting too much tris into detailing the small cylinder, for it being a 6-sided cylinder it has too fine detailing near the base. Make it similar shape to what you showed me on the highpoly, thats how it looks on the refs. Maybe consider making the cylinder 8-sided?

I can also see some unneeded tris near where locking mechanism is, and also on that locking plate near the circular hole, as well. Try to optimize the thing a bit.

You're getting there, keep it up!

[KaB]

Originally Posted by lucky.BOY

make a hard edge where there is a 90? angle between faces

Got it !

Originally Posted by lucky.BOY

Other than this, I think you are putting too much tris into detailing the small cylinder, for it being a 6-sided cylinder it has too fine detailing near the base. Make it similar shape to what you showed me on the highpoly, thats how it looks on the refs. Maybe consider making the cylinder 8-sided?

Actually the high poly was made from this precise model Not sure what you asking for then, but as you said it has too much details near the base I turned it into this :



Tell me if that's what you meant (it has 8 sides now).

Originally Posted by lucky.BOY

I can also see some unneeded tris near where locking mechanism is, and also on that locking plate near the circular hole, as well. Try to optimize the thing a bit.

I could optimize the bottom, but nothing I can do on the sides or the bottom change anything on the tris count :





Also just wanted to add that I've just experienced some heavy crash issues with 3ds max. Actually it focused on the big object : each time I deleted edges or polys, it crashed. This same object also turned into red wireframe sometimes. I don't really know how I finally succeeded in finishing what I was doing, anyway the software doesn't crash anymore when I modify it.
However I still have issues that used to appear during the several crashes as you can see on the first screen : there are some edges missing on Smooth view. I'm afraid it means the model is still very unstable and the crashes might come back at any moment... Should I be worried about it ?

(I can't be sure but I thing the crashes came after I attached an object which already had materials on it, and I believe that's what causes the red wireframe first, and then the crashes)

Edit : the bug might have come from wrong bridge that made weird hidden polys. I took a backup to replace it.

[KaB]

p3d.in - garand m7 ATTACH2

Does it have greenlight for highpoly (or at least first attempts) ?

[lucky.BOY]

About the max crashing, that just happens sometimes I think. At least it makes the modelling more thrilling, eh?

Model looks good, but you can still optimize it quite a bit. Not sure what the tri count is right now, but we should be trying to get it as low as possible.


Purple: That edge is missing because you probably deleted it accidentaly, just select the two verts and connect them, edge should be right back
Blue: collapse those edges, i dont think you need so much smoothnes in that part.
Red: get rid of that vertex, Has no right to be there


Traget weld those vertexes as marked, should get your tri count down in no time


Get completely rid of this small cylinder along with any edges/verts associated with it, The animation wont probably even show that part of the launcher and even if it will, you can "fake it" with bump map just fine, saves you a big bunch of tris.


Looks way too detailed for a thing that wont be seen all that much;
Red: Target weld those vertexes as marked, you should keep the vertexes that make the circle and get rid of those that make the bending of the plate correct.
Blue: I feel like you put way too many tris into detailing this curve, they and optimize it a bit.

What I meant with how should the small cylinder look is that it shoul be like on this image, with the base little wider:


Also, I think that you should maybe add a little chamfer to the tip of the launcher, It is visible on the refs. It might make the UVing and baking a little trickier, but at least it will be more fun

[KaB]

Just fixed everything as you said, except :

Originally Posted by lucky.BOY

http://i.imgur.com/TXD0vML.png
Looks way too detailed for a thing that wont be seen all that much;

I must disagree. Even though it's very small, the slight curves really makes the difference... And I just love it like that ;'(

[KaB]

Update with the M9A1 :

http://p3d.in/YUBxH/wireonsmooth

I didn't do the safety pin ... yet. I actually wondered if it's needed ? It seems not all the nades had it, and that would be some extra work for the animator

[lucky.BOY]

That chamfer on tip of the launcher is too big, I think.

Rest of the launcher looks done to me

As for the grenade itself, the hemisphere on the tip is wrongly done. You should be using a hemisphere which you will get by cutting a sphere in half by through its equator. In other words, create your sphere in the "front" viewport, if you got your model oriented logically. This wat the sides of the tip will line up with the sides of the cylinder forming the main body, so you wont get that wierd transition you have going on here- And it will allow for much nicer UVs.

From looking at refs it looks like the back part of the grenade is a bit too long maybe and that extrusion on the explosive looks a bit too big in comparison with the diameter of the thing.

Also, maybe its not needed to weld the stabilizers at the end of the grenade to the body? they wont z-fight and welding them wont save you any usable UV space. Only issue I can see arising from not having the welded on is that if they go all the way to the back end of the grenade, there might be some z-fighting there maybe. Maybe move them a bit to the front, so they dont go all the way to the back?

You should also look into making the rear part of the grenade hollow, as it is in reality.



EDIT: for the safety pin, you got any source claiming some grenades didnt have them? I mean these are rather important to the functiobality of the grenade, right? And dont worry about the animator, worst case scenario is that he cant be bothered to animate it and just deletes it from the scene

[KaB]

Updated : p3d.in - garand m7 ATTACH5

Originally Posted by lucky.BOY

And dont worry about the animator, worst case scenario is that he cant be bothered to animate it and just deletes it from the scene

Or he could make the character removing the spin out of the field of view We would just see a small movement of the head of the nade coming with a "click" sound.