50 cal Sniper Rifle

[cpsx]

I've been getting back into using XSI (after not doing any 3d for a few years) and this is the first model that I am tring to put alot of effort into. Not sure where that effort will get me though, I consider myself a big newbie to 3d (but I love it). I am modelling just from this picture as reference, so it is kind of hard to keep everything scaled great.



and this is what I have got so far, haven't added any detail yet, just trying to rough out the shape.



I'm kind of scared to get started on the base of the gun, I'm sure I will screw that up a couple of times. Any suggestions or tips and tricks are very much welcome. Also can anyone point me to a tut (XSI) on how to make nice renders for things like this, the untextured ones you see good people posting. Thanks.

[Knight-]

Glad to see you've gone British mate. Accuracy International... finest rifles in the world. 8)

[cpsx]

Dunno too much about British guns, but this one is sexy. I've got a good deal of the gun done now and detailed a few places, still haven't started on the body or really the scope. Comments and critique welcome

[drjustice01]

Well, I think I can help you out here (sort of). They look great, however, be prepared for them to take several minutes for just 1 frame of a highly detailed model to render.
First those high quality renders are really simple to do In 3dsmax. I don't know about XSI, I've never used it. You need to create a new post titled... "How can I make clay renders in XSI?" If its possible someone will tell you.
Second about keeping the scale and shape of the rifle correct. Just google it and get more pictures. The company that makes it will probably have more pictures of it, likely several from different angles.

[Carnage]

I found this over at threedt forums, posted by a user called Nehumanuscrede.

Anyway, like you've discovered there are a billion options for rendering within XSI as it is, but there are three ways ( off the top of my head anyway ) for putting in an environment for reflection purposes. They are:

1) Model the environment. Not an option considering the time limit.

2) Create a ' dome ' within your scene and image map your favorite outdoor
photo onto it. Simple poly sphere, remove the bottom half of the polys,
flip the remaining polys so the normals face inward and apply an image
map. Scale it up to a size appropriate for your scene and render. If you
only want the reflections to show up, ( otherwise the dome and it's
mapped image will show up in the rendered view ) You need to tell XSI
to kill the primary ray visibility. To do so select your sphere then ( right
side menu bar here ) click selection -> visibility -> rendering tab -> and
uncheck primary rays. Now when you render the object isn't visible via
a direct view from the camera, but it IS visible from a reflective object.

3) The easiest ( and the fastest ) is to simply create an environment shader.
Pull up the render menu tree ( 3 is the keyboard shortcut ) and look in the
lower left corner under the Pass section. Select edit -> edit current pass
this will open up the options tab for the current pass. Select environment
shaders tab and hit the add button in the environment shader shader
stack. Select the environment shader. It will populate in the Stack
window. Highlight it and select Inspect. You're now presented with the
noicon_pic window ( insert your favorite reflecto or HDRI image here ).

Once you have your image selected, make note of the three sliders at the bottom. These are Background / Reflections / Image. The background slider slider controls the image visibility from the camera. Set it to zero and the camera can no longer see it directly. Similar to killing it's primary rays visibility from method # 2 above. The reflections slider controls how strong or intense the reflected image is within the scene. The image slider controls the intensity of Final Gathering lighting. ( used with HDRI images. Yes, you can utilize an HDRI image for the environment map to
light the entire scene with

And voila! Reflected environment !

Now, as far as Ambient Occlusion goes it's also a pretty simple setup. Though keep in mind at it's higher settings it WILL start to hurt render times.

But, here's how it's done.

Select your object and bring up the render tree by pressing ' 7 '. Go Nodes -> Illumination -> Ambient Occlusion to bring the node online. If you have already applied a material to your object, you should see the material node, the Illumination type node ( phong, Blinn, lambert, etc. etc. ) and the Ambient Occlusion node. As of right now ( IF you have a material applied to it already ) the Illum Type node will be directly connected to the Material Node. Grab the ' connection ' from the Material input ( surface socket ) node and plug it into the AmbientOcclusion input (bright socket) node. Then connect the output socket from the Ambient Occlusion node to the Material input (surface) socket. Basically you have the AO node in line between the Shader and the Material Node ( surface socket ). You can now play with the AO options by dbl clicking on the AO node and set the parameters to whatever you wish.

Hopefully that will help you somewhat.

[cpsx]

Carnage, I'll try to follow that little guide, the way I am rendering right now is similiar and gives me kind of a crappy clay look, so I need to fix that up. I'm getting pretty far along in the modelling, I am very slow at it though. Also I find myself using difference Boolean alot, which I am assuming is not a good thing in some cases, because I have created alot of wierd polygon areas, I'll post a wire next time. I've found that marking certain edges as hard improves the look alot (I never even knew about "hard" edges until starting this model)

Also what is the best way to model something like this, right now I have quite a few different meshes that make up the gun, is this the way it is usual done or extruded from one object?

Here is where I am at now, probably alot more details by tommorow.



Thanks for any help, comments, or critiques!

[cpsx]

I've done some more work, but the new scope stands out the most to me, here is a close up.



I have a few more questions. I am guessing that I will need to merge all of the parts before I texture? And anyone know of a tutorial that will teach me the best way to texture this model, my previous texturing experiences have been rather crappy.

I definately need to learn how to model without boolean and using tons of polygons though. Any comments or crits are welcome (help point a newbie in the right direction) as always! Thanks for looking.

[cpsx]

Well I am going to finish up a few touch ups on the geometry tommorow and then make a feeble attempt at texturing it (hopefully I can make it look pretty good).



Here is a render of the left side, pretty bare since can't find any good views of it, wasn't a great idea to try and model a not mainstream gun. Any comments on the job I've done so far?

[cpsx]

Well I applied some crap materials to it and just test rendered it, but I don't think I will bother taking this any further until I am more advanced, then I will model the stand and a nice environment as well as actually try to texture it.

[budweizzer]

It's not that bad. It's looking great to me :wink: