Week 21 Hybrid Weapon Asset Production
Week 21: Hybrid Weapon Asset Production
3D Artists In The Industry
Over the course of this year, I have been looking into a range of 3D artists and their development into 3D assets as well as environments. In term 1, I looked at Patrick Sutton and Tyler Smith, two 3D artists who work on 3D assets and Environments respectively, as well as the range of programmes they both use. Moving on from term 1, I have started to become more comfortable with the programmes I use in 3D production which now allows me to evaluate and study 3D artists in more detail and understanding.
(Cramer 2020)
A new artist I started to follow was Andreas Cramer as recently at the time I spent a lot it practising with gun models to develop my Maya skills. Cramer first started the model in Blender as a way of practising this program as he was new to it, but inevitably went back to Maya. It's no surprise a model like this would be much harder in Blender as Maya is used for more Hard Surface and rigid models such as this gun rather than something more Organic like a character. As I am only accustomed to Maya, I could then note and understand Cramer's workflow for this program, however, he does use Zbrush and Substance Painter which in this workflow that I am not accustomed to. What I wanted to learn from Cramer in this workflow was how he separates his model into separate meshes for the cleanest wireframes and retopology.
(Cramer 2020)
From what I can learn from the wireframe, I can see the chamber, body, trigger, handle, bullets and cock meshes are most likely separated from each other for the cleanest edge flow for 3D production. This is something I will remember when I develop gun models in the future. What I have also noticed Cramer has done is that he has Rendered out a 256x256 Normal Map. A normal at this aspect ratio has been created for a texture which is something I have not done yet in Maya when creating Normal Maps.
He has also used Zbrush for sculpting detail onto the model. Zbrush would usually be used for more organic models that require a higher level of detail. Here Cramer has only sculpted a small amount of detail into the model, using a custom diamond pattern brush on the handle to give the texture of wood, as well as, small carvings around edges to give the immersion of wear and scratches and for the screws on the body surface. From Zbrush, Cramer struggled to use Blender for his UV creation which is why he inevitably went back to Maya. For asset production, It is important to make sure to create a normal map from a sculpted mesh as this mesh will have a high level of detail which correlates to a high level of polycount. In Maya, Cramer has retopologised his new mid poly model from the sculpted mesh with a much smaller tri count of 14000, more optimised for a game engine. From here he creates a UV from the retopologised model to creates bakes in Maya for his Normal Maps.
(Roberts 2021)
As Cramer was more adapted to Substance painter in his workflow, I wanted to look for an artist who uses Quixel Mixer in their workflow to understand their process of texturing. I found Guileherme Roberts who is a younger 3D asset developer in the making who uses Quixel in his production workflow. Quixel is great for early 3D developers as it is simple to understand and experiment with for texture study as well as producing more stylised assets. His Vector inspired piece 'RKD-01' (Roberts 2021) caught my attention for its use of Quixel in material creation. From creating Normal Maps, these files can be imported into texturing programmes such as Quixel Mixer. Here I can see Roberts has used a darker grey and black albedo with high roughness and few metalness to create a more acrylic and plastic material for his weapon instead of a more metallic gun. This was most likely done to mask the immersion of a more modern era weapon as opposed to an older metallic era of weaponry. I can also see in areas he has used paint layers with custom stamps for text and patterns along the sight and body of the gun. He has also used masked layers to create an extra layer of texture on the materials such as scratches and wear which is common with weapons that are usually factory-made and can show the immersion of use. From Quixel, texture maps can easily be imported out when complete, such as Albedo, Metalness, Roughness, Normal and Ambient Occlusion, to be plugged into programs such as Unreal Engine for Games Production. From studying Roberts Artstation, he uses a similar workflow pattern of following a blueprint he concepts from photo bashing and experimenting on Photoshop.
These artists I have studied show the same process I have been taught this year for the general workflow of Games Asset Production. From what I have learned, the general workflow follows the pattern of creating a blueprint design concept, using this to create a base mesh in a program such as Maya or Blender, Creating high poly for sculpting in programs like Zbrush or Maya, Retopologising for lower Polycount, UV unwrapping and baking for Maps to plug into texture software such as Quixel or Substance Painter and finalising with a Render. Despite me using different software to other 3D artists, I can see the workflow relatively follows the same pattern which gives me the confidence to try and experiment with them in the future.
Brief
Connecting this weapon to my 2D Fighting Character, I want to design a Peaky Blinders era 1920s revolver. In terms of transformation, I want to concept the idea of a revolver that also has a knife attached to the gun, to allow for poking when wielded by the user but also match as a hack and slash style of weapon. To achieve this I have the idea to attach a knuckle duster on the base so that the gun can be held in an optional way to use the weapon and knife to bash.
Cultural Research
As my character was based around a Peaky Blinder, the weapon was going to have to be inspired by a 1920s era of British weaponry. The weapon is going to have to be simplified in the model but can be textured with a unique pattern and design. As it is a Great War era of weaponry, the gun will have to be in high metallic metal as this was the standard as opposed to the Modern era of acrylic weaponry. For my research, I created a Pinterest Board to compile all my findings (Pinterest 2021).
Target Audience Research
As my gun has a very violent nature, being designed to stab, shoot and bash, my gun will most likely be designed for a more mature audience of around 16-18 years old. A study from Gameindustry (Taylor 2018) shows that there is a great interest in games of an 18 rating with an average of 47% of underage millennials have played an 18 rating game. One of the most popular 18 rating games at this time that involves the use of guns is Call of Duty: Warzone (Infinity Ward 2020), which currently has a total player count of 100 Million (J.Clement 2021) and is still slowly rising. From these numbers, I can see that there is a clear high interest in First Person Shooters of the 16-18 age demographic.
(Simonesdh 2020)
As this game also has a revolver model, it can be a perfect benchmark for how I can concept my own 3D asset, especially in terms of metalness and texture.
Asset Production
To first concept my Weapon Asset, I used my Pinterest board (Pinterest 2021) to concept the body shape of my weapon and knife designs and shapes to combine. These designs were more about shape languages and what stood out best for peer assessment and voting.
After some peer assessment, I came to the conclusion that designs 5 and H were the most popular and will be the models I will take further into the design.
Whiteboxing
Whiteboxing allows me to get a simplified model of my asset which I can take into programmes such as Photoshop to produce a paintover of how I want my weapon asset to look.
Whitebox Redesign
My model had to take a redesign due to the original concept not being practical to use, as well as not correctly functioning as a transforming weapon. To fix this, I took reference online of transforming revolvers (New World Ordnance 2014) where the knuckle duster has a latch that allows it to become the handle of the gun as well as the handle for a shank. The knife was then moved to the barrel end of the gun. This redesign already makes the weapon more interesting and unique but also highlighting its violent nature for a more mature audience.
(New World Ordnance 2014)
Texture and Design - Photoshop
Using my Whitebox models, I took them into Photoshop to produce a turnaround sketch of how I want my model to look. This turnaround has been rendered out to build ideas of colour, textures, Metalness decals such as the flowers and markings on the gun body. This turnaround can also now be used as a blueprint to import into Maya for a more precise reference to follow.
(Treyarch 2010)
Keeping to the benchmark of the Call of Duty Franchise in my gun design, I used the iconic 'Mustang and Sally' pistols from the Call of Duty Black Ops (Treyarch 2010) Boxart. Here, the pistols have been engraved with names that make them more personal to the wielder and gives them more character despite being simple in their design. I have used this in my own design with the name 'Beatie' implying both a name and its violent nature. I have also used the similar idea of tallys and kill checkers on the gun body with comedic 'Bangs' on the chamber. At this stage, I worried about my PCs capabilities of sculpting and how I would manage to get this level of detail on my asset. I decided at this point that these details would be applied as a paint layer in Quixel as I would be less likely to fall into problems with Mudbox and poly counts too high for my PC to handle.
Maya Development
Low Poly Mesh
Using my white box models I already made, as well as my blueprint, I began creating my first Lowpoly Mesh. Here I used what I learned from Cramer as to how I should break my model down into parts. The body was created from a cube mesh with the two-barrel ends being created from circularise. These circles have been reduced to octagon shapes as they can be rounded out in the smooth model, however, most revolvers at this time did not have perfectly rounded barrels. The knife and brass knuckle were made from a flat plane, where the multi-cut tool has been used to outline the shape and extruded out to its correct thickness. The chamber was created from a cylinder mesh that has had reduced sub-divisions to be more in shape and make it easier to create mirrored bullet holes.
High Poly Mesh
the High Poly Mesh was easily created from the Low Poly Mesh by identifying and hard edges and creating supporting edge loops. Edge Loops can be created manually using Multi-cut or by bevelling the hard edges. I avoided using bevel on all parts of the model as the use of bevel on areas like the gun body would produce too many Ngons to deal with. However, manually adding edge loops can produce areas that still look too soft edge. This was the result of parts such as the knife which ended up looking too soft edge and not sharp and hard. I also ended up missing edge loops in areas such as the barrel end. Another mistake I ran into was the knuckle duster, which was difficult to make the holes perfectly round. I spent a lot of time using smooth preview with the 4 and 5 keys to carefully add edge loops and bevelling so that the knuckle body was curved on the edges. The holes on the Low Poly model needed to be changed with the circularise tool as square holes were the problem with creating perfectly rounded holes. Before I used the smoothing tool, I added additional details on the chamber like the concaved parts of the side and a rounded indent separating the middle barrel part from the back end. I also had to alter the shape of the gun body to fit the chamber mesh more comfortably inside.
When the supported edge loops were applied, I used the Smoothing tool with 2 subdivision levels. This would leave me with a high poly count and enough vertices to begin sculpting on.
Sculpting in Mudbox
After spending some time the week before practising Mudbox, I felt comfortable and ready to start sculpting details into the model. After looking through references online, I settled on a subtle knuckle duster design that contains both carving and built-up patterns.
(Anon 2019)
When implementing this design on Mudbox, I made sure to use the symmetry tool so that the pattern sequence was mirrored on both sides. Mirroring would not work on the same side as the shape of the knuckle duster is not perfectly mirrored so I would have to carefully mirror some patterns by eye. I had to make sure to adjust the strength of the brush a lot lower as I didn't want the deviations to be extreme. A lot of the sculpting I made on the duster had to be smoothed out with Shift as they were too rigid looking and smoothing the designs gives a more antique look.
As I mentioned before, I was worried about the capability of my PC to bake with high sculpted detail on my gun model. This is why I did not sculpt the scratches or patterns on the gun body. however, I wanted to sculpt some details into the body, this resulted in creating carvings into the bottom end of the gun body handle as well as the body of the cock of the gun. I also added a subtle indent in the body of the gun trigger.
Retopology
Once I was happy, I imported the sculpted model back into Maya. Here I needed to now retopologise my High Poly Model to create a Mid Poly with a more optimised Polycount.
Before I created the high poly model, I saved a pre-smooth tool version. Meshes from this version like the chamber and knife I left were optimised and retopologised enough to use in the Mid Poly version. For other parts, I froze transformations and turned my high poly into a live surface. This would allow me to use the Quad Draw tool for retopology. An issue I ran into while retopologising the body was how extra edges were being created. This can be caused by an extrude or tool that wasn't committed to. When extra edges are created, problems arise such as Ngons and struggling to create edge-loops, they need to be sorted out. To fix extra edges, I use the edge tool and scale to move them out so that they are identified. Here the face of the extra edge is revealed and can be deleted or manipulated with the target weld into the intended shape. Retopologising the model also revealed how I should have also separated the cylindrical part inside the body that connects the body to the chamber as it resulted in an enclosed edge flow. However, I managed to pair these extra edges to the cylindrical part below the barrel. The sight on the top of the body also needed a lot of extra edges which created some problems on the top face of the barrel. To solve this I had to create tris to connect to one vertex before the barrel of the gun to keep the edge flow on the barrel clean.
Once the retopology was complete, the mesh then needed to be UV unwrapped. Here, hard surfaces are identified to be cut using the cut and sew tool. Cutting all the hard edges would create UVs that could be Unwrapped and laid out in the UV editor. The correct layout of UVs is to make sure UVs are not overlapping, as well as, making sure areas that will require a lot of detail and most likely will be seen are larger in size in the UV. When checking the checker pattern of the gun, I found that a lot of the pattern was warped, this meant a lot of the UVs I made needed to be Unitised. Unitising will alter the shapes of the UVs so that the checker pattern is clean on the model meaning when the texture is applied it won't appear stretched and deviating in shape. I also lowered the curvature of the gun barrel to its more octagon shape as I found out that most 1920s revolver barrels were not perfectly circular in shape.
UV Map
Checker Pattern from UV
High Poly Mesh Poly Count
Retopologised Mesh Poly Count
Baking
Once the UV Unwrap is complete, the Mid Poly is ready for baking. Baking will create a Normal Map from the sculpted to apply that additional detail as a texture map to apply to the Mid Poly.
To bake, the Mid Poly should be converted to soft edge selection and used as the target mesh. The sculpted model will be the source mesh and should be on the exact same axis as the Mid Poly so that they are perfectly overlapping as it would cause errors and a lot of artefacts. Luckily, the first bake went very well and I was happy with the results. There were few artefacts created such as around the latches on the knife but I left these for reasons I will show in Quixel Mixer.
The green parts of the Normal Map were caused due to clipping geometry, however, as these parts were either unseen or very hard to see on the model I didn't see these as a problem. To fix things like this, explode baking would be the best result. Explode bake is to bake the two meshes but all parts are separated to no longer be clipping, which will usually remove these unwanted outcomes.
Ambient Occlusion Maps can also be created in Maya using Arnold Renderer and applying an Ambient Occlusion texture to the mesh and rendering to texture.
Quixel Development - Texturing
The Mid Poly and Texture Maps are now ready to be exported to texturing software. The software which I used for texturing is Quixel Mixer.
It was important here to consider Material Studies. As I discussed before, the 1920s era of firearm was primarily steel metal rather than the modern acrylic era of firearms. Steel is high in silver metalness as well as being high in roughness giving a shiny texture but not too shiny. Steel is also prone to scratching and wear and tear as well as a parallel line texture that is caused by the factory manufacturing process. This texture can be created in Quixel using masking layers by manipulating the Noise effect to be linear and a parallel sequence.
(Pinterest 2021)
The majority of the Gun model will be steel, including the knife that will be more white in colour and higher in Roughness to be shinier in texture. The Brass Knuckle is self-explanatory for its material. Brass is also not so different to Steel in texture but is obviously more yellow in Albedo, high in metalness and higher in roughness to be shinier, as well as a similar texture with the linear parallel lines.
(Pinterest 2021)
Before importing everything into Quixel, I created a Material ID map on Maya so that I could create separate textures for each part of the gun mesh. One mistake I found on my Material ID was the use of the colour orange, as Quixel still identifies this as red, however, I did not see this as an issue and continued with it.
Once the Gun Mesh is imported, the Normal, Ambient Occlusion and Material ID maps can be loaded into the base layer. The materials I discussed were created from a solid layer. On these solid layers, I altered the Albedo Colours, Metalness and Roughness to how I discussed. To create additional textures like wear and tear and parallel lines, I layered masked layers onto the solid layers.
For masked layers, I used a noise mask as these masked patterns could be manipulated into a parallel sequence of lines similar to the studies. I found this mask to work most effectively on the sharp blade of the knife as it gives the immersion of a manually sharpened blade. Noise masks could also be manipulated to create scratches and wear on the body. I also used these masked layers for the Brass Knuckle by giving it a more antique and rustic texture.
The feedback I was given at this stage was to use a curvature mask layer on the gun model. A curvature layer will identify any deviations and displacements on the mesh to make them more noticeable and creating greater depth on the surface.
Quixel was where I was going to create the additional sculpted details on the body of the gun. This detail was to be created with a paint layer. On paint layers, displacement can be created to give the immersion of hand-carved scratches. As these scratches go into the metal, the texture will be higher in Roughness and creating more shine as well as being more whiter in albedo. One problem I found when using the paint layer was using one layer, as the longer, I worked into the layer the more the displacement vanished and went flat. I fixed this by breaking up the pattern into several layers. I also struggled to get the brush into a texture that looked like scratches. 
I did have a pattern I could've used as a stamp to create these textures in Quixel but I wasn't familiar with how this worked due to my lack of practice with Quixel. This is something I can look into in the future to make stages like this in the future a much faster process.
Overall, I was very happy with the textures I had created in Quixel. To improve in Quixel in the future, I should experiment more with overlapping several mask layers to create a greater amount of detail with texture creating. I am most impressed in myself that I made my own textures instead of using just the pre-made surface layers, however, this was also due to deleting a majority of the sample packs to save storage on my PC drivers. As I said before, I had artefacts on areas such as the latches connecting the knife to the gun body. In Quixel, I was able to use these defects to create a welded texture to give the immersion of a manufactured weapon.
Albedo Map
Metalness Map
Normal Map
Roughness Map
Unreal Engine 4 Development
At this stage of the course, this was the first time I had ever used Unreal Engine 4. This meant that I had a lot of new things to learn and was very overwhelmed. From Quixel, I exported all my texture maps to be imported into Unreal Engine 4.
Albedo Map
Ambient Occlussion Map
Metalness Map
Normal Map (NEW - Containing the new sculpts from Quixel)
Roughness Map
Specular Map
The first thing I did was import all my maps from Quixel and my Mid Poly Gun Model as an FBX into Unreal. Once a mesh is imported, a material blueprint is created. Here, all the maps can be imported and plugged into the blueprint respectively to get all the textured detail onto the mesh.
Once the blueprint is complete, I can begin to create a turnaround video of my Asset.
One way I managed to get my model to spin was by creating a blueprint on my Gun. This blueprint creates a scripted code so that when the Engine runs, the Model will spin In-game. This Blueprint works by creating a rotation script on the Z-axis. I struggled to get this blueprint to work but found out online that by creating a Speed Variable into the blueprint, the gun began to spin in-game.
When the sequence is complete, the video can be ready to render. As an AVI render is low in quality, you can render it as a PNG image sequence. When the images are created, the sequence can be imported into a video editing software where the sequence can be rendered into a high-quality video. Here I used Premiere Pro to export my sequence into an MP4.
Final Turnaround Video
Unreal Engine 4 can also produce High-Quality Snapshot renders.
Sketchfab
All the maps and Mid Poly Model can be imported into Sketchfab, a site that allows a real-time render view of my Asset.
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/knuckle-duster-gun-beatie-be391a23fab64ea2902945bfbc03d331
Software Evaluation
Before the course, I only had experience in Solidworks for 3D modelling. This year I have spent learning Autodesk Maya which is marginally different to Solidworks. Through Maya, I have been able to create simple models for whiteboxing to use in digital production and concept art. Also, using a range of tools I have learned on a weekly basis I have managed to create an asset workflow consisting of Low, High and Retopologised models. I have also become equipped to Arnold Renderer to get high quality renders, as well as Baking Normals and UV unwrapping which was something I struggled at a lot in the beginning. However, I have run into issues along the way such as extra edges caused by uncommitted extrudes which had to be fixed, as well as the symmetry tool not working correctly which resulted in me having to use the mirror tool which slowed down work speed. Overall, I feel I have made a good start on Maya this year.
For sculpting, I used Mudbox for a short amount of time. Mudbox has allowed me to learn about sculpting due to it being relatively easy to pick up. For my asset, I was able to get very simple sculpting detail on the gun, however, the duster patterning was a lot more interesting and stylised. However, I need to practise more complicated sculpting patterns and techniques in the future. Hopefully next year I can achieve this next year when the Computers on Uni campus are more available.
For texturing, Quixel Mixer was the first texturing program I've ever used. However, even with this lack of knowledge, it has been really enjoying playing around with Quixel and seeing what sort of textures and materials I can create, as well as, the sculpting and additional details I can create using Paint Layers. I have also had success in texturing for creating texture maps such as Albedo, Metalness, Roughness and Normals. Over the summer, I want to experiment a lot more with Quixel Mixer to see what different materials I can make such as wood or plastic, as well as, applying multiple masking layers to a solid layer to achieve additional layers of detail.
For Unreal Engine 4, I spent very really time experimenting with what I can do with the program besides what was asked. More UE4 I'm doing to need to find some tutorials online over the summer to become more adequate.
Anon, 2019. Boxer Knuckle duster - Aluminium or Brass [online]. Fusil-calais.com. Available at: https://www.fusil-calais.com/en/68-poing-americain-boxer-aluminium.html [Accessed 30 May 2021].
Cramer, 2020. LeMat Revolver, Andreas Cramer [online]. ArtStation. Available at: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/ZGl6nm [Accessed 30 May 2021].
J.Clement, 2021. Call of Duty: Warzone players 2021 | Statista [online]. Statista. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1110000/call-of-duty-warzone-players/ [Accessed 30 May 2021].
New World Ordnance, 2014. Apache Knuckle Duster Pepperbox Antique French Revolver Overview Texas Gun Blog. YouTube.Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxuLSn2WROs [Accessed 1 March 2021].
Infinity Ward, 2020. Call of Duty: Warzone. [Digital], PC. Los Angeles, CA: Activision Publishing
Pinterest, 2021. Weapon Development, Will Taylor [online]. Pinterest. Available at: https://pin.it/5niox5Z
Roberts, 2021. RKD-01, Guilherme Rob Guilherme Roberts [online]. ArtStation. Available at: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/YeyPoV [Accessed 30 May 2021].
Simonesdh, 2020. .357 | Weapon Blueprints | COD Modern Warfare | Call of Duty [online]. Games Atlas. Available at: https://www.gamesatlas.com/cod-modern-warfare/weapons/357 [Accessed 30 May 2021].
Taylor, H., 2018. 27% of Brits have purchased 18-rated games while still underage [online]. GamesIndustry.biz. Available at: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-02-15-27-percent-of-brits-have-purchased-18-rated-games-while-still-underage [Accessed 30 May 2021].
Treyarch, 2010. Call of Duty: Black Ops. [Digital], PC. Los Angeles, CA: Activision Publishing
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