Before I start retelling how I created my project I must outline the important aspects of a good workflow. As I am still quite new to these processes I am still working the finer details of mine. Importantly you must take a large project, such as this, as simply as possible. Breaking each step of the build down into a series of repeating processes. Firstly decide upon your next piece, what you are to make it from. Once you have decided, and called, the base poly shape into the scene, rename it in the outliner widow, this should always be open, then add it as a new layer, giving it the corresponding name here. You can not have duplicate names in Maya so I name the layer piece with a 1 at the end. For example if you are making a wheel create a poly pipe, name it “wheel” in the outliner, and “wheel1” as the layer. The reasons for this are to work easily on one piece at a time, aswell as the use of texturing the items easier, later.
Having gathered my inspiration I set about it’s construction. Deciding where to start was a problem until I realised that my main source of reference would be for the pistol grip. I imported the default, first person, gun from UE4, placed it at zero point on the grid and began to model my pistol grip. I took a poly pipe, so I could fit the crystal in it, and resized it with the scale tool. To mimic the shape of an actual grip I scaled the shape to an oval. To make the holes all I did was insert some edge loops across the verticles. I then deleted every other face and bridged the reveals of the now open space. Then it was just a simple matter of reshaping the grip, by each line of vertices, to give it a more ergonomic appearance.
Once done all I needed was for some way for it to attach to the body of the gun. This was done simply by extrusions from the front facing side of the grip. Selecting Two faces and extruding out, with small extrusion and rotation for the bends. I then made the crystal for the pistol grip and maneuvered it into place, duplicating it ready for the body crystal.
The next stage was forming a body for the gun. I would need to shape it around the crystal without losing the threat of the weapon.
Taking a polygon pipe I maneuvered it into position and resized it across the wides part of the crystal. From there I extruded and reshaped until I had enveloped the crystal. Finally extruding the remainder of the body, in one direction, and the stock in the other.
From there I added a few more extrusions ready for the placing of the finer details of the guns make-up. Finally I added the extra grip on the bodies undercarriage.
Now I need the business end of the weapon. The barrels were easy to create, a polygonal cylinder, duplicated twice so I had the three I required. It was then a simple matter of resizing, and positioning, until I had them right. To hold them in place, aswell as adding more detail along the barrels, I created a collar from a poly cylinder, resizing it so it comfortably held the three barrels. After that I duplicated it twice, one for the body end and one for the middle, for balance.
The iron sights were created by combining a resized poly pipe, two resized poly cubes, and another cube, resized and reshaped, for it’s base. I then placed the combined iron sight on the top of the first collar.
Having completed all of the major aspects required to make a shotgun I now needed to start making the aesthetics.
Firstly I began work on the bulbs, which I was going to place upon the left hand side of the body upon the flat plate I had made earlier.
The base was made from a poly cylinder. Selecting one face I extruded and resized the face inward slightly, before extruding again and pushing the smaller face back into the body far enough to fit the bulb part in. The bulb itself was made in the same process except for the widened upper part. There I needed to make the original flat end look like the raised curve of the bulbs top. Starting with the flat surface I extruded, resized the extrusion with the scale tool till happy, hit extrusion again and pull up slightly with the move tool. I repeated this process until I had the desired, bulb, shape. Next I moved them into place on the shotgun’s body.
With that done I moved on to the pocket watch. Again I used a poly cylinder, flattening it to the shape of a pocket watch. I recessed the face slightly, to fit in a piece of glass, which was made by cutting a poly sphere in half, which I almost flattened. Then positioned with the aid of the side elevation. Finally I selected the outer rim, with edge mode, and bridged the back closed. The final details were the winder and the bow ( the bit you attach a chain to at the top).
The wider was a poly cylinder, resized and reshaped, the bow was also a poly pipe scaled and flattened slightly, to accommodate a chain. To fix the bow to the winder I added two poly spheres, removing the faces I did not require before moving it into position.
Now I had to attach this to my gun somehow. A bracket. Deciding to keep it simple I used a duplicated poly cube for the arms and a poly sphere for it’s hinge. I also made a simple chain from a poly cylinder. Scaling it down to match the dimensions on the front face. This gave me a nice squared chain which should look cool swinging around, in game.
The grips and body of the bracket were created from the arms face extrusion. The corners were made available for extrusion by the use of the multi-cut tool.
Next was my favourite looking piece from the model, a tesla coil.
I used poly pipes to create this simple model, extruding or scaling where needed. The body core was a poly cylinder, scaled into a pole. The tyroid was a flattened sphere. I combined the body and coils separately from the pole and tyroid for reason of simpler texturing later.
At this point I showed my model to some colleagues and my tutor. My tutor pointed out that my project was top heavy. I needed some more detail at the front to balance my model. After a brief discussion we reasoned that a sword could be a great addition. I would need to find a suitable design, befitting my weapon, and also find a way of mounting it to my shotgun.
In keeping with the design, and period upon which it based, I decided a cavalry sword would suit it best.
Again I kept it simple. The grip was a poly cylinder, which I added an edge loop, with multi-cut, and pulled the vertices over near that end of the cylinder.
The hilt was again created from a poly cylinder I angled it in line with the end of the grip, then added an edge loop at the centre, with two more bisecting this one. Deleting the centre edge loop, I then moved the two others closer with the scale tool. Once done I extruded five faces, enough to be in line with the grip. I then extruded, moved and rotated the face all the way until I had the shape required. Using the side elevation I moved the lower bend and bottom piece in line with the base of the grip. The top of the grip I then moved it’s vertices, via the side elevation, into line with the base of the head of the hilt.
Finally the blade was created from a poly cube. I re-scaled it into a flat rectangle. Fitting it to the underside of the hilt in side view. Extruding the blade to it’s full length. For the detail near the hilt, where the squared steel flattens into a blade, I added two edge loops, at a suitable distance apart. On the furthest loop, from the hilt, I needed to make this into a point. To achieve this I added a multi-cut from the second edge loop to the end of the blade, shift click at each end. Then I simply target welded the outer vertices, at each end, to the, new, central one. My sword now had a blade.
The final re-shaping came by the tip of the blade. This was done by moving the vertices until the blade fitted the shape required.
The shotgun still looked back heavy, I need more balance. What could I fit to a shotgun, from the eighteen hundreds, that wouldn’t look stupid? I looked down another avenue, modern attachments for guns. The answer was blindingly obvious, a light.
Having looked at some examples of the periods carriage lamps I decided upon a simple design, that looks hardy, with some added pieces to make it convincing of the era.
A wooden box, made from a scaled cube. A brass body made from a poly cylinder, with a lens made from another. The pieces were brass corner protectors made from a cube. When I had the corner piece I extruded the outer faces, giving it a more dated design.
At this point I needed to somehow attach my sword to the shotgun. I had not managed to think of any way of doing this. Trying it in different locations around the gun nowhere seemed a natural place. The best place was as an under-mount. The weapon had a new dynamic, combined it was a lance.
To remedy the situation I decided on a hook. I could always change it later.
I decided that the pistol grip needed to be simpler, if only for the uv’ing. I bridged all of the holes over, after deleting the appropriate faces but it still didn’t look right. The pistol grip was steel and steel doesn’t grip well. I needed some wood for a grip. I duplicated the pistol grip, deleting all unnecessary faces until both sides were even. I then bridged the open faces. The screw was made from half a sphere. The notch, by manipulating the vertices in side view.
I decided to change the body on my weapon. This decision was made after trying to lower my poly count to 8000, or below. Also at this point I deleted the chain from the pocket watch for the same reason.
My, high poly shotgun at the moment.
My Blueprint Factory 