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I made an a gun in 3ds max and was wondering how is it for my first gun model. I thought was pretty cool wondering if you think the same.



[EDIT]:
some known problems:
1.no textures
2.low detail lighting
just something I no arent right about this model

Pretty close. The magazine neeeds to be wider. The carry handle and front site should be larger. The grip needs to be wider. You're missing the ejection port, charging handle and the forward assist and the receiver doesn't go as far down as the one in your model. Depending on which model of M16 you're trying to model the forearm should be triangular in cross section. I know that sounds bad... But I can tell what weapon you're trying to model, so that's a start.

Here's a good reference picture:

So let me get this striaght. If I fix the proportions of this model you would like the model.

Also, Those are nice refs. I got mine from www.fas.org(Federation of American Scientist) It has just about every weapon from every country.

Yeah the Eject port is there. just to small to really pass for sorry about that I shallt make it bigger and more eject port like.
My ref was kinda small and maybe get smashed a little when I textured my viewport with. I looked at, I think the front viewport, and looked at the gun so it lined up with the picture and In the end it fit in and looked right. But then you brought these things to my attention and now it is clear

thanks I take that as a positive compliment to my model.

I like the model as it is. It is a very good effort. I was simply pointing out a few things that differ between it and an M16. Just trying to help make our model better. You did after all say that there was something "not right" about the model, so I was critiquing it. Keep up the good work!

Thank You,

Ive seen in this side of the forum you are the expert on weapons and just modeling in general to hear a compliment from you is encouraging.

Aw shucks, that's probably one of the nicest things anybody's ever said to me! Thanks!

No prob!!

Can you help with uv mapping. Im not sure how. I have Deep UV demo but no sure how to quite use it. LithUnwrap was confusing too. UV mapping itself is something I never learned.

I use lithunwrap. It's actually pretty easy to use once you understand what you're doing.

If you have lithunwrap, do this:

Open lithunwrap then click "file", "model", "open"

Find your model and load it.

It might complain about your model having no texture coordinates. If so, simply ignore it. If it complains that your model needs to be triangulated before it can be previewed. Simply click "tools" & "triangulate".

Next, click "Select" & "all".

Then click "Tools", "UV Mapping", "Box".

Viola, you've created a UV map. A basic one, but a UV map none the less.

You can click "File", "UV Map" & "Save", to save off the Bitmap version of the UV map. Then Save the model too (just to be safe) by clicking "File", "Model", "Save". Save it as a .LUM file, that's Lithunwrap's internal format. From there, you can export it to any of the other formats that Lithunwrap can do (which is another reason to keep Lithunwrap around, it's a great file type converter).

Now, open the bitmap you created in whatever image editing software that you wish to use (I use PaintShop Pro) and paint your texture on top of the UV ma you created. Once you're done, you can reload the .LUM version of your model into Lithunwrap. Goto the righthand side of the screen and you'll see a treeview control. It's likely to have three entries, "Groups", "Materials" and "Bones". There should be a "+" sign beside "Materials". Click it and it will expand to show you the material name for your model. Double click that and a small dialog will load. At the bottom of the dialog, you will see a box labelled "Diffuse Map" and in it will be a label that says "Map type:" and a combobox. Click the combo box and make it say "Bitmap" Then click the "Properties" button immediately below the combo. This will load another dialog over the top of the first. Click the "Change" button on that dialog and navigate to the bitmap texture that you painted, then click the "Ok" button to close the dialog. Then click the "Ok" button to close the original dialog. Now click on "Preview", "Show Model" and bask in your textured model goodness... You can rotate the preview screen with the left mouse button. You can zoom in and out with shift and the left mouse button and move the camera's view area around with Ctrl and the left mouse button.

I've heard of Deep UV, I guess I ought to check it out.

When you get to the point that you want to animate your models, I've been playing with FragMotion by Fragmosoft with some level of success...

like this(notice the multi colored gun)

made it really fast expect a really textured one once I experiment a little. Tomorrow though

EDIT: sorry for big pic. mod please let it stay until G_man sees it.
its jpg and is only 100 some odd kb

There you go. Glad I could help...

Ok, the next step in UV wrapping is to remove overlaps. Have a look at the attached picture. There you see your model with two green arrows. They point out an overlap. On the UV map, the inside of the trigger guard and the top of the reciever occupy the same UV coordinates. That means that if you paint a texture that's intended to be the top of the receiver, it will also appear inside the trigger guard when you render the model. In some cases, that might not matter. If however you wanted a different texture to be mapped to the inside of the trigger guard, then you've need to select those faces in Lithunwrap and drag them to a place on the UV map that's unoccupied by any other faces. If you load your model in the previewer and switch it to wireframe mode (right click in the screen for a menu) then the faces you select in the interface will be highlighted in red in the previewer. What I do is check the "Keep on Top" option in the previewer's menu then size the preview window down so that I can still work, but also keep tabs on which faces I've got selected by looking at the little version of the preview window.

The next thing you might want to know is how to select vertices. You can click on the vertice directly to select it (it'll turn red) or you can drag select several vertices (left click & move mouse to drag out a selection lasso). If you hold down shift, you can add vertices to your selection. If you hold down Ctrl you can remove vertices from your selection.

The next thing to note is the selection mode in the "Select" menu. You can select vertices, faces or groups. If you are in face mode and select a vertice, you will select one of the faces that the vertice belongs to. Pressing shift and repeatedly clicking the same vertice will cause it to select additional faces that the vertice is a part of (one face per click). Drag selecting a vertice in face selection mode will cause all of the faces that the vertice is a part of to be selected.

It is important to note, that one UV vertice will be created for each face that the vertice is a part of. So when in Vertice selection mode. If you click on a vertice and move it, you will only be moving one copy of that vert. If you truly want to move all copies of a vertice, then use the drag selection mode.

Notice also that there are other UV mapping options like "Decal", "Sphere" and "Cyllinder". These UV mapping functions only work if you are in Face or Group Selection mode though. That means that a UV mapping can be applied to an entire object or a sub- selection of the faces that comprise the object. That's important! That means that you can cube map boxy portions of your model and cyllinder map cyllindircal parts (like the barrel of your gun).

The best way to learn is by doing... Play around with some of these things and you'll get the hang of it in no time.

Im not sure if I want to texture it with real textures yet. I have to wait to get the hang of LithUnwrap and maybe see how I can do the same thing in Deep UV. Pretty soon Ill have a full render with textures and all on my m16. I CANT WAIT

i like your modeling, could you make me a sniper rifle like a dragonvo(v/u)

btw the m16 youre modelling is the vietnam m16 a1...the m4a1 carbine(smaller) version of the m16 is pictured above the on youre trying to model in he reference image.