SimonK's WIPs
 

So recently, I've been working on a bunch of models and I'm so far enjoying myself :D (always did find this weird pleasure in modeling firearms and lightsaber hilts), so I'd like to show you some of my progress, get a little feedback, perhaps some suggestions, and hopefully, some assistance if any issues should arise (and some have already arisen).

First up are my finished models with the textures done 100%:

Revan's 'padawan' Lightsaber hilt (info below)


Malak's canonical lightsaber hilt


Next up are my finished models, but with no textures as of yet (I'm working on some of them now. I do always prefer to make all the models i've intended first, then texture them):

Standard blaster pistol


Standard blaster rifle


Mandalorian Assault Rifle


Carth's Blaster


Bendak's Blaster


Standard Heavy Blaster


More coming soon. Do feel free to add feedback.

Excellent work and welcome to the forums

Good stuff! Always fun to see people modeling things.

It's been a long time since I put anything into the game so I'm not really sure about the stretching but can try to help. Did you detach the UV's?

Thanks, although I'm only back from a long hiatus, I've actually been on the forums since woohoo ages ago :D

Detach them? In what way? You mean detach the polygon groups before positioning them in the Unwrap UVW window, or was it something I overlooked?

You need to detatch use detatch to element to break up your model into elements which correspond to the way you've broken up your model to map it.

So basically, select each UV element, go into the editable poly/mesh (whichever you're using) and detatch to element.

Do this for your whole model and you should be good to go. :D

Wow I love those models, I wish someone can teach me how to make stuff like that [Modeling tuts here here in Holowan are too complicated/ :(]

Okay, I'll try that. Strange thing is, I did that when I was initially arranging the surfaces for the base UV map. Then i exported from 3ds max into the 3ds format and imported into gmax. It must've started stretching when I welded all the vertices together, since exporting to 3ds tends to separate all the surfaces one from another, causing all the surfaces to lose their smoothing.

Anyway, I've done something extra for a bit of change. A bit of skinning. Figured the Qel-Droma robes for K1 needed to look distinctive from the other Jedi robes. My only regret is that I couldn't get the big flowing hooded cape like in Shadows and Light, the way Duron was wearing them, since I used that as my reference for the robe coloring.


For better understanding of modelling software, it's best to buy a book that explains it. Try "3ds Max 4 Bible" or for newer versions of Max. If you know how to use Max 4, gmax is a cakewalk, since it's based on Max 4.

You'd actually be amazed at what you can pick up just playing around in Max and experimenting with different things.

I'm by no means a fantastic modeler, but I am far better than I used to be, purely because I put in some effort and experimented with the software.

An update to the lightsaber textures... I figured it out. The trick was not to weld together the vertices after importing the 3ds file into gmax. This eventually does result in the hilt appearing a bit faceted in game, but it's no big deal with the CM_Baremetal shader on; you'll barely notice. Thanks for the additional advice, though. I'm working on Bastila's lightsaber hilt now.

Good to see you, Simon! I remember gawking at all your glorious hilts back in my JK3 days... Keep up the sexy work!

Haha, I like my work being attributed as 'sexy'. Kinda appropreate. :xp:

Hey, I actually just remembered that I had found a workaround for detaching UV's for game imports so that the step could be entirely skipped :)

So normally, with me at least, if I UVMapped the weapon and didn't detach before I resetxform, the UV's would get stretched and messed up. After messing around with it I remember finding a solution that at worked for me: after you map your model but before you resetxform, save your UV set to a file somewhere. IIRC there is an option for that on your right hand toolbar in the UV tools thing. So now hit resetxform and your UV's will probably get all stretched, but that's ok. Just hit "Load UV Set" or something similar and load up the file you just exported. Your UV's should be just as they were before and you should be ok to export.

I don't think I ever mentioned this, so I think it's at least worth a try because if it works for you it saves you lots of work in the future! Hope it works and helps!

Looking good!
 

I'm particularly interested in replacing default Bendak's Blaster and the Standard Heavy Blaster models ... those do s#!@*ck IMHO ... :lol:

Ah! That robe looks amazing, great work! Can't wait to see more, good job so far!

updates!
 

A quick update on Bendak's Blaster/Mandalorian Blaster; I've added a scope mount and a small sniping scope, and I've optimized the topology a bit. Just over 1000 tris now; will do a bit more enhancing. As I've mentioned before though, the scopeless version of this will be used as the model for the Mandalorian Blaster, and the textures will differ (the standard one will be gray and more stock/military issue, while Bendak's upgraded pistol will have a black finish with a customized wooden or bone grip; I'll see which suits me more)

I've also taken the liberty of remaking my original Bastila's hilt, now both the shape, size and texture are more accurate, and they look great ingame. Strangely enough, it looks as though it'll only fit Bastila's hands appropriately, and in male characters' hands it seems to look kinda flimsy. I've no problem with that :)

Looking good - keep up the great work. :)

I absolutely love that Mandalorian Assault Rifle, every time I come to this thread, I look at the MAR model :P. Keep up the good work.

Wow, nice! Keep it up!

More new models, and this time I've decided to work on sith weaponry. For starters, I did the Sith Assault Gun, which would be the ancient equivalent of the stormtrooper E-11 rifle.

And, after a good 5 hours work, I give you the most advanced blaster rifle intended in the game, the Sith Sniper Rifle. It might look a little ahead of its time (might look good in SW Battlefront lol), but I think that since the Sith had the advantages of the Star Forge, they would also have some of the most advanced weapons in the galaxy at the time.

Feedback and suggestions are always welcome.

EDIT: I just finished my Sith Assassin Pistol model this morning.

I love looking at your models :)

Carth's Blaster
 

Update: I did some topology fixing on Carth's blaster and I modded out the details. Now it's finished with just under 1000 polygons to the whole model. I just wish i could do the textures as fast as I could do the models (trust me, I'm not good at painting firearm textures)

You use Wings 3D don't you?

Nice additions
 

I already have PLENTY of Sniper rifles added but that Sith assassin pistol model :bot2: ... looks like another MUST-HAVE for my Override :nod: ...

Wow cool models keep up the good work SimonKTemplar !!!!!!

Nope, I use 3ds max 9. Don't ask me how I obtained a copy though ;)

The rest of the models are coming along quite nicely... I only have a few more ranged weapons to complete, after which I'll move on to melee weapons, and then after those I'll move on to texturing. I might do the melee weapons' textures first because I'm much better at making symmetrical, less-detailed textures than what guns require me to do.

In the meantime, I've made two new additions to my works, the first being a reskin of PMBI02, the Dark Jedi robe, since I thought the original looked like a mashed up mess of greenish-brownish-patinated pieces of cloth.

My second addition for today is the Mandalorian Heavy Blaster, which I completed last night. Try to picture these in the hands of Calo Nord or some Mandalorian commando. I always figured those blasters looked way too identical to the standard heavy blasters in vanilla Kotor.

Yes. They're hawt. :O

Brief announcement: I will be unavailable for the next few days, the reason being my new hardware and operating system being installed, followed by a few outside events I wouldn't skip (it's sorta like a holiday to me). I will resume my work, however, as soon as I have everything reconfigured.

i'm back, with an update:
 

I've got all my systems up and running again, thankfully, and there was no loss of data from the system purge. (And sorry for the double post, I'd hate to make this look like a bump thread, but there were no replies). I'm continuing my works as planned, and here is one of the most recent WIPs. I've looked across the internet for a canonical Darth Bandon hilt, and I found an item in TOR that corresponds to what I'm looking for, however it uses a generic hilt. In an effort to make it more unique, I did some modifications that would make the hilt look like it's behind the TOR timeline, like covering up the exposed crystal in the middle (i found radical design gimmicks like this to be way ahead of Kotor in terms of modernity), and removing the unnecessary spokes surrounding the hilt. The only thing I'm not sure about (and I'll need help from you TOR players who may have encountered the hilt) is the angle of the spiky crossguard things against the main hilt. I've made them angle the middle of the hilt by 90 degrees, but it could be at a different angle in TOR. Please provide assistance if possible.

AWSOME!!!!!!!!!
 

Awsome job hey u l notised that you are using very great tools ???

Personally, I think this hilt is really ugly and would rather see you come up with something from your imagination. Not my mod though :twocents:

Believe me, I've not been having much success doing a different texture for this, and I'm considering swapping this out for something else. We'll see how it turns out in the end. I'm a poor texture painter when it's compared with my modeling and reskinning skills. Painting a texture like this takes talent, and skill.

Talent and skill?

They're really upping the qualifications these days ;)

My advice? Good UV's make all the difference with texture mapping. For reals though.

:conspire:

Nice one
 

So ... a "tweaked" Canonical Darth Bandon hilt eh?? interesting. As long as it looks different from everything (hilts) I already have, the real aspect doesn't matter too much for me. And that spoiler screenie looks pretty different and unique from what I've seen/installed ... :raise:

850 polycount? u kidding me?? I'm still struggling with a rusty Nvidia GForce 7600 GT 256 Mb card!!! :lol: heh heh... fortunately another rig's on its way, yup, soon :woo:

keep up the good work :thmbup1:

Oh, well then you must hate my 2500-4000 polycount models. :eek:

I've decided that it's perhaps best I stopped working on that hilt for now... there is a good point about it not being distinctly Bandon's hilt... I'll leave that for some other time. What I'm looking to work on now are the rest of the Dark Jedi Robe variants (I did 2 out of 3), as well as the ranged weapon variants for the 3 most common categories: standard (4 of 11 weapons), sith (3 of 3 weapons) and mandalorian (3 of 5 weapons). After I've finished those 3 categories, I'll look over the less common ranged weapons afterwords, and then move on to texturing them all.
Currently, the model work-in-progress is the Standard Blaster Carbine. I'll upload some renders shortly.

UPDATE: And here's the finished carbine model. I wanted it to be more streamlined and actually shorter than my standard-length rifle.

Edit: I forgot to add a screenshot of the third Dark Jedi robe variant. Now there are 3 variations for both Light (Brown, Blue, Orange) and Dark Side users (PMBI02, PMBI06, PMBI07). This is PMBI07, the texture used for the Dark Jedi Master Robe.

Very nice work I like the robes

more new stuff
 

I finished another model, this time it's a Mandalorian Ripper pistol. One of my favorites, actually. I believe the disruptor weapons in the game, especially the pistols, never got any good models from bioware. It's about to change.

wou good work

Excellent robes! The guns I can tell are excellent, but I won't be able to feel it (down in mahh pluuuums...) until they're textured.