Heya, this is Hooker from ThePlatoon.com's message boards. I am working on a mod for Ghost Recon, and thought I'd share some information with you guys on how I make my guns. While DJ has a nice basic tutorial, a more involved one is needed to be able to make weapons that look acceptable for putting in the game. We are going to be making a sniper rifle here, the Blaser R93 LSR2 Tactical. So, here we go.
NOTE
These screenshots are very large, and since I can't have Photoshop and 3d Studio MAX running at the same time (MAX eats up 255 megs of ram), I am not going to do much editing to the shots. So if they are very blurry it's just because of their size relative to your screen. If you hold your mouse over the image for a few seconds it should give you a little button to push to zoom it to regular size, or you could just right click, save target as, save to your desktop and look at them.
What you will need
3d Studio MAX (I'm using R3) or Gmax would probably work for learning, I believe they are basically the same. Not promising anything with Gmax though :) HOWEVER, with Gmax you WON'T be able to export them into GR, it would just be for learning until you can get a 3d Studio MAX. By the way, I would suggest not getting R4 of 3d Studio MAX because I am not sure if the level plugins (which you cannot put your models in-game without) will work with R4.
Adobe Photoshop or Paintshop Pro. In this tutorial I'm going to be using Photoshop, but if you are familiar with Paintshop you can do the same stuff with it.
Preparation
Ok so, let me give you a little bit of "intro" data. First of all, to model guns, you MUST have 3-4 good pictures of the gun. One of the pictures MUST be a side view of the gun, flat on it's side, no angle. This is because 1) you will be using that to skin the gun, and 2) you will need it for creating the individual parts of the gun in 3d Studio MAX. Other pictures that are of use are close-ups on the different parts, these come in very handy when you go to skin the gun. So you understand what I mean by skin, when you create a model in 3d Studio MAX, it resembles the shape of a gun but you don't see the metal patterns, the little details, etc. Well you have to stick them there and you do this by, without getting into details just yet, basically sticking that picture on your model. Here are a couple pictures explaining this, here is a picture of my MSG90 model "unskinned". Those colors are just colors assigned by 3d Studio MAX so you can select each shape you made easily. Here is a picture of the same model, "skinned". Here is the picture I used to skin the model. But we'll get into that more in-depth later. So the pictures we are going to use for our model are, here, here and here. That will cover us pretty well. Save those images to your hard drive by right-clicking, save target as, then just save your desktop which is the easiest.
Familiarizing yourself with 3d Studio MAX
Ok getting down to work now. First you must know about the different basic actions 3d Studio MAX can perform, and just be familiar with the fundamentals of the program. So I took a screenshot to help explain.
Here is the basic view of 3d Studio MAX. Now let's break it down a little bit. First off lets take the viewports. Each viewport is basically one viewpoint of the model. It is by default split into 4 sections, as you can see. This is fine to leave it like this. The 4 viewpoints here are Top, Left, Front and Perspective. They first 3 are self-explanatory, but the Perspective viewport is simply a viewport where your model will be shaded in, and you can manipulate the viewing of it. Very quickly, if your viewports look cut-up or screwy, just hit "1" and it will redraw them all and they should look normal again. The first 3 are vital for the creation of the model, and Perspective is vital for seeing what it's going to look like. Look what happens when I make a simple cylinder, you can see the different view of it (front and left views are, of course, the same when viewing a cylinder). Now let's move onto XYZ coordinates. XYZ coordinates are basically the 3 different planes things exist in 3d. You have X, which is the horizontal (left and right) plane, Y, which is the vertical (up and and down) plane and Z which is the depth plane. When changing the position of shapes in space in 3d Studio MAX, you will be moving/rotating/etc along these planes. So you can see this a little easier, look along the right-hand side of MAX, where you see the arrow-pointer with the ball of light behind it, and click "Cylinder". Now put your mouse into the "Top" viewport, click and drag to create the diameter of the base of the cylinder. You can make however big or small you want to. Once you are satisfied with your base, let go of the mouse button. Now you are going to decided the height. Move your mouse up and down to change the height of the cylinder, when you are satisfied, left-click to set it. Now hit delete to get rid of it. Do this the Top viewport, Front viewport and Left viewport. Notice how the cylinder points in different directions for each viewport? You are creating the cylinder along the 3 different XYZ planes when you do this. Note that the XYZ coordinates are set, do not change even when the viewpoint changes. So it might "appear" they are off, but you have to remember from where you are viewing them.
So now let's take a look at the buttons along the top "Main toolbar" tab. I will only explain the ones we will be using. You are free to play around with them if you'd like :)
Ok the first one is the simply mouse-arrow (not the one with a question mark). When you click this, you can select shapes/objects in the viewports and that's it, can't change anything with it. This is Select Object.
The next important button is the arrow with the lines next to it. This is where you can select individual shapes by a list of their names (which I will go over later). This is Select by Name.
The next button over, the four arrows, is for moving shapes. You can move them along the XYZ planes I was describing earlier. This is Select and Move.
The next button, the curved arrow, is for rotating shapes. You can also rotate shapes along the 3 different planes. This is Select and Rotate.
Then next button is the grey box with the red-bordered white box in it. That is for scaling. Scaling is simply where you can make an object bigger, or smaller. This is Select and Uniform Scale.
The next buttons of importance are the big X, Y, Z and XY buttons. These are for when you move and rotate shapes. These are the "Restrict to ____" (plane) buttons. If you click the move button (four arrows), then click X, and click your cylinder, it will move only along the X plane. The gizmo is the little thing you see in each corner of the viewport that has the green line, then Y. The blue line, then Z, and the red line, then X. You don't have to use the X Y Z or XY buttons to move along the planes. To demonstrate this, click the move button, then your cylinder in the "Top" viewport. Now you see the gizmo over your cylinder. Now move your pointer over the "X" line of the gizmo, click and drag back and forth, now try up and down. See it won't go along the Y plane because you've clicked only the X plane. Now do the same clicking the Y plane (green line, then Y). Move up and down, but see you can't go left and right. Notice when you click the planes on the gizmo, it pushes down the button of the plane you clicked. Play around with the Move, Rotate and Scale buttons by simply clicking the button, then clicking your cylinder, dragging, and letting go. Get familiar with this.
The next button of importance is the 2nd button after the XY button, the triangles opposite each other with the line down the middle. This is Mirror Selected Objects. Click your cylinder, and click the Mirror button. You will get this. Now, you can mirror along the different planes, which you will have to play with to see the result (too hard to explain, but very simple to see). Also you will see the option No Clone, Copy, Instance and Reference. Use "No Clone" when rotating objects, the other options simply mirror the object, but leaving the original there and creating a new one. Useful sometimes but not much. Don't worry about the "Mirror IK Limits", just leave it how it is.
Ok now onto the button with the 4 different colored spheres in it. This is the Material Editor. This is used for skinning your models, which will be in the next tutorial. You can also access the Material Editor by pressing the M key.
The teapot with the small white and blue window over it, is the Render Scene button. When you hit this it will render (draw) the active viewport (the one you are currently using for editing). This is how you see images of 3d scenes, you work out all the models, skin them, then render which is your final product. To make a viewport active, an easy way is to simply right-click in it. The next teapot is a quick render button, don't actually notice much a difference in quality by default, but with the Render Scene button you can go to some VERY high quality resolutions, while in quick render you cannot.
One more thing that is of importance, how to rotate/zoom the views of the viewports. In your bottom right-hand corner you will see these. These are your viewport tools.
The magnifying glass zooms in and out, you must click and drag back and forth in a viewport for it to zoom/unzoom. This is Zoom.
The glass in the red-lined box let's you zoom every viewport by zooming just one, comes in handy. This is Zoom All.
Then the box with the red "photo frame" around it, that will take you to a very close zoom of an object. This is Zoom Extents.
The box in front of the red-lined box does what the last one does, but to all viewports, not just the active one. This is Zoom Extents All.
The bracket-looking thing lets you zoom in and out on an object, but it won't zoom through the object like Zoom will. Useful. This is called Field-Of-View.
The hand lets you pan the viewport left and right, up and down. This is Pan.
The circle with the gizmo in it lets you rotate around the object. It's call Arc Rotate. Note that sometimes it acts funny and instead of rotating around an object, it just rotates in place. This can get very annoying. To fix this just hit the Zoom Extents All button, and Arc Rotate will rotate around the object again. NOTE: You can Zoom/Pan the Top, Left and Front viewports, but when you Arc Rotate them,they change to "User" and this makes it tough to complete. If this happens, simply go to the Customize drop-down menu up top, then Viewport Configuration, then click the Layout tab within that and left-click the viewport that changed to User, and simply click it back to what it's supposed to be.
NOTE BEFORE YOU CONTINUE
This is all I will be telling about the basics of 3d Studio MAX. While there is more to be said about them, if you are very new to it I suggest doing a tutorial or two that comes with 3d Studio MAX. Play around with these different things until you feel familiar. Try making some other shapes besides a cylinder by clicking on the tab with the arrow and light behind it along the right-hand side, then cliking the sphere. Or you can access the different shapes by clicking the "Objects" tab along the top of 3d Studio MAX.
Making the gun
NOTE
SAVE A LOT!! Can't stress this enough, nothing is more annoying than getting something right and having your computer lock up. I save after each item is made. Also if you make any mistakes you can just hit control+z to undo, or use the Edit drop-down menu, and hit undo.
Alrighty, right click in the Front viewport to make it active. Hit alt+b, which brings up the Viewport Background window. What we are going to do is stick a picture of our gun as a background image in this viewport. Hit the Files... button, and select this picture. Then click the Match Bitmap button, and the Lock Zoom/Pan button. It should look like this. Now your viewport should look like this.
When making guns, if you want them to be decently detailed you must model each individual piece and then place them all together. This jacks up the polygon count, but that's ok :) Plus it's better to learn this way, as making simpler models is very easy once you get through this tutorial.
NOTE
When tracing it's much easier if you turn the grid off, to do this press G, to turn it back on just press G again.
So first we are going to make the butt/handle of this rifle. So, make sure Front is the active viewport and Zoom+Pan until you only have the butt of the rifle on the screen. It should look like this. Now we are going to trace the butt of the gun, so on the right-hand menu with the different tabs, select the arrow with the light behind it (Create tab), then click the button next to the sphere, that shows a few different shapes on it. On the drop-down menu make sure "Splines" are selected. You will get this. Now select line, and it works like this. You click once in the viewport to start the line, you click over and over to set the different points of the line, you eventually come back to the first point and then it will ask you if you would like to close the spline, and you say yes. Here is a picture of mine. So you know it's smart to have the other pictures open when you are modeling, so you can have a few viewpoints because images get a little blurry in 3d Studio MAX. A good program for viewing images is ACD See, you can get it from Tucows.
Anyways, back to the model. So you've traced the butt, but you can't get some of the points where you want 'em. Well don't worry you can edit the line by it's points very easily. To do this, click the tab next to the Create tab, which is the Modify tab. Now click the Select Object button (remember the mouse-arrow button up top?), and click your line. It should look like this.
Now see the rollout "Modifier Stack" under the drop-down box that says "Line" in it? Well right in there click the "Sub-Object" button, and make sure "Vertex" is selected in the drop-down. It should now look like this. Now click the Move button (four arrows button on top row of buttons), and select one of the vertexes (points marked by a cross on your screen, these are the points you clicked in your line) by clicking it. Now click and hold, and drag to move it around. You can zoom the viewport up close so you can get them perfect.
So you have your butt perfectly traced, good. So now click the Sub-Object button again, turning it off. Now click the Extrude button just above the Modifier Stack. What Extrude does is takes your 2d outline of the butt, and gives it depth, making it 3d. So, in the Parameters rollout of Extrude, in the Amount box, that's where you can control how far it goes out. I did 9 for this, but you can do it however you want. This is how it looked afterwards (I simply Arc Rotated the Perspective view, that's why it's a different angle). Ok so we have our basic butt now. Let's create the little piece sticking out from the bottom that we didn't trace. Now if you look in the other pictures (you DO have them open like I said to right? ;), you'll see the piece is sort of a cylinder thing. So let's make a cylinder. Right-click in the Top perspective, then click back to the Create tab, then the Geometry button (the single grey sphere) and click the Cylinder button. Try to make the diameter pretty small, but you can always change the radius another way, which I'm about to show you. So your cylinder is too big/small long? No problem, just select (using the Select Object button), then click the Modify Tab (next to the Create tab). You should see this. Now under Radius just play with it until you like the size. If you want it to perfectly match the size of the image, just drag it into it's position, it will look like this. So now just adjust the radius by typing in new numbers in the box, then hitting enter until you like the size.
NOTE:
Whenever you make changes using the Modify tab you must hit enter for them to take place.
I zoomed in pretty close to the butt to make sure my cylinder was in position. This is the final result. Now we have to make the smaller cylinder under it. So let's click into the Top perspective, then back into the Create tab, and then Geometry tab. Select Cylinder and make a new one, drag it under the first one, into position. Then click back into the Modify tab, and change the radius/height to how you like it. I just matched the picture. Here's what mine looked like.
Now if you look at the picture outside of MAX you will notice that there are a few knobs and an indentation in the butt. Let's put these in. The knobs first. These are very simple, right-click in the Front viewport, click the Create tab, then Geometry, select Cylinder. Just outline the knob in the picture with the cylinder, make it stick out some but not too far. Here's mine. Just adjust it to how you like it, do the same for the other knob. That's what it should resemble.
Now we must make the indentation. This is a little tougher, but nothing too hard. First what we are going to do is trace (using Line, remember when we traced the butt) the shape of our indention, following the lines from the picture. There's mine. Now let's extrude it, so click on the Modify tab, then click extrude. I extruded it 5. You won't be able to see it because it's inside the butt, so click it in the Top perspective and move it out some. It should look like this. Notice I simply changed the color of the butt so it would contrast the wireframes (the bunch of lines that make up the 3d shapes) more. Ok so you this is how this worked, what we are going to do is subtract our shape we just made from the butt. Which will create the indentation. So what's going to happen is, the amount of our new shape that's still inside the butt, that's how deep the indentation is. You decide how much you want it in. Just make sure some of the shape is still buried in the butt. I removed the grid (hit G to do this) to show you how much I left it sticking in, you can see this here. The black is the butt, the white is our shape.
Ok now click the Select Object button (mouse-arrow button up top), then click the main butt shape. Now up top you will see these blue/purplish tabs you can click, Main Toolbar, Objects, Shapes, etc. Click the Compounds one. You'll see this. Now click the 2nd to the last button, the cube with circle holes in it, which is called Boolean Compound Object. The right-hand menu should now look like this. Ok, so now click the "Pick Operand B" button, and click our new shape we just made. Voila! If you did exactly what I said it will look like this. This is a VERY useful tool, you can get quite creative and useful with it.
So now your butt should like something like this. Now let's make the cheek-rest. Trace the cheek rest first, here's what mine looked like. Now Extrude it (Modify tab > Extrude). I extruded it the same amount as my butt (9). It's up to you though. Here's what mine looked like. Now just trace the connecting shape, and extrude it the same way. I extruded it a little less than the cheek rest and butt. Here's our butt, almost done.
Now we don't want our butt to look so blocky, so let's fix it. Select the butt, then in the bluish/purple tabs up top, click the Modifiers tab. Right under the "Modifiers", you will see a smoothed looking cube inside a wirefram box, called Meshsmooth. You can see it here. Click it. Now your butt looks like this steaming pile of shit. Well we're going to fix that. Under the Parameters rollout on the right-hand menu, click the little button for Classic thenchange the strength to .09, and the relax to .02. The menu should look like this, and your gun should resemble this. Ok cool so it doesn't look so retarded now, let's do the same to the cheek rest. Just click it, then the Modifiers blue-tab, Meshsmooth, and lower the strength to about the same, you can play with it though. Make sure to turn it on Classic though. Well the butt is done!! That's what mine looked like.
Making the stock
Now it's time for the stock. I suggest turning the grid off in the Front view, we are going to trace the stock of the gun. So click the Create tab in the right-hand menu, then select the Shapes button (next to Geometry), make sure Splines is selected in the drop-down menu. Trace the outline of the of stock just like you did the butt. That's what mine turned out like. Don't trace the trigger or the trigger guard, we'll do that later. Also notice I didn't trace the figure the barrel rests on, we will deal with that afterwards. Now let's extrude it. Extrude it the same amount as the butt, which was 9 for me. There's mine extruded.
Now for the indentations we see. Let's see if you remember how :) Well I'll refresh you anyways ;) Trace the outlines of the indentions using Line first. Here's mine, the red is the stock and the white are the outlines I drew.
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