So now select the first outline you drew (make sure to click the Select Object button), hold down control and select the next 2 you drew. When you hold down control it will select each one individually as parts of a group. Now go Extrude them (Modify tab >
Extrude), I extruded them 4. With them all still selected, hit the Select and Move button, and move them so they stick out some, but leave some of it still in the gun. This is how you will want it to look. Now before we Boolean it, let's make copes of them for use on the other side. Go to edit then Clone. You will see this. Make sure you leave it how it is, and hit ok. Now it will look the exact same because the clone is placed directly in the same spot as the original, but it's there. So click the Select and Move button, then just move it back and you will see. Move it to about this position. Good now we're ready to boolean. Select the stock, then click the Compounds blue-tab, and then Boolean Compound Object. Then click Pick Operand B, and click one of the outlines we just extruded. To do the next Boolean, simply click the Boolean button again, located right in the right-hand menu. Repeat until all the outlined figures are extruded into the stock. It will look like this on both sides. This might look hard but if you follow exactly what I say it is quite simple. Also make sure to hit the Boolean button again for each new Boolean, or it will erase your previous one. Don't just hit "Pick Operand B" over and over, you have to start a new Boolean entirely. Now if you look closely in the pictures there is an indentation in the handle, so let's do it :)
NOTE
In the pictures for this, you will see a cylinder not a box, that's because I was trying a cylinder first but a box works better, and I'm too lazy to retake screens, but the positioning is still the same :)
Right-click in the Left viewport to make it active. Now your right-hand menu should look like this. Click the drop-down menu and click Standard Primitives. Now we can make our box. Remember we can always change the values of it from the Modify tab so you don't have to be precise at first. Just make sure to create it in the Left viewport. So make it, and place it about here. You can decide how deep you want the indentation. Click on the Modify tab on the right-hand menu, and you will see this. Play with the settings until you like the size. Here's how I placed mine. BEFORE YOU BOOLEAN IT, clone it (Edit drop-down, Clone), then move to clone to the other side. This is what it should resemble. Then Boolean it out of the butt, which I'll repeat one more time :) Click the Select Object button, then click the butt, then click the Compounds blue-tab, then Boolean, then on the right-hand menu click "Pick Operand B", and click your box. Do it for the other box, and you should end up with something like this on both sides.
Great, now let's trace the trigger guard and trigger (very simple, just use Line, then extrude about 2). You'll want it to look something like this.
NOTE
If a background image is getting in your way, just hit alt+b then uncheck "Display Background", then when you want it back just go check it again.
Modelling the barrel and barrel mount
Ok now for the barrel and it's mount. Let's do the mount first. Now, trace it a little bit shorter of how long you want it to be, the reason being is we're going to modify it a little bit to get the right shape. Look how I did it, see how I left it a little short of touching the stock. Ok now go extrude, extrude it less than the stock. Probably 6 or 7 would work but just play with it until you like the size. Now, click into the blue-tab Modifiers. Then click the Edit Mesh button, shown here. You will then see this, now click the face button (I have it highlighted for you). Now right-click into the Perspective viewport. Then click the Customize drop-down menu along the top of MAX, and then Viewport Configuration. You'll see this. Under Rendering Level, click the button Wireframe. Now the Perspective view will look like a bunch of lines that make up a 3d looking gun thing :) Now zoom in close on our mount we just made, using the Viewport Tools in the lower-right-hand corner. Now, what we are going to do is select the bottom face of this mount we made, and extrude it down. So hit the Select Object button, and then select the buttom face by clicking on one side of it, holding control, and clicking the other. It will look like this. The red is the selected face. Then on the right-hand menu, you will see a box Extrude. I messed up on my length and had to fix it another way, so when you extrude use only about 2 or 3. If you want to play with it you can. Each time you don't like it though, you must undo your extrusion before doing another one. If you extrude it too far/little, hit control+z before you try it over. Just realise you don't want it stickout out of your stock under where it sits from too much length. It should now look like this. You can change the Perspective viewport back now if you would like to, just go back to Viewport Configuration and click the Smooth or Smooth with Highlights button. Now click the Sub-Object button on the right-hand menu so you're not selecting faces anymore. Bring the mount a little bit down into the gun so it doesn't look akward. Here's how I put mine.
Now for the barrel. Right-click in the Left viewport to make it active. Click on the Create tab, then go in the drop-down to Standard Primitives if it isn't already there, and click Cylinder. Make sure to create it in the Left viewport. Make the cylinder and give it some length, doesn't have to be perfect you can always change it with the Modify tab on the right-hand menu. I gave my barrel a height of 195 and a radius of 3.059 (the picture shows a height of 210, which I changed after I took the picture). Here's a screenshot of the placement.
If you look the barrel goes into a larger "casing" type thing, so let's make that. Let's trace, then extrude. There's how I did mine, however the placement is obviously off, but you can just see what I traced. When you extrude just extrude the same amount as the mount so they blend in together, I had the fix mine in the picture so just use whatever amount you extruded the mount. Line it up perfectly over the mount so it looks something like this.
Now let's do the last part of the barrel, the tip. I'm going to keep this very simple because it's a small point. I'm doing mine by using a cone, then extruding the face of it out. You can do whatever you want, you if you want to put a silencer on it, just make a tube (same place as cylinder, just look for tube in there) and play around with it. Almost there!! Here's my rifle so far.
The scope
Right click in the Front viewport, and hit alt+b. Click the Files... button, and click this picture as the new background, and hit ok. Your viewport should now look like this, maybe the zoom/pan will be a little different though. Now click the Select by Name button under the Main Toolbar blue-tab. You will see this however only one thing or maybe none will be selected. Hit the All button and it will look like the picture, then hit the Select button. Now everything that makes up the gun is selected, if the viewports look hacked up, just push 1 and it will redraw them. Now move the whole gun down so it sorta fits in our background image. It wont fit perfectly but that's ok, just try to line it up like this. Now trace and extrude the smaller mount that goes on top of our casing and barrel. Or just make a Box, either way it works. Make it about that big. As for the scope itself, I hope after ALL this you can make a measly scope ;) To help you out, you can do it a few different ways. One, make a long cylinder, then cones and attatch them at both sides, then tubs for where you would look in/view out. Or a little more complicated, but polygon saving, is to make a cylinder and give it more segments (look in the Modify tab in the right-hand menu, you will see segments), probably 7 or 8, and extrude the faces then mesh edit them. You should know how to do all that now :) Well after the scope you can attatch it how you want, just make a box going from the mount to the scope or get fancy, I'll leave that up to you. To be a good modeller you have to have a lot of imagination, especially when dealing with things a little tougher than guns.
ONE LAST THING YOU HAVE TO DO IF YOU PLAN ON EXPORTING THIS SUCKER INTO GHOST RECON: Click the Select by Name button, then hit all, then hit Select. Now under the blue-tab Modifiers, you will see the Optimize button. Click this with everything selected. This will reduce the polygun count of your gun pretty drastically. It took mine from nearly 6000 polys to just over 2000. This helps framerates and such when you put the gun in-game.
Well I hope this has helped you, it took me a good 4 hours or so to put this all together (takes about 4x as long to model something when you have to take screenshots, upload them to the web, and write html while trying to finish the model :). If you have any questions, comments or complains (better not! ;), email me at ach_sr4@hotmail.com
I will be making another tutorial that explains how to skin a gun. Read DJs modeling tutorial though, and on the skinning part I figured out the correct way to do it on my own, let's hope some of you do the same to save me the work hehe ;) To point you in the right direction, you take a side view picture of the gun, go into Photoshop/Paintshop Pro, and cut out the different pieces of the gun into their own image files. Make sure to paint any white/off colors left over from the cut/copy so it blends. You have to do this for each shape you make, so having good pictures is VITAL for skinning. But I will do a full tutorial on this if a lot of people would like it.
I'm also going to do a quick tutorial on how to export them into the game correctly, DJ missed a few points that are absolutely vital.
Well in closing I'd like to thank DJ for helping me out when I didn't know shit :) His tutorial pointed me in the right direction and his tips/help is appreciated. If you made it all the way through this tutorial, you have all the basics down now and should be able to make pretty much any gun you would like. There are a few things I didn't discuss in this tutorial, but they are little more advanced and not needed as much. Well I wanna see some badass guns coming from everywhere now! :)
Signing off here...Oh before I leave you can download my .MAX file for the gun we just made here. Note that it will give you a few errors about not being able to find some files, that's because I skinned the model, which is the next tutorial. Also it isn't ready to be imported in-game, that tutorial is coming too :)
-Hooker
NOTE
I forgot to model the bolt-action and magazine on this gun, hehe sorry it was quite late :) However you should easily know how to do these now :) Just letting you know, also I'm going to add a tripod to mine.
