MPG brief - Game Artist Brief
Brief-
Deadline: 21st November 2025
Of the two briefs given to us, I'm going to be doing the Realistic Assault rifle prop. My reason for choosing this brief is that I feel more confident with hard surface modelling than some of the organic shapes in the room brief. I think this will allow me to challenge myself whilst also not throwing myself entirely into the deep end and risking not getting the project finished on time.
Some important details to note about this brief:
Poly budget - 30k - 35k
Texture size - 3 x 2k pbr based udims
Gathering references-
Looking at different kinds of assault rifles, I think that this gun most closely resembles an AK-103 with a scope attachment on top. With this in mind, I had a look at some images of this kind of gun mixed with AK-47's and zoom ins of clear magazines and scopes. I will use these reference images to help me build the model more accurately as only one side of the model is given.
Below are also some links to Sketchfab models that will help me build my own model.
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Modelling process-
I am going to first attempt modelling my asset in high poly, then baking the details onto a lower poly model, that way I can be more efficient with my polygon budget. I will have to utilize retopology again for this project so that is good practice to improve my skills.
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I decided to start with the scope first for this project as I had the most references showing different angles of this part of the gun. Most of the scope was made with an extruded cylinder of which i used edge loops to separate the twistable sections. To give them texture, I selected alternating faces and scaled them outwards to give the impression of a ridged surface. To smooth out some sections, especially around the eyepiece bit, I utilized the bevel function.
A similar technique was used to create the barrel of the gun, I also used edge loops to select some faces at the bottom and extrude them out to connect to the smaller cylinder that is underneath the main barrel.
I then pulled the end of the barrel [that will connect to the stock of the rifle] upwards to create this teardrop shape, then, for the bit above that, i made a new shape and extruded it out like the barrel and scope. The section screenshotted above is three separate meshes, those being the barrel, the small bit above the barrel [highlighted in green] and the bridging piece between the two. I chose to model this section in this way so that i could keep my topology relatively neat to make UV mapping easier later on.
Zooming out, this is how those two sections look so far. The front sight was created from a face of the barrel that i extruded, then bevelled and used the Boolean function on to create the hole through it. The bolt and curved section are both separate meshes, I did originally try to create them both from the piece of geometry i extruded upwards to use less polys from my poly budget, but found the resulting topology from doing so was quite poor.
The stock of the rifle was arguably the most time consuming part of this stage of modelling. I chose to begin with a cube and roughly block out the shape first using the extrude and bevel tool. I figured giving myself a base to work from then refining that shape would be much easier than trying to get everything looking right straight out of the gate. I used many of my 3/4 references at this stage to determine how thick the stock needed to be, The rough taper of different sections of the stock, and also how round some of the edges needed to be.
Here is a better view of my stock base.
I also decided to go and name everything within my Outliner so that I wouldn't get lost when looking for certain sections of the gun, I think this is a good practice to get into the habit of anyways so that If someone else needs to look at my model they can easily find what section is which. [Though I do admit I don't know all the proper names for parts of the gun's anatomy so many of these objects are describes as best as i could]
Looking back at the barrel of the rifle, I realized I had forgotten the small cylinder under the barrel, so I went back in and added that. I also didn't realize that the end of the rifle had a section that was somewhat see through until I zoomed in closer at the reference photo. To add this in I removed some faces, Bridged the gap, then bevelled the edges towards the bore of the rifle. Doing this gave a smoother transition from the barrel to the cut out.
Returning to the stock, I focused on the far end and worked my way forward, first rounding the edges more and creating the indent in the back edge that I saw on one of my reference images. I made sure to check the taper of this section constantly to ensure that my changes kept the same tapering shape of the gun that was present in my original block out.
I could see on the reference there was this indented section on the side of the stock, I recreated this using the Boolean function once again and bevelling the edges of this removed section so that it could flow nicer and look less sharp.
Moving on to the upper section of the stock, I extruded the edges in a stepped manner and smoothed out some of the corners, I am going to overlap this section with separate meshes for the upper magazine area. I have chosen to approach this in this way for much of the same reason as i did for the barrel, I want to keep my topology as neat as possible so that I will be able to UV map easier further down the line.
I was originally going to do the same for the grip, though I thought it would be better to extrude this section and keep it as part of the stock mesh to reduce the Polys needed. As the stock and grip are going to be similar textures, I figured this would be more efficient. The grip itself used a lot of edge loops and some target welding of vertices so that i could remove any ngons created from bevelling the edges. This part took a little bit of time to get everything looking correctly. Throughout this process I have been utilizing the mirror tool to keep things even, though as both sides of the gun will be different later on, I have left out modelling the asymmetrical parts until the very last so that the main body of the rifle will look even.
The trigger area is made of two meshes, that being the trigger and the trigger guard. Both of these were created using extruded cubes. I also made the divot in which both of these structures sit by pushing the two bottom faces of the gun up into the stock, to provide a little more realism to my model.
This section was a bit more challenging, as such I decided to break it down into three sections [two of which are pictured above and the third section being pictured below]. The top section was made from a cylinder that i halved, extruded, bridged and then poked the end faces to give better topology. Then, for the more complex lower section [highlighted in green] I approached it in much of the same was as the stock. I created my rough block out from a cube, then used edge loops and transformed vertices to create that swooped shape. Then i bevelled some edges to create a slight incline, and adjusted edges and more vertices in accordance to the references i had gathered. Again this section was where my 3/4 view references came in very handy, as the side profile did not provide information on the tapering of this part.
This is how this section looks with the three overlapping meshes, I feel this was a better way of approaching this section as opposed to creating it all out of one shape as the resulting topology would likely be quite messy, especially to where the bottom section meets the top.
This little section was also made from a cube, later on you will see me add in some rivets to give this part a bit more texture, I also added in a small clip to the side of it which you can see in the image below.
The magazine was a lot easier than I anticipated, I simply built the bottom shape out of a cube, scaled it in a bit, then extruded it upwards following the curve of the reference image, which gave me the rough shape. Then I added the middle section by extruding the inner face inwards slightly, then scaled it outwards to make a raised surface. As I have clicked on the stock and trigger as well, you can see some of the topology that I have made so far. I was fairly happy with everything so far, though I knew i would have to go back in to optimize it for the poly budget later on. The area in the middle [just behind the grip] had an awful lot of edges there so i anticipated having to work in that area to get the poly count down.
The spring inside the magazine was exceptionally easy to make, I simply brought in a helix, Adjusted the coils, radius and size, then squashed it and transformed it within the main body of the magazine.
Here is how that looked, I also added in that plate by duplicating the magazine mesh and clipping out just the bottom section, bridging the subsequent hole that appeared from deleting the upper faces. This saved me a lot of time and I think it looks fairly good.
I then added in the bullets which are based on AK-47 rounds, as I believe the gun to be a rendition of an AK-103 which uses these kinds of ammunition. They are made from cylinders however I did have to go back in and re model them as the polygon density on them was much too high. I simply reduced the amount of vertical subdivisions on the cylinder that i built them from to make a more optimized shape that didn't loose too much of the detail.
Here is my final model of the gun both with and without the wireframe view.
Although i had been checking the polygons throughout the modelling process, I realized I had been mistaken by the 35k poly budget thinking it was faces and not Tris, this meant I would have to do some retopology to reduce the amount of polygons in my model.
Retopology-
To begin with, I used the quad draw function to attempt retopology that way. I found very quickly that I am not very proficient at using this tool, and my resulting topology was both horribly optimized, and reduced the overall quality of my model. Out of experience, I knew that even if i tried baking my textures and details back over top of this new topology, the likelihood of this looking to the same quality as my original model would be very slim.
To rectify this, I took the much longer route of manually target welding edges and vertices to reduce my poly count that way. This took about double the time it would to have just retopologized it using the quad draw tool however, I did identify some problem areas with my mesh and non manifold geometry that i would have likely missed. I managed to both fix those issues with my model and get my model down to roughly 34, 600 polys whilst retaining almost all of my original details. I am very happy with how this bit turned out and although i had some troubles, the process of working through these issues was oddly very satisfying.
UV Mapping -
Here are some screenshots of my process of UV mapping, I used the create from camera function then worked my way around each section of the model cutting, sewing and unfolding areas to create my UVS.
Here is my final UV sheet and how it looks on the model. I find the process of UV mapping somewhat difficult at times, but i managed to fix some of the issues i came upon such as transferring attributes so that it accurately shared UVs between objects such as the rivets and screws on the scope.
Texturing -
I exported everything as an FBX then brought this into substance painter to begin texturing. I ran into some issues with the software repeatedly crashing, and unfortunately I was not able to open substance painter on my home PC. To kind of work around this roadblock, I decided to texture the gun myself using my art program. I acknowledge this will not result in a high quality, realistic model, but i thought it was the best thing i could do considering my issues with the software. I used the reference image to colour pick hues and inform me on which textures to try to emulate.
Once i had finished the texturing, i brought them into Maya as two separate textures. The main body of the gun is a standard surface material which i edited to have a higher metalness value, turned down the glossiness, and tweaked the Anisotropic values to give more of a matte metal look to the surface. Then, for the plastic magazine, I used my textures on an ai standard surface material which i lowered the transmission weight on to give it a semi transparent look to it. I also increased the glossiness just slightly to give it a more plastic look, but not quite as shiny as glass.
Here is how my final textures look!
Rendering -
For rendering, I brought in a free HDRI i had found online, i decided to go with a gloomy urbanscape. I added this using the Arnold Skybox and replaced the solid colour with the HDRI file. Then I added in a directional light to show off some of the reflectivity of the materials and rendered out a couple of views of the gun.
I have also uploaded my model on Sketchfab for you to look at the UVs and wireframes in an easier manner. The link to this should be below :)
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