Flechette gun creation
Hello everyone, welcome to the first developer diary for Sourceforts 2.0, codenamed "Haven". In this thread you will see the process through which I have created one of the weapon models that will be used in the first phase release. These models all retain a visual style suitable to the Half-Life universe, and this weapon is no exception. It has been working-titled the "flechette gun", although this probably won't be its name in the final release. The gun is intended as a highly accurate suppression weapon for ranged use by the "defense" class. This is another title that will be changed prior to release, but I'm sure it gives you some insight as to the classes role. Please note that there are no plans to incorporate a scope into this weapon, and that any gameplay information presented is subject to change due to conclusions that will be drawn in future testing sessions.
I have started this diary a bit late (the weapon is now nearly 30% modeled), however the diary will describe the process from the beginning.
Below you can see the original concept, drawn from Iraqi soils by our concept-artist, o_nobody_o, who remains dedicated despite military obligations.
This weapon is somewhat more organic than other weapons in the HL2 universe, yet a lot of inspiration has been drawn from the 'Hunter' present in HL2: Episode Two. The texture I plan on using is a modified version of the Hunter's body.
Anyway, onto the model:
I prefer polygonal modeling technique (starting from plane and adjusting every single polygon) which i used in this case. One of the most important things was to give the model an organic look, so when I finished half of the model I made some deformations to the mesh (you can see them on the second picture). Adding the second half of the part was very easy because of two views of the model on the concept. I used symmetry modifier to make a mirrored copy of the model. This part doesn't have small details (in fact there is only one piece) so I only concentrated on the shape. The small nozzle-like object extending from the front of the weapon is a laser-sight; whether this will be incorporated into gameplay has yet to be seen, but removing this aspect of the model is not a complex procedure.
Steps I'm going to take in this project :
->Modeling the mesh
->Texturing the model
->Rigging
->Animations
Current model polygon amount : 3178
Thank you for reading, updates will be posted as often as I make progress with the model.