[Gallery] DEEhunter's Light arrays

[neuro]

renegade x is a UT3 mod correct?

if you're doing this for normalmapping, you really need to quit making all your little detailythingies a simple straight extrude, because they won't show in your normalmap, unless you do your projection wrong, resulting in a double-wrong

here's a few small pointers:
normalmaps only store surface -direction-, not depth. it's the single reason floaters actually WORK.

ask yourself this, if the projection process can't see the height difference between floaters and the surrounding mesh, why would it be able to see the height difference on your extruded cylinders?

i'm also wondering why you've got perfectly sharp edges on the cylinders. whats the point of doing a highres if you're not going to see anythign of it?

the things you add are so miniscule, they'd end up being less than a pixel wide on a normalmap.
what you're doing right now, may look nice (to you) but when it comes to actual practical purposes, it's not really usefull, at all, the best you could bake of this would be -some- of the things you've got in the front atm.

[DEElekgolo]

Where do you see these details that will show up less than a pixel?

[neuro]

first of all, ALL your hard edges. (why do you keep hard edges? explain this to me please)

unless you know what you're doing when projecting (which honestly, i doubt) you'll get a nice W-formation going along all your cylinder-cap-loops

the rest i marked in orange will either not show up because they're straight-down projections without surface direction (or maybe there's at most 2 pixels width) mainly the 3 asmaller cylinder in the middle of the thing and around it. and the little extruded box-bit youve got on the side thing will vanish (maybe leave 1 pixel edge) because, there's just not enough surface direction.

you should avoid hard edges in general, because supersampling has a hard time with it, giving it a 1-pixel offset along the length of it usually (resulting in something which you could describe as shitty anti-aliasing

what you're doing now, is putting teeny-tiny-mini details on places, when you haven't got your main mesh built.
generally, you'll want to build your things in order, from big shapes first, small shapes later. if you end up having to change a big shape later, you're fucked, because all the smaller things are dependant on the things underneath it. (like the hole in the big round thing, where the handle comes out)

if i were you, i'd make sure you get that hole-bit where the handle goes into in your mesh first, because that'll propably end up being the most challenging part of this thing for you.
since the rest of the gun is just cylinders on a handle.

edit:

quick example of what i ment with the thing the handle goes in, and using soft edges.

[DEElekgolo]

softened up some parts.

[ThePlague]

Much better.

[DEElekgolo]

Made the low poly and unwrapped it.

[Roostervier]

...why is there so much empty space

[DEElekgolo]

Make it bigger they said.
http://deelekgolo.wmclan.net/WONG%20FOO.png
Watch out kids, 10 mb png.
http://deelekgolo.deviantart.com/art...GGER-132304176

[neuro]

Made the low poly and unwrapped it.
[derr]

...why is there so much empty space

you're using only like 60% of your surface.
if you unwrapped it properly, you could have the SAME density on HALF the texture.

i'd suggest you restart your UV's
if you can't get it to fit in a square texture, make it fit in a 256x512 instead. it often makes alot more sense if you've got alot of longer strips, like you do in this case.

honestly, those uv's just won't do.

[DEElekgolo]

[derr]