Made a small start yesterday... not much yet... and my internet conked out on me so I had to photograph the screen with my phone!
Oblivion - Jack's pistol
- Thread starter Art Andrews
- Start date
Looks nice! Last night I restarted - more or less scrapped my whole model in fact. It was really only a 3D sketch to check proportions and placements. I'll post a couple of renders later on, you might get a laff out of it. I was comically inaccurate.
It does seem like the art department renders are weird versus the screen caps, doesn't it? Or the other way around.
It does seem like the art department renders are weird versus the screen caps, doesn't it? Or the other way around.
I put it down to lens distortion and perspective, both in the rendering (which CAN be a bit extreme) and in the film. There's one really grainy/blurry side shot I have from the movie that is almost perfectly planar from the side as far as I can tell... and that profile is pretty different from the concept. I've been using it as a guide to cut'n'past details from the concept render to their proper locations after trying to correct the perspective. But until the bluray or even more reference surfaces, anything we do will be a close amalgam of the different images.
nexnox
Well-Known Member
Often we have to modify a concept when bringing a prop to reality. While an artist's concept can be beautiful and amazing, they rarely put thought into how it's going to be made. And even if they did we may have to take a different route to use the tools we have, meet deadlines, and/or meet budget requirements.
Oh, tell me about it... concept artists can indeed be fantastically talented but practical reality doesn't always factor into their images! (I work in games...)
Father
Sr Member
I hope that doesn't mean we have to wait until the Bluray comes out before final casts are made. That's a bit of time down the road.
@Father Only two and a half months, relax, take it easy. 
Father
Sr Member
@Father Only two and a half months, relax, take it easy.
That's forever. Wondersquid almost has a completed Oblivion rifle without the Bluray. Just sayin.
That's forever. Wondersquid almost has a completed Oblivion rifle without the Bluray. Just sayin.
Yeah... but there is close to perfect reference material for the rifle! Not so with the pistol. How important is accuracy?
Father
Sr Member
Oh sure. Corner me with that question. LOL.
If the recent concept image is enough reference material to create a working model and that's what someone sold I'd be happy.
I can't take a set of calipers to screen caps to verify exact proportions.
Look at how many variations of the Blade Runner gun have been made. Most of them have minute details that differentiate them but they're all fantastic replicas given the limited amount of source material.
Not trying to rush anyone (not that I have enough influence to do this anyway) but if you made one from that concept image I seriously doubt I'd be able to tell the difference.
In short... I think this pistol is so awesome I can't wait to lay hands on it.
Got this in from our designer. Needs a bit of tweaking and obviously we are a long way from being done, but at least we have a start.
Father
Sr Member
I've never used 3D rendering software so I'm coming in cold and blind, but can you lay the original image on the "canvas" and basically trace it out as 2D and then "add" the depth to the parts? Or trace out the image that shows it on an angle and add the lines of perspective to create the 3D?
I am not doing the work on this, just giving my input along the way, so I don't know exactly how it is being approached, but I am assuming there has to be something along the lines of what you are suggesting going on.
Yes; you can use an image as a backdrop in your windows for left view, top view, front view etc.
If you're thinking in terms of telling your voice-activated sci-fi computer "Enhance!", no, it's not like that.
I mean that is what you do, but by building up shapes and altering them as needed, very manually. Not really, there's no magic bullet solution. There are 3D scanners that work photographically and even modelling applications which try to replicate objects from a handful of photos but nothing beats hand and eye, as far as I'm aware anyway. AI will crack it one day.
Here's my sketchy version...clearly my hand and eye suck, lol. Art, your person's doing nice work.
Attachments
The ideal is to have a top, down front and side of the object you want to recreate, but that is seldom the reality. In a case like this it will vary from artist to artist but I like to cut and paste from as many reference photos as possible and rescale/distort them to get as close to "correct" proportions as possible. It's doing a Frankenstein to be sure, but it can get you 90-95% of the way if you don't have really good reference. Going only by the concept images above for instance, would yield a model that looks right at first glance but would be significantly off when you start to really compare with the screen prop. Knowing the correct width and depth is also very useful.
Nice! It is interesting to see the differences and the similarities in approach that the two of you are taking. Add Joe into the mix and it is going to be really interesting indeed! I know very little about this kind of work and how/where you start from, so it is cool to see these being developed from the ground up.
Still blocking out the major components... thinking about how and where to split this for printing. It's likely I'll use at least two different materials- one for strength and one for detail. The photo below shows a perspective corrected concept and "behind" the 3d geometry is a screenshot that has been cut'n'pasted together to get the correct silhouette.
