TMBountyHunter
Well-Known Member
Hi everyone, I've been lurking for a while and finally decided to post.
So back last August I decided I wanted to have a Portal Gun for a con. That was kind of a last minute thing since I realized I didn't have any money to blow in the dealer room and the guest list didn't seem too fun. Regardless I wanted to go and get the most out of my weekend pass so cosplay was the natural choice.
This isn't meant to be a WIP thread yet (since schoolwork currently wants to kill me with sleep deprivation), but more of a short review of references to make the Portal Gun. Since my build was so last minute, with only 2.5 weeks before the deadline my first thought was to just copy Volpin's famous V1 gun but I quickly realized that as wonderful as his WIP post is it's quite far from a clear blueprint that you can just grab all the parts and slap it together.
Next choice was to go straight to the source (no pun intended) the game itself. Ideally the path would have been to just export the model to CAD software, tweak it, break it into parts and print out the plans and the shopping list. This idea was quickly canned because I had absolutely no clue about exporting models or CAD software and no time to learn with the deadline looming.
Moving on to the next option: Steam has built in SDK for most of Valve's Source Engine games and if you own the game you can just grab the SDK for free, which comes with the Model Viewer. Here came the first and biggest problem. The game actually has two different Portal Gun models: w_portalgun.mdl which is the low-polygon model used within the world (on the stand, the ground when you die, the one Chell is holding when you look at yourself though a portal, etc). And the v_portalgun.mdl which is the player view model, it has a much higher polycount but it's also incomplete since you only ever see it from one angle. The problem here is that the two models do not agree with each other, especially since the view model has a few gameplay tweaks to it so that it doesn't obstruct the player's view too much.
So there I was, 2 weeks to make the damn thing and no one true blueprint to follow. I ended up spending a weekend or so drawing up my own plans that turned out to be a Frankensteining together of the W and V models, the Volpin gun and at the same time trying to keep dimensions close to off the shelf pipe sizes.
Long story short I didn't finish in time for the con, this is what it looked like the night before:
Pause in build afterwards, some progress during Christmas break, and here's about what it looks like now:
As happy as I am with it, I always knew this is only a v1 and I'll get around to making a better, more accurate version eventually. What I didn't know until this past week or two was what my final reference would be for that "accurate" portal gun.
Portal 2 has been announced all the way last year before I started my gun, but all the promo images and video released have always had the same old portal gun models. It wasn't too bat of an assumption to make that the developers would update the weapon models for a sequel. But nope. The only variation was the Co-op bots had color stripes. Even as recently as February Chell was still carrying around the W model in new promotional art:
But then on March 17th something magical has finally happened. Valve released the 30 second TV spot for Portal 2 and right at the beginning what do we have? Why it's a shiny new, high polygon Portal Gun model!
Finally a proper reference! Too bad it's stuck in a trailer and at that point I just decided to wait and see what happens.
Yet there's more! Valve started the insane Alternate Reality Game on April 1st to promote Portal 2 and after a while concept art started emerging. While most images have the portal gun either roughly sketched or are reusing the W model, two images in particular I find relevant to the current topic of this thread. The first is this, which is quite literally a shiny and clean portal gun and a potential reference.
The other is this.
Looks familiar? That's a photo of Volpin's gun worked into the sketch.
But now for the grand finale of this post and pretty much the reason why I finally decided to post. I got home today to find that Valve released yet another promo video. Right at the beginning we have this:
Quite literally, THE blueprint. Every little bit in exploded view, even the obscured and mysterious bits. Sure it doesn't come without contradicting the previous models, but I'd say it's as definitive of a reference as it gets unless Valve included the TV spot model in the game for us to export and manipulate.
As far as my WIP goes I have dozens and dozens of pics but I also have a terrible habit of writing up very wordy posts documenting everything because I like to have people point out where I went wrong or what processes I can make more efficient. I'll probably get around to it in very late April.
So back last August I decided I wanted to have a Portal Gun for a con. That was kind of a last minute thing since I realized I didn't have any money to blow in the dealer room and the guest list didn't seem too fun. Regardless I wanted to go and get the most out of my weekend pass so cosplay was the natural choice.
This isn't meant to be a WIP thread yet (since schoolwork currently wants to kill me with sleep deprivation), but more of a short review of references to make the Portal Gun. Since my build was so last minute, with only 2.5 weeks before the deadline my first thought was to just copy Volpin's famous V1 gun but I quickly realized that as wonderful as his WIP post is it's quite far from a clear blueprint that you can just grab all the parts and slap it together.
Next choice was to go straight to the source (no pun intended) the game itself. Ideally the path would have been to just export the model to CAD software, tweak it, break it into parts and print out the plans and the shopping list. This idea was quickly canned because I had absolutely no clue about exporting models or CAD software and no time to learn with the deadline looming.
Moving on to the next option: Steam has built in SDK for most of Valve's Source Engine games and if you own the game you can just grab the SDK for free, which comes with the Model Viewer. Here came the first and biggest problem. The game actually has two different Portal Gun models: w_portalgun.mdl which is the low-polygon model used within the world (on the stand, the ground when you die, the one Chell is holding when you look at yourself though a portal, etc). And the v_portalgun.mdl which is the player view model, it has a much higher polycount but it's also incomplete since you only ever see it from one angle. The problem here is that the two models do not agree with each other, especially since the view model has a few gameplay tweaks to it so that it doesn't obstruct the player's view too much.
So there I was, 2 weeks to make the damn thing and no one true blueprint to follow. I ended up spending a weekend or so drawing up my own plans that turned out to be a Frankensteining together of the W and V models, the Volpin gun and at the same time trying to keep dimensions close to off the shelf pipe sizes.
Long story short I didn't finish in time for the con, this is what it looked like the night before:
Pause in build afterwards, some progress during Christmas break, and here's about what it looks like now:
As happy as I am with it, I always knew this is only a v1 and I'll get around to making a better, more accurate version eventually. What I didn't know until this past week or two was what my final reference would be for that "accurate" portal gun.
Portal 2 has been announced all the way last year before I started my gun, but all the promo images and video released have always had the same old portal gun models. It wasn't too bat of an assumption to make that the developers would update the weapon models for a sequel. But nope. The only variation was the Co-op bots had color stripes. Even as recently as February Chell was still carrying around the W model in new promotional art:
But then on March 17th something magical has finally happened. Valve released the 30 second TV spot for Portal 2 and right at the beginning what do we have? Why it's a shiny new, high polygon Portal Gun model!
Finally a proper reference! Too bad it's stuck in a trailer and at that point I just decided to wait and see what happens.
Yet there's more! Valve started the insane Alternate Reality Game on April 1st to promote Portal 2 and after a while concept art started emerging. While most images have the portal gun either roughly sketched or are reusing the W model, two images in particular I find relevant to the current topic of this thread. The first is this, which is quite literally a shiny and clean portal gun and a potential reference.
The other is this.
Looks familiar? That's a photo of Volpin's gun worked into the sketch.
But now for the grand finale of this post and pretty much the reason why I finally decided to post. I got home today to find that Valve released yet another promo video. Right at the beginning we have this:
Quite literally, THE blueprint. Every little bit in exploded view, even the obscured and mysterious bits. Sure it doesn't come without contradicting the previous models, but I'd say it's as definitive of a reference as it gets unless Valve included the TV spot model in the game for us to export and manipulate.
As far as my WIP goes I have dozens and dozens of pics but I also have a terrible habit of writing up very wordy posts documenting everything because I like to have people point out where I went wrong or what processes I can make more efficient. I'll probably get around to it in very late April.
Last edited:
sleep
