Hard Surface is hard

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What's the problem? Box model the frame and normal map the green shit.

>>578661
Hmm

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>>578663

i forgot to mention that the back of this piece, is differente. One side is flat, while the other side is kinda a Cylinder shape. And another thing is, that this cylinder shape side, will move in a animation. In order to reload the gun, this piece needs to go out to the left.

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pic related of what that part need to do. Well, the only thing how i was able to do it, was doing this part as a separated object. But then... after doing it, its really a pain to adjust it into the gun. You can't see it but its kinda mess topology. Some vertices are in front of others, its just not working properly. I'm really lacking out of ideas. The guy who did this is a god

>>578661
If you are smoothing, putting edge loops closer to eachother will make edges sharper.

Is that 3d coat?

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>>578675
You need to break down the model in your head into simple shapes. Every single piece on your model can be achieved by:

>model the plane
>extrude
>bend (optional)
>boolean (optional)

>>578703

Yep, i'm trying to think this way more often. But still... Its funny because i learned how to model, but still knowledge isnt everything. Its like you gotta create a technique to allow your knowledge to flow. Its crazy but thats how i'm seeing Hard Surface modelling now

Just put 2 edge loops or more on the corner holy shit are you guys for real i learned this in ny first day with 3d programs

Hard surface modeling is harder when your topo is utter shit

easiest way to do it is to snap a polygon and extrude it outwards.

connect it later
make sure you have some space in between

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>>578661
I'm having a hard time understanding what's so complex about this, just draw a spline curve and extrude it into the shape you need.

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>>578755
...then just inset some edge loops, throw on a smooth, or maybe use the edge shader trick instead for you normal bake. When it comes to flat surfaces, topology doesn't matter as long as your edges smooth alright.

>>578661
I don't know what gun this is, I'm not a gun guy, but you can generally find manufacturing blueprints / diagrams for just about every gun online.
That's because there's lots and lots of licensed gunsmiths that (legally) make, modify, and repair firearms and they need these technical diagrams in order to meet the operational specifications.
From there you should model all, or at least all the visible / visibly moving, parts as separate meshes and then join it together later on the lowpoly.

>>578769
For all we know it could be an original design that's based conceptually on the operation of some existing gun type.
In any case, it seems OP's issue isn't that he doesn't know what the mechanics of the gun look like, but how to actually produce those shapes using his software. Even the best reference is useless if you can't into topology.

>>578771
If that's the case then he needs to go back to basics, hit the tutorials, and learn how to box model.

If, however, his problem is that he's having a hard time understanding what the parts look like and how those parts function in a realistic way during the operation of the gun during animation (as he's stated he's going to animate it), looking at full on diagrams would help.

Thanks for those tips guys, i'm going to try using curves now. I suck because my mind is not open. I lack to remenber and i dont try or combine workflows, because for me right now its a lot of tools and operations and workflows that i get kinda confused. Yes i'm doing it in Maya, and i actually never did a hard surface gun model before. This is the second time i guess i'm doing it. And i'm thinking about animation aswell, so i'm tryin to understand a gun, how it works, what parts moves and how they move, etc..

One question though, about topology, if a certain area of the gun is 100% flat, that means i can put triangles in there, so i have less polygons right? But then i gota be careful with the borders, so it can smooth properly, is that it?

>>578811
You should really go watch some chamferzone tutorials m8

Op is a retard.

>>578811
First of all, do this >>578817, the dude is really good at weapons modeling.
But to answer your question, yes, flat surfaces are anything-goes territory. You don't even need triangles, you can leave big n-gons that cover a whole surface. If this is for a game, game engines will always turn your mesh into tris anyway. Quads are mainly for deformation and sculpting, but even then, if you decided to toss the model into ZBrush, you can just group the mesh into smoothing groups and dynamesh the whole thing with minimal cleanup.