This is a project I have been wanting to make for a while , it works toward my Voltron project. I just recently been learning hard surface modeling, seemed like a good test for me. Its a 45 Long Colt Break Action Revolver from a anime series called Trigun. I have gathered so much reference and there have been so many attempts at making it , only a few have got it right, not completely there fault tho. I have the anime series and some of the scenes are not drawn accurately to include all the details , sometimes that just how anime is. However I am going to do my best to figure it out, I have the creators concept art for it as well , so hopefully I can do it justice and get it right. Its more complicated then it looks and I hope to bring it to life someday as well.
Should look something like this when its done
I started the cylinder, I find it interesting how I could topologize it , cause I am planning to model the auto eject of the casings from the gun and well , the shape is there already basicly , so it should be pretty simple I think. Next though I think I will handle the hard part and make those T shape cuts to the cylinder.
Im going to be using a Subsurf modifier on most of this, to get them smooth edges , quad topology my friends and yes you can get away with not having quads sometimes people will say, but majority of the time , if you are using Subsurf Mod , better have quads.
I learned that the grooves are a cylinder stop, stops it from just spinning after you pull the trigger , unfortunately I had to redo some of the cylinder cause I didn’t have enough vertices to make them. But thats done now , going to make the ejection part next
So after looking at this picture and consideration , I decided to slow it down and do it right ,many people say that , and don’t really “do it right” sometimes you need to step back and even though you put a lot of work into it, do it over and if this offends you well… too bad lol A good portion of the time if you do something over it will come out better then you previously did or you will remember something the previous one did. But I did not like the cylinder brake on it and it just looked too plain. so decided to try it again. Even if you are not a beginner, never hurts to step back , slow it down and gain your direction.
So this is my new result, I have put a lot of time in learning topology and how a revolver works so that I could get this right. This was not created with booleans cause I have not had any good luck with booleans.Now does that mean I made it perfect , probably not. However, putting more time into it , doing all the research I needed too and stop rushing through it allowed me to do it right, It looks exactly how it should, its all proper topology , all the details are there, looks great and I am very happy with it. And yes you don’t have to agree with anything here, but I am just giving you a view of my process and how I think. This is what I feel a WIP from me should be and this is how I work.
Now that I have the cylinder done and that during the process of making the cylinder I know references were not completely correct, I am almost certain the barrel of the gun is not aligned correctly, and since I already know that needs changed , I may as well work on that next.
Just as I thought, seems like this is the next thing to do , then I will know where the barrel will sit ,I will make it to the proper size, then I will make the rifling in the barrel which causes the bullet to spin as it comes out of the gun. I have a image of from the anime of said rifling.
Alignment set correctly, rifling is done, barrel complete. I think the alignment is very important in this , so next I will work on the mechanical components that could move, like the trigger and hammer
I figured why not make a firing pin , and then I finished up a trigger
Hammer is completed
Update , whenever I model there comes a point I mess up pretty badly, well this was the case with the grip, even good modelers and even professionals mess up, just they can’t really afford it all the time. This is what happened with making the grip , I got over confident cause it was going so smoothly, and was rocking topology. Lets step back a moment and share a saying that my uncle taught me a while back “keep it simple stupid” And as you can see , I did not keep it simple and confused myself and it became a mess. too many loops preventing me from moving things around easily. I tried to add in detail loops and make it detailed off the get go, I got all caught up in the concave parts where the fingers go and worried bout topology so much I made it too complicated off the start,didn’t even have the thickness of the grip right and I messed it all up. So going to delete the entire grip and start over now.
Here it is remade, simpler and its pretty easy to add the supporting loops in to sharpen areas after adding subsurf modifier. And if I need too add in things like the screw for the handle , now is the time before it gets more detailed.
This rubber grip was tough to make , I tried it like 4 different times, This is the closest I could get to the reference. I think its pretty good.
You always take your blendering seriously, end result you always come out guns blazing!