I pivoted. Slightly. 

My original goal was to lay down the cables like I have below, but then cover them with a grey fabric which was in all of the references I found for the asset. This turned out to be a very.... unfun point in the project. I'm sure someone else with organic modeling skills could have pulled it off, but given my ability with organics or even cloth sim, I felt it would stick out like a sore thumb. Better just get rid of it entirely. Besides, it still looks cool without it.

Also, zip ties suck.

At this point I was thinking. "Ok, I'm done with the modeling. I can now finish texturing. Whew!" Not so fast there, dude. Let's put on our QA hat and do a once over the ref to see if we missed anyth-... Shit. Yeah, you missed a lot. Can't texture my way out of this one. 

Soooo, on it goes.

The finish line is so close I can taste it!

I started this project exactly 1 year ago today. I expected it to be a 6-month project. HAH! How quaint. Well, here is the progress. All of the major forms are modeled and baked. Currently sitting at 153k tris. I do also have some brackets and bolts baked as well, mostly out of convenience. Next up is to finish out all of the bolts, brackets, hoses, couplings, and tie downs that remain. So maybe 1-2 months left depending on motivation.

I apparently can't relax on my day off like a normal person. Tried to play games and watch TV but I got bored. So I modeled an axis speed reducer for my robot arm instead.

And other progress since my last update: 

I had a very short amount of free time to work on this project over the weekend, but managed to crank out the low, UVs, and a quick bake in about 2 hours. Also, I love Marmoset Toolbag for baking. One click, first try, didn't mess with settings other than resolution and sample size. 

Bake:

Wires:

VS the High poly:

Will do the same thing as last time. Very basic material assignments and then on to the next part.

Adding an addendum to my blog post since apparently I typed too much for ArtStation to handle in the comments. Tobias Simon asked what the pros and cons are for Marmoset Toolbag:

There are 3 major pros that I can see to baking in Marmoset Toolbag over Substance Painter. 

First and foremost is the real-time feedback/adjustment. You can visualize and edit the cage in real-time without creating a custom cage to begin with, though you can use a custom if you choose. I rarely do. But with that real-time editing, it can also quickly update your normal maps after every adjustment without needing to rebake every time. Makes it very easy to get rid of artifacts without going through the whole process. 

Secondly, the skew map. This will get rid of skewed normals due to tangent averages on the low poly mesh. So if you have a hole in the high poly, but just decide to put a flat plane over it in the low with uneven control loops on either side of the hole, you'll get funky looking normals. The skew map lets you "paint" on the mesh directly in the viewport to correct those issues without the need to make a separate subdivided low poly mesh. And much like the cage, you can visualize the affects of the skew map in quick real-time updates. This feature alone is worth every penny.

And lastly, everything about Toolbag baking is centered around improving iteration times. It will auto-load your meshes if it detects a change. If you have auto-bake turned on, it'll do a quick rebake without any user input. Change your models, switch over to Toolbag, and enjoy the glory with none of the work. Also, it's worth noting that Toolbag also uses mesh name grouping much like Painter (as in, no need for manually exploding your meshes). You can also independently alter the cage/skew of each group. 

As for Cons.. um. Honestly, the only thing that I could consider a con that I've experienced so far is it doesn't have the ability to bake the round edge shader stuff, but that is seriously nitpicking for me. 

I hope that answers your questions :)

New week, new part. Moving on to the S-axis. Started with the servo motors first since the part is used twice on this axis (the block on the left side). Will do the big frame next since it'll be easier to place the cables and stuff once that's done.

MeshFusion was kind of a bitch this time. Tons of intersections and it was getting really twitchy. Still managed to get it looking nice, though! The flat cylinders facing out are placement for where the cable plugs will go.

Progress!

Progress is a nice feeling. I've found when doing big projects like this to break it up into parts and bring those parts to completion before moving on to the next. It helps keep the project moving and reduce the risk of boredom. On the flipside, the texturing can become inconsistent over time so doing a base pass at first and a final detail pass at the end all at once is ideal. No point in obsessing over texture details this early in the project.

So this is me throwing basic materials on the model and moving on to the next part.

Was on vacation all last week, but I'm back on the modeling train for this weekend. Just about done with the Base axis. Need to add some cables, but calling the high poly done otherwise.

Almost done with the base now :)

Yay progress! And zip ties!

Soooo, about that last blog post on starting a new gun. Yeah, that didn't happen. A few weeks after posting that we started on a slew of new weapons at work and have been working on those since December. I have had no desire to work on another weapon after all that. 

I figured I should try to finally learn animating and rigging in MODO. I also want to treat this as if it was a project for work. That means going into more modeled detail that I would normally do, with the exception that I wouldn't model the internals. I expect the low poly to be around 300k tris. Maybe more if I include a weld/grip tool. A secondary goal would be to get it in engine and try my hand at VFX/lighting/cinematics.  

Here's the current state of affairs. The blockout is in blue while the in-progress detail pass is in grey:

And here's the reference I'm basing it off of. Might have the big grey cylinder thing in the bottom left be an "if I have the time and feel like it" addition:

I've also decided I won't be messing with the fabric cable wraps. I don't have the time/sanity to learn Marvelous Designer right now. I'll have to come up with some other kind of sheathing that isn't such a pain in the ass. 

Oh, and this will naturally be made primarily with MeshFusion in MODO, because it's the tits. Speaking of which, I also have a couple weapons made entirely with MeshFusion in the upcoming Predator: Hunting Grounds game :)