KYLE HANSELMAN | ROTATOR PISTOLS

rotator pistols

technology used

Blender

Substance Painter

Adobe Photoshop

final renders

❮

The rotator pistol rendered in Blender in a three quarters view

The rotator pistol rendered in Blender as a pair of pistols

The rotator pistol rendered in Blender with the magazine removed, displaying the cartidges

The rotator pistol rendered in Blender with the magazine removed, displaying an empty magazine and a full magazine

❯

Above are Blender renders of the final product. This firearm was inspired by my novel: Cities Above the Clouds. They're similar to the weapons carried by the protagonist Mikayel Goenvelt.

For this project, I wanted to teach myself Blender while working on something I'm familiar with - firearms. I learned many of Blender's tools and features and it has become my daily driver since.

sketch and blockout

❮

A sketch dipicting the rotator pistol from the side

The initial blockout of shapes for the rotator pistol in blender depicted from a three quarters view

The initial blockout of shapes for the rotator pistol in blender depicted from the rear

The initial blockout of shapes for the rotator pistol in blender depicted with undercarriage details

The initial blockout of shapes for the rotator pistol in blender depicted from above

The initial blockout of shapes for the rotator pistol in blender depicting the magazine and cartridges

❯

I have concepted this firearm several times for my novel, but felt in necessary to refine the sketch for this process. Then, I modeled the initial blockout in Blender based on the sketch, matching the proportions and prominent details.

geometry

❮

A render of the rotator pistol with a wireframe and ambient occlusion to display the geometry from the back

A screenshot of the rotator pistol in Blender to show the geometric complexity of the high poly from the side

A screenshot of the rotator pistol in Blender to show the geometric complexity of the high poly from the back

A screenshot of the rotator pistol in Blender to show the geometric complexity of the high poly from the front

❯

With the blockout in place, I moved to refining the shapes and details while focusing on clean, simple geometry. I landed at just over 13k tris.

I went with a high poly bake on this project, and used that to massively improve the detail of the geometry adding rivets, plates, flutes, etc.

textures

❮

A blender screenshot of the rotator pistol displaying the color id mapping to destiguish different materials

A texture map of the rotator pistol diplaying the albedo or base color

A texture map of the rotator pistol displaying the normal or bump map

A texture map of the rotator pistol displaying the ambient occulsion, roughness, and metallic maps compressed into a single image via isolated RGB channels

A texture map of the rotator pistol displaying the UV packing

❯

For this project, I wanted to try using Color IDs to help me isolate different materials. The technique was really intuitive and helped make the texturing process faster and cleaner.

I also wanted to improve optimization by packing my AO, roughness, and metallic maps into a single texture by isolating each to a single RGB channel.