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Accidental Big Progress update
🕑 Added 2023-10-10 10:12:18 +0000 UTCG'Day everyone.
It's been a little bit of an overdue post but It thought it'd be good to get everything on the same page.
So, the L4 Brens went out, to much my own relief, until I saw the next weapon set voted for by you generous patrons -
MilSpec AR15s
There's a lot under that banner, and to some degree it also was intended to bit of a soft redo so some of the existing AR15s. So, to keep the thing on a manageable release scale I decided to identify a core set of ARs to hit, and organise them into a phased release pattern (keeping the thing to something completable in sub year chunks). It roughly ended up falling into the major US AR15 adoption phases -
- 1st Phase being the Early Adoption phase - i.e, the A1 era. Covering things like the XM16E1, XM177E1/E2, that sort of thing
- 2nd Phase being approximately the A2 era (with some overlap). Includes things like the C7A1, Transitional M16A1, 700-series carbines(727,733, etc).
- 3rd Phase being the modernised era of A4s and picatinny rails. Includes C7A2/C8 (and variants), M4A1s in both Block 1 and 2 SOPMOD,
The benefits to the structure are several fold -
- Faster turn around
- Ability to focus down on parts in the short term but remain flexible longterm
- Parts base builds from one iteration to the next- miminises overlap.
The entire chalked out project basically broke down into this list
So, on April 5 work began on phase one. I'll try and break this down succinctly, because it's a lot of ground to cover and it went really fast. Pics incoming, comments as we go.
April 5 - Foundation layed - 20 inch barrel and FSB
April 7 - Into the handguards
April 10 - Slip ring (A1-era Flat profile), Barrel Nut and retention spring.
April 17 - Bolt Carrier Group complete
April 20 - Base "A1" Upper receiver profile established ( it'd be massaged a little later as we went, but good enough for now)
April 21 - Upper receiver interior established. At this point it's worth noting that a lot of the creation of the parts for these were made almost entirely using Boolean tools. It's MUCH faster in Blender than Max ever was, cleaner too, and it allowed for an immense amount of versatility in creation."Iteration? Piece of piss"
April 28 - Lower receiver base complete. From this needed to come at least two different version of the (un-reinforced) A1 Lower receiver, so the shapes necessary for those are left off for the time being.
Worth noting, while the Upper was more or less freehanded or taken from blind measurements, The lower was taken from the actual machining drawings for the milspec A1 lower.
May 4 - Big leaps. Rifle Buffer Tube, E1 stock and receiver pins gone in, as well as some of the parts common to both (the bolt catch and magazine release/latch)
May 8 - A1 stock, pins.
May 10 - Rear sight assembly and rudimentary charging handle. Not shown - in game pre-calibration, to establish the precise offsets. If you saw what I did with the Bren, same deal, but only 2 ranges
May 16 - Completion of the "square sided" charging handle, used with the E1 and earlier prototypes of AR15/M16.
May 17 - With the addition of the 3-prong brake distinctive to the E1, there is now at least 1 model of AR in the set 99% parts complete - from nothing to here in just over a month. Missing sling loops.
May 23 - A1 follows suit, and includes sling loops.
Same day - Displaying some of the differences between the XM16E1 and M16A1 from the rear end.
May 29 - CAR-15 parts library starts coming together. As you can see, there are some parts here that are just modifications of existing ones (FSB, gas tube) and a lot of otherwise unchanged parts shared with the mainline rifles.
May 31 - Remaining carbine parts put in, notably stock.
Same day - Beauty shots of the main rifles.
June 6 - Work has begun on the M203. Barrel is mostly complete, the main body is still being sketched out. The breach-face however is looking mint.
June 7 - M203 parts complete, sans handguard.
June 8 - M203 handguard and heatshield done. As an aside, something every game and mod gets wrong about the thing is it's actually polymer, and not metal. It also has a heatshield on the inside which is visible (and is modeled here). Also done, the sling loop mount needed because the M203 blocks use of the one on the FSB.
This is all of the weapons themselves complete - @91 individual objects.
June 30 - Work begins on an accessories set for the M16s, starting with an ARMS rail. Idea being to replace the one that's currently on all the NIArms carry-handle ARs.
Not seen is the long gap doing UV mapping between these the 8th and now.
July 4- First accessory slot device - the Litton AIM-1/D. Picked, because it's about the earliest you can go in the history of laser devices where it was still weapon-mounted and fielded (during the late 80s/early 90s). Not seen here is the weird kludge to have a generic barrel mount that will let it go on any weapon, which apparently was legit. It will also end up having it's officially supported M16 mount which used the bayonet lug to mount. You'll see.
July 10 - Surefire SF660 WML : An SF6P light, M10 Weaver Mount, and a M14 Barrel Mount. Picked for it's ubiquity.
July 31 - Work on the High-poly meshes to bake down from begins. A lot of what's not shown from the intervening period is the remainder of UV mapping, followed by the creation of LOD Variations of all the objects - lower poly versions to not render at full detail at distance or certain circumstances. 91 objects x 3 (2 new lods) = 270 Objects.
NB - Due to ....outside interference...., records during august were non-existent, resumed in a glut at the end of the month. Will try to keep it as chronological as I can.
Mid-August - On a break from High-poly work , switched over to animation and decided to give the redone ARs a new lick of motion. I also made use of a long- lingering script donated for the C96s for non-empty reloads (actually it's more conditional than that, but for now it's just for non-empty) and am trialing it's application on the weapons.
You can check it out the implementation at - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVsScLDgNBQ
Oh yeah, and there's new X15 drum reloads, so you get the correct effect of using those 50 rounders.
End of August - High-poly bakes are complete.
Here's basically where the fast recap ends and we can start talking about the current task -
Texturing
Holosun HS321G
One of my blender transitional practice models that I put down basically around the baking phase and forgotten to get back to (around the time of the SCAR-H, which it would have been ideal for). Found it again just as I was putting together the bake collages for the M16s, and as a little bit of a warm up for texturing, I picked it up, and got it all the way to completion. Think of it as a little bonus that comes with the M16s.
Above: Arma 3 Screenshot Displaying the Holosun HS321G on a SCAR-H
Barrel-Mounted Accessories
So as a coincidental follow-on, the first actual planned maps I started on were the illumination accessories to go with the phase 1 M16s - the AIM-1/D laser module and Surefire SF660, and associate mounting equipment. The Surefire was pretty straightforward, because for the most part those are very standard torches.
The AIM-1 was a little less so, but gave me the opportunity to flex and texture how beat up they pretty uniformly look, and how worn the various stickers adorning them are. Came out nice, IMO.
CAR-15 Fore-ends
One of the small blessings that I'm thankful for my earlier self was that made each of the Barrels used by the Carbines it's own mesh with their own places on the UV map. If I hadn't I'd have to do multiple versions of the fore-ends, and for the very small amount of difference between them, it would have been 200% not worth the effort. Downside is basically the extra work from those versions compresses onto the one, but that's a small price to pay. ANYWAY, WHY this all matters is specifically the barrels on the carbines are all different -
The XM177E1 has an earlier Colt barrel proof, and a Stellite interior lining (including chamber)
The XM177E2 has the initial Colt proofing for Chrome-line barrels, and the barrel lining to match (though not in the chamber)
Whilst the M16A1 Carbine, or Model 653, comes much later and is finished with the 80s proof marks, and fully chrome-lines interior.
So there's the major differences, and as you can see they're all on display there, but the core parts of the CAR15 fore-end, all basically the same, without much on the way of surprises or neat hidden details . They do however, by my own biased eyes, look pretty good overall.
M16A1 Fore-ends
Unlike the CAR15s where I separated the parts out that had different geometry AND materials, when it came to the rifle fore-ends everything was on one map and needed to be worked into two variations for 1 reason - They are otherwise geometrically identical and the only differences are material composition of several major parts that take up big chunks of the texture. So I built up the two variations, while sharing as much of the material between them as I could to save on doubling up my work. The results speak for themselves.
Once again, different proofs and barrel lining between the XM16E1 and M16A1 are in effect, again it's Stellite and chrome. However, while the E1 is easily pigeonholed into it's fixed production window of the late 60s, I spent a considerable amount of time debating what period the A1 belonged to. The reason being, (to cut a long technical story short,) the A1s have a rolling change list over 15 years of how barrels and various parts were marked/finished. I settled on a late '69-71, which probably won't satisfy everyone, but whatcha gonna do.
Above: Buldozer render - (XM16E1) M16 barrel and FSB, displaying details under the handguards
Above: Buldozer render - (M16A1) M16 fore-end displaying the material definition and overall details. Worth noting compared to the E1 is the different front sight base
Above: Arma 3 Screenshot - M16A1 fore-end completely textured
Above: Arma 3 Screenshot - Two partially textured M16 Rifles, displaying the detail and material differences between the XM16E1 (foreground) and M16A1 (background)- most notable is the fibreglass laminate on the E1 handguard, compared to a more expected polymer on the A1
M203
So, I'm reasonably proud with how well this came together, from modelling all the way through to materials here, as in one regard it sets a long mistaken record straight - The M203 handguard is made of polymer, with an interior aluminum heatshield. Really all I've got here, this being the third M203/M203-derivative I've textured, and the first I think I close to 100% nailed, owing to some extra references I had this time round.
Common Reciever Parts
The map I'm currently finishing off now. This is one of the textures that will have variations (, because thanks XM16E1 a Chrome bolt is a really cool idea), but I'm not quite up to the point where I've completed both.
You can see that it's up to the same standards as the rest so far though.
So that is the project brought up to current as of 2pm today. I'm just under half way through the entire texturing phase, so I expect there's a few more weeks of that before I have anything that you might get your hands on.
If you'd like any of the images seen here in a larger res (because Imgur won't let me have them link to large size versions of themselves) you can find them all in the following 2 imgur albums -
That's it for the mo... OH actually. Some housekeeping -
NIArms has it's own Bluesky account now - I'm not sure the wheels on twitter will stay on much longer at this point,so can find all the freshest daily progress stuff on Bluesky as well should the inevitable happen.
NOW that's it from me. Happy 10th anniversary to Arma 3, and I'll see you all later.
Toadie
