HIGH RESOLUTION EDGE LOOP MODEL:

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This sniper rifle is a "hard surface model" and can be built in Maya. For organic models and characters you want to use ZBrush. You can also use ZBrush "Light" otherwise known as Mudbox (that's sarcasm). Maya 8.0 and above have really great tools for a modeling technique called "Edge Loop" modeling. Maya 2008 has additional greatness which allows you quickly switch between your low and high resolution models. I'll outline what that's all about. Let's talk about edge looping.

Edge Looping

In this technique you're modeling low resolution geometry then smoothing it to create your high resolution geometry. The reason this is called edge loop modeling is because you need a poly "loop" to hold beveled edges so they don't get soft and blobby (more about that below). Edge looping is fast, efficient and works wonders for real-time asset creation because building the high resolution model goes a long way towards creating your low resolution model. You can see that case-in-point here by comparing this geometry:

The image on the right is the "pre-smoothed" edge looped model and the image on the left is smoothed. You can see that by removing a couple "loops"...you have your low resolution game model. Now that's a time saver!

Maya Edge Loop Display

Starting with Maya 2008 edge loop previews have become much more streamlined. In my oppinion, proxy geo and sub-d surfaces are strange and cumbersome by comparison. By simply pressing the 1, 2 and 3 keys you will step you through smooth mesh preview. 1 returns you to normal mode, 2 shows the smooth mesh preview with the low resolution cage and 3 shows you the smooth mesh preview with no cage. Page Up and Page Down will tessellate the mesh more and less. It looks like this:

There are more options for the preview that you can set manually by opening up the attribute editor for the selected asset. Those options look like this:

There's only one thing left to do with this groovy new mode and that's to convert it to polys once you love the way they look. Once you do it, there's no going back so save a copy to be used as your low resolution model.Convert it here:

The Edge Loop Toolbar

Here's the way I have my shelves set up. You can clearly do this however you want. You can ctrl+alt+shift drag these tools to your own shelf.

1. Poly count HUD toggle
2. Grid display toggle
3. Make a box primitive - I actually customize the size and divisions of the primitive to be useful with our scale.
4. Make a cylander primitive - Customize it for our scale.
5. Make a sphere - Customize it for our scale.
6. Select edge loop - great for sliding, deleting, scaling, etc.
7. Select edge ring - great for converting selection to faces for extruding etc. (ctrl+f9, f10, f11, f12 to convert)
8. Select border
9. Slide edge loop - Great for sliding an edge loop along complex topology. It slides the edge loop along the topology.
10. Insert edge loop - your edgelooping mainstay. This is how you insert your "holding edges".
11. Offset edge loop - This is a one click holding edge creater. Adds an edge on each side of the loop.
12. Append polygon - Add faces to a polygon or bridge polygons.
13. Extrude
14. Cut faces - I usually have this set up to open the options box for this tool. It splits selected faces along the specified axis or by dragging freehand.
15. Split face - Great for splitting faces when used in conjunction with the snapping options.
16. Collapse
17. Duplicate face - I usually have this tool set to extract duplicated faces.
18. Combine - Combines poly's into a unified mesh.
19. Transform component - When you really want to tweak the numbers.
20. Triangulate
21. Delete edge / vert - This deletes edges and verts while trying to maintain UV's.
22. Transfer attributes - Awesome tool I use to "re-fit" the low resolution cage to the high resolution asset. The topology does not matter.
23. Merge - I usually have the tolerance set at .001 to make sure only verts that are on top of one another get merged.
24. MY - I have this set to mirror and copy geo on the Y. This is much more efficient than "duplicate > scale on Y > freeze transforms > flip normals > merge verts.
25. MX - I have this set to mirror and copy geo on the X. This is much more efficient than "duplicate > scale on X > freeze transforms > flip normals > merge verts.
26. Make selected edges soft
27. Make selected edges hard

Here is a copy of my edge loop shelf. To use it copy it to your maya/version/prefs/shelves directory (different for XP and Vista).

Edge Loop Shelf

Constructing the Scope

Using these tools lets build a sniper scope! The image below shows three stages. The first stage is the primitive shape, then the low poly model, then the low poly model with holding edges for the high resolution shape.

For the first stage I showed the manipulator because I wanted to mention that ctrl+LMB clicking on any axis constrains the scale or manipulation to the other two. For example, ctrl+RMB clicking on the X will constrain to the Y and Z. This is a simple but powerful modeling tool when used with extrude for banging out shapes.

For stage two, this is just the primitive shape extruded. This is most likely what will turn into your low resolution model. What happens to this shape without holding edges in place? It smoothes all soft and nasty like this:

That's just ugly and it gives me the creeps. That won't make a very good normal map during your surface transfer stage later. Here's where the edge loop toolbar comes in. Using those tools makes inserting, deleting and moving holding edges a snap. Just a couple of notes here. I don't get crazy accurate with holding edges. It is possible to type in values to get exact but but I just take a shot at how big I want my bevels to be. You get good (knowing that it takes three edges to hold a bevel). By RMB clicking once on the asset you can slide your edge to where you want it then let go to "drop" it in place. This works for both insert edge or offset edge. You should be able to bang out holding edges in a matter of seconds / minutes once you get the hang of where they need to go. Your model may start to look busy with edges, but that's okay. Removing those edges (if you choose to do so to create your low poly model) is as easy as creating them. There is a craft to placing these edges and I'll put a couple screenshots of the whole sniper rifle down below so you can check out my decisions.

Here's the scope with holding edges in place. Note that I also inserted a few edges (3 per crease) to quickly add some grooves to indicate some sort of construction. It's faster here than in PhotoShop. For some of these details you can exaggerate them so the occlusion and normal map rock more:

That's all there is to it. The art is in getting fast at placing these edges and locating them to get the shape you want. You will also discover fast ways to split and chip off polys to create new shapes. Also, by turning off "Keep faces together" in the Edit Mesh menu when extruding you can quickly build more complex shapes and add detail. Also note that changing the edge loop insertion method from equal distance to relative will get you some different results. And the final thought...straight vertical extrudes don't work very well even if it's realistic. The normal maps don't read the depth very well and they don't transfer to your low resolution game asset. Whenever possible, slope your bevels just a bit so the detail shows up when you surface transfer. Okay and lastly, in all of this modeling if you find that your low resolution mesh is not matching your high resolution mesh, you can use mesh > transfer attributes with the following options to refit it even if the topology does not match.

Edge Loop Examples:

Here are some examples of this technique so you can see what descisions I made.

Here's what it looks like when all those edges are smoothed!

Next Step - Low Resolution Model and UVs >>

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