Modeling in 3dsmax

[von*ferret]

How would you model a barrel of a gun if there are holes in it? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

[Patrick_H]

You could use a boolean intersection to subtract out the holes.

[KoKo5oVaR]

Yeah but a boolean intersection usally make really crappy meshes :/

[Patrick_H]

OK, so how else would you make holes in the side of a gun barrel without using some normal mapped alpha channel texture on the barrel? The only way I could think to do it would be to start with the booleans and then manually clean up the poly faces in that area.

Honestly, though- I would like to hear of a better and faster way.

[skdr]

I'd do it this way.

Make one hole plane, array and bend. I dont know if this is a bad way but hell, I'm just trying to help :-p

[e-freak]

make one unit of the barrel and cut the holes into it - fix it up and then copy and paste it... not sure if this is what skdr described but i think that's the fastest way. after you've added the first copy to the barrel you can look if there's a chance to save polys - then copy both of them together (if you've saved polys) and paste it in again - look if poly saving is possible and so on...

[skdr]

array is the best way to "copy/paste" stuff in this case. Also max's vertex weld modifier is handy too when done with array tool.

[PhilipK]

I guess I'd do it sk's way. If it would only be for the normal map I'd cheat tho with floatings

[von*ferret]

its a solid piece attached to the weapon. I did something similar to you skdr, but I guess i can go back and make it again to see if it would help. If you just do a skylight render its not noticable, however adding any type of light to it other than skylight shows the errors int he model, and sinec I'm going for detail its unacceptable and i can't just do a cheat around it.

[Hourences]

Is this for ingame use or just for a pretty render?

I would personally also follow skdr's method. However if its a render you can use a lot more cuts, preventing you from having those arctifacts.

I would personally use splines to make the basic "cube" with a hole in, like sdkr has with the difference that I would let the cuts run along the lenght of the thing. Once bend the whole thing shouldnt give any probs because for every vertex theres a horziontale line if you get what I mean.