Compound Bow

[late citrus]

Title: Compound Bow
Skin Type: Weapon Skin
Description: I’ve always wanted to make a model for a krunker weapon, so I decided to make a model for a class I feel get’s a lot less love than some others when it comes to skins being made for them. I really do think that the crossbow should get a detailed tradeable remodel as the few remodel’s that crossbow does have are either relic rarity (and therefore smaller/less detailed) or are untradeable. I must say I don’t think I did a very good job. but then again this was the first time I've actually used blender to make like a full model. It was confusing, and even though the texture looks like shit I don't envy anyone UV unwrapping large models. NEVER AGAIN! I SEE SEAMS IN MY SLEEP! I mostly just wanted to share what I’d done and float the idea of a compound bow as a cosmetic skin for the crossbow. Anyways, can provide any/all files if anyone wants to see my shitty, first time ever using blender to properly make a model work lmao

NOTE: For some reason, the little sight aim thingy I added (Which lines up with the user’s crosshair in game) doesn’t show when loaded into the texture viewer. It’s weird, but yeah just FYI

[scarlet sparrow]

holy fire

[dire token]

I like this

[autumn acorn]

Impressive first model! send the files and someone will check

[late citrus]

Thanks 😄

I guess I'll jsut leave it here ha ha. I wonder what sensitive information this'll leak. Knowing me I somehow coded my bank information into this somehow lmao

Uh oh why cry reactions? What did I do????

[foggy vine]

If it's your design and model, you can send it through the specific channel for submitting models in skin-submission

[languid thorn]

you would greately benefit from going and marking sharp edges then shading the entire thing smooth, tbh you could prob get away with just auto shade smooth (just checked, auto shade smooth at 35 degrees was perfect), and it would also be good to learn how to get rid of ngons, there arent super problematic on this specific model, but they can be, there is one that is kinda an issue here because of the curved geometry there

with auto smooth^

[late citrus]

Yeah it was a whole learning experience for me and honestly probably not the way it shouldve been done. A lot of YouTube tutorials that led to new errors and more tutorials ha ha. (Edit: Which is to say for all the errors I found about a hundred more probably slipped through) I'll look into this though, thanks 😊

[languid thorn]

i would recommend going through and seeing if there are doubled vertices and if there are and they are unnecessary just dissolving them

[late citrus]

Ooh ok, that sounds like a lot of tedious work, but Im game for it. Good job I think im about to be bed ridden with nothing to do!

[late citrus]

I had no issue sending it here, but should I find and send it in that channel too?

[dire token]

Crying because you said about coding your bank details 😅

[foggy vine]

Yes

Check server-announcements

[autumn acorn]

Because blitz is lame, later I'll show some of the quick methods to find most of the errors blitz mentions

Actually I can prob just type them, the 2 functions I was going to recommend are selecting all by trait --> number of vertices (or worded something similar) --> greater than 4 (for ngons), and selecting all vertices, m --> merge by distance to remove doubled vertices

Blitz mentions auto smooth at 35 degree works, but if youre truly game to learn then you should get some experience marking sharp edges manually

Oh and blitz alludes that ngons are ok for this particular model, for every model ngons are bad, definitely get in the mindset of working in tris & quads

[late citrus]

Thanks for this description, ill take a look tomorrow. I have no idea what ngons even are 😆

[autumn acorn]

No problem, ngons are just faces that have over 4 vertices/points (polygon.. hexagon... "n"gon)

[late citrus]

Oh my word, that makes so much sense 🤦

[peak thorn]

Looks amazing 🔥

[autumn acorn]

some quick extra comments

please 1st image for seemingly leftover geometry

2nd image looking like the a part was left behind when beveling

3rd is seemingly an unnecessary loop cut, we'll talk more on optimizations after the core issues are solved (but if you'd like to get ahead, you have some inside faces which can be deleted, inside faces are faces that are fully contained in another object, aka faces that will never be visible which is why we dont need them)

[harsh sluice]

Love this!

[late citrus]

Tysm 😄

[late citrus]

Thanks for the feedback, I'll begin looking into this (And the other things you mentioned) now 😄

[late citrus]

Hey, thanks again for all of these helpful pointeers. I went ahead and did most of what you suggested, though I couldn't for the life of me work out all of the smoothing and setting sharp edges stuff. Auto smooth looked fine, but I couldn't work out how to do it manually. On a side note: I'm not sure if skins suggestions is where this sort of continued conversation should live, though I don't really know where else would be appropriate either 😅

[real basin]

As a crossbow main I think this looks pretty good

It looks a little bit thin in some parts but in general it's well-made fs

Upvoted

[late citrus]

Yeah I main crossbow too, just felt like we were getting skipped somewhat often when it came to new skins

[real basin]

True true

[autumn acorn]

as for appropriate place, not sure since there's like no designated spot but if you're fine keeping it here then that's alright with us

as for the model, admittedly I'm not sure what changed but I see your triangle count went down. There's still inside faces, but more importantly, the model is littered with ngons. Now I'm going to tell you the shortcut but I dont want you to only use it, selecting a face and hitting ctrl+t will triangulate it (and hence remove ngons), but this also makes the model an absolute mess to work with and is destructive (not reversable)

[late citrus]

That sounds rather daunting, time to make backups haha. I will say, I did work out some of the stuff since I resent that blend file, like the sharp edges which I'm doing now, as well as a load of texturing stuff. Thanks for your help anyways 😄

[autumn acorn]

sharp edges and texturing I'd recommend to hold off until the topology is set, I'm not going to like force you to do it but for future considerations, your curves have quite a few too many edges (why the model is pushing 4k tris), which also makes correcting topology a bit harder

texturing I know you're familiar with uv packing (thanks for doing your research before hand), but you could also be getting a better uv packing. And of course, by changing the packing... the old texture won't align anymore (and if you change topology you'll need to unwrap again regardless).

Packing is typically done by add-on, blitz and I use uvpackmaster3 but this is paid, there's some free alternatives that will get the job done as well (at least better than default blender)

tl;dr: there's a workflow to minimize wasted effort if any change was to occur

also in your object view if your model is looking glitchy, I believe it's cause of your clip start being at like 0.01m, turning it up should fix

[late citrus]

Ahhh I see, honestly I was just doing all of this to teach myself blender so this is all super useful!

[late citrus]

I wokred that one out by accident ha ha

[autumn acorn]

right, the goal is to learn of course, so I wish to give you everything you would need to know (although a bit daunting I know)

[late citrus]

I'll start working on that geometry stuff tonight or tomorrow then and put a hold on the other stuff. I know it might be a stupid question, but where can I see the count of tris/quads/ngons? 😅

[autumn acorn]

and yes any uncertainty feel free to ask, better earlier than later

[late citrus]

Omfg I've been looking for it for ages and it was right there the entire time haha

[late citrus]

I tried it, but is this really what's preferred over just having 1 large face with more than 3 sides? It looks like a spider's web and it's kinda untidy

[autumn acorn]

to answer the first question: yes, ngons are, and I will stress this heavily, not acceptable (at least if you ask me, if you ask blitz or mooga maybe they're different)

and yea it's untidy, could be cleaned up if the interior bevels didnt have so many cuts (an optimization), but it's not really an issue since it'll all be on the same uv island

[late citrus]

Ok no worries, I wont be using this shortcut too much as per your advice and so am currently looking up how to reduce ngons and internal faces I'll update if/when something substantial happens 🙂

[autumn acorn]

just throwing it out there that you could dissolve some of the edges into quads if you'd like, but this is more of a preference thing than performance (and if you were looking to use tools, since those work best on quads)

[languid thorn]

ive learned that ngons are fine in some cases

i mean ofc just triangulate when done tbh

[autumn acorn]

yes and no

ok since you brought it up I might as well explain

shading: causes issues if it's not flat
animation: will cause some awkward deformations
importing: could cause some issues when importing elsewhere (game engine.. anywhere that isn't a modeling software)
rendering: if used for renders inside blender, shouldn't really be a problem aside from points 1-2

the details aren't important to remember, it's just standard or at least a goal to not have ngons when making game models

[late citrus]

Ugh I've tried and tried and tried to fix this but I have no earthly clue what's going on. The handle of the bow, the curve it had, just like collapses in a really weird way without me noticing and by the time I do I don't know what I've done to cause it or how to undo it. Do you have any idea about it? It's present in the attached blend file if you want to take a look. Ugh, this is stressing me out, I need a break

[autumn acorn]

file with the 1 fix

noticed you have the same issue on the other side, and actually on the whole handle.

On the upside, this is a great example of why ngons cause problems

ok so the handle is just kinda cooked, so I'm gonna show you how to repair the topology in this video

you may notice the poked face is very ugly, it sure is, this is a good sign that there's too many vertices/edges are cut too much. Since the bevels are destructive they can't easily be reversed, but if you wanted to you could manually remove some of the cuts

[late citrus]

Omg thanks for these videos. Im a little tired now as I've been teaching myself this all day, but I'll likely look into this tomorrow.

[autumn acorn]

manually cut down the edges on the handle and shaded it, looks pretty much the same while being like 25% as heavy

if you'd like to see the handle, here

[late citrus]

Amazing, your video was quite fast (youre just a pro haha) so I keep pausing it, but I should be able to replicate it myself. Thanks for the blend, I have something to compare it to

[languid thorn]

cant believe he’s helping you so much he just threw me to the wolves

(i’m lying pan was very helpful)

[hard zenith]

Wow that was an interesting read
Very useful and informative
A thanks from me too!

[harsh sluice]

^^ ❤️

[late citrus]

Thnk-you so much for the tutorial. I couldn't work out some of your movements to be honest, but going off of what you recorded I managed to replicate what you did (Mostly I struggled with the selection stuff, so I ended up just selecting all of the seams as they were all I needed to keep and copying them to a new object, then filled them in and went from there) But yeah, absoloutley massiave help!

[late citrus]

Oh yeah and I found a tool for UV packing which produced this. It certainly looks a lot more efficient, but obviously it still has to deal with all my interior geometry and ngons so it doesn't liik so great right now. The only issue is that it's a standalone program so I have no idea what each bit of the UV is actually pointing to for the most part ha ha

[languid thorn]

oh did pancito not tell you how to get rid of ngons

he's selling

go to select, select by trait, faces by sides

then select these options

though it looks like you've already triangulated everything

i would suggest trying to make some of these parts low poly like the arrow itself

[late citrus]

I haven't, Idk why but the program added those lines, I was just in the process of adding them myself. I know how to select all thefaces with more than 4 sides, I just don't know what to do after that 😆

[late citrus]

I'll look into this, thanks for the suggestion

[languid thorn]

ctrl t to triangulate iirc

[late citrus]

Oh right, yeah I've used that. It just looked so ugly that I presumed there might be another way other than manually doing it lol

[languid thorn]

hmm

theres also a grid fill option if a loop has the correct amount of edges for it

[autumn acorn]

@languid thorn 🙄

[languid thorn]

you’re being sassy today pan

[autumn acorn]

Delete and rebuild manually, bridge edge loops (bridging the gap between 2 disconnected edges), poke face, or triangulate are your options.

It's situational, but you'll likely be doing manual for most

[autumn acorn]

Oh yes, if youre not using substance painter then this may be a hassle to figure out. You could use a uv checker grid to figure it out but may be a hassle if your uv unwrap creates many islands for single shapes

[late citrus]

Yeah well my creating of these lines to break everything up seems to have broken a load of stuff (go figure) :/ It generates the lines over the lines I made, and the lines I made just refuse to be dissolved when I try to dissolve them 😢

[autumn acorn]

Uhhh

The dissolving comment makes me think these are several overlapping faces

[languid thorn]

may we see the blend file perchance

[autumn acorn]

Just to confirm, you did select all vertices, m --> merge by distance at the start yes

[late citrus]

I think it is, it acts really weird but I cant seem to find out

[late citrus]

Sure

[late citrus]

I'll do that now

[late citrus]

Oh, uhhh no

I thought u meant to do it now, I've not rly touched that merge stuff it tends to make everythign disapear

uh oh

[autumn acorn]

Distance at a minimumn it's just to remove doubled vertices

[languid thorn]

yeah there's a few overlapping faces

[late citrus]

I did it now and it removed 51 vertices

[languid thorn]

one thing to note, the half circle doesnt have to be actually connected to the face below

[late citrus]

Ngl I dont know how to not have it connected I was just hollowing everything out using the intersect knife tool

[autumn acorn]

You can have intersecting objects

[languid thorn]

it wouldve saved triangles to have the tube go all the way thru and not connect to the flat face there

[late citrus]

Oh I thought it all needed to be hollow

[languid thorn]

pancito didnt mention but there are some cases where inside faces are fine

like a tube that goes through something completely, it would add more geometry to cut it in half to have less inside faces

[autumn acorn]

Full inside faces are not fine, partial inside faces are fine

[late citrus]

I see

Well uhhh

It's a little late for that

[autumn acorn]

But like partial arent called inside faces and arent picked up by tools

[autumn acorn]

Looking at the img I dont imagine it would be hard to revert if that's your goal

[late citrus]

Yeah but it's all saved so I can't undo 🙁

[autumn acorn]

I meant, manually fixing

I can give it a check soon

[late citrus]

Ok, I think I need to go find out how to remove overlapping faces

[autumn acorn]

You'll have to do it manually, it's pretty easy to find them when you've done a manual uv mark and unwrap as you can select overlap (for the uv) and it'll point them out

Auto unwrap wont pick them up

[late citrus]

Ok

I'm marking this as a tomorrow issue, though if you think of anythign else then it's always welcome! Funny thing is, I had a nicely textured bow with baked in shadows and stuff yesterday, it seems all this good practice stuff made the issue worse ha ha

[late citrus]

Did you remove my squiggly lines on the arrow?

[languid thorn]

yeah

[late citrus]

Rude, they added character smh

😛

[languid thorn]

to make those straight you can select the loop, scale on the x axis by 0

[late citrus]

Thanks, I broke it up because it took up so much space int he texture map, but I might just remove them for the time being anyways

[languid thorn]

another space that would save on geometry is here, you can just pull that red edge down into the body there and remove all the extra geo it takes to connect it

[late citrus]

That's what I did have but then I removed it all because I was removing all the internal faces, though I guess like a 4 internal faces is better than this mess

[languid thorn]

this is also the grid fill i mentioned earlier

[late citrus]

Ohhhh that's so much nicer

Thanks for all these tips, they're so useful!

[languid thorn]

to do that select the loop (provided it has an even number of edges) and click faces then grid fill

[dire token]

Once this is finalised can we keep this thread for future skin creators, i feel like this is full of great examples

[autumn acorn]

just to clarify, left is not considered an inside face, intersecting faces are used all the time for optimization purposes

right is an inside face, the meaning of an inside face is a face/geometry that is never seen, so as you can assume, there's no point of having it

ok the x and check might be confusing now that I look at it lol, the check is indicating that it's an inside face, NOT that you should do it

[late citrus]

My failure: A guide for all blender noobs

[languid thorn]

oh my godddd you're throwing

[dire token]

Not even a failure, more like a learning process ✨️

You got the layout and now you are adjusting it for the better

[late citrus]

Pfft yeah I totally knew that I definitely didn't spend a few hours with the knife tool cutting out every face that intersected or anything lol

But in all seriousness that's really helpful to know

Omfg yay I have a backup from after I follow your steps to fix the handle but before I did all of this hollowing and stuff! Perfect! All these backups I made are proving super helpful

[late citrus]

I have this odd artifact on my handle a couple of the edges from when I used Point are going over areas that should not have geometry and creating extraneous faces. This is extremely minuscule and barely noticable, however is causing weird lighting when I shade smooth the model. I've tried using the face -> Intersect (Knife) tool as I have in previous similar errors however it doesn't seem to work. Is this because it's so small? How should I approach fixing this?

On the handle it appears here, and occurs on both sides

[languid thorn]

its from poking the faxe

[late citrus]

If I remove all those edges and do ctrl+T will it fix the issue?

Idk why I'ma sking and not trying it myself, I'ma wful

I'll try now

Thanks, I dissolved the edges and then made new ones using the knife that look like this, however it still messes up my UV map. I'll look into fixing this, but thanks (ffs I meant to press enter to send this message like 10 minutes ago :/ )

Fixed it

[late citrus]

Ok so, I think I've caught up with most/all of the suggestions that have been made in terms of optimizing my model and am ready to move on to optimizing my UV and recreating my texture map + baked in shadows. Although I've checked the model myself, I wonder if someone could do a quick double-check of the model for me as if I think I'm done then surely I must've missed something by accident.

[dire token]

You needa make a custom sound for this aswell

[late citrus]

I have some foley stuff so I was considering this 👀 xD

[dire token]

👀👀

[late citrus]

Oh it won't be any good, I can assure you that

[dire token]

Nah it'll be great

[late citrus]

Well, I can only try my best... Although considering this is just going to end up being a mod for myself I'm not sure I need to go through so much effort ha ha

Although I'll still try my best, because why not

[dire token]

Can already imagine the pew pew

[late citrus]

xD

[late citrus]

Just replying to this message so it's at the bottom as I'm hesitant to go forward a little 😅

[autumn acorn]

Could also be fixed by moving the middle vertex up

I'd say a grid fill would be more ideal but I dont know if the asymmetry of vertices would make for a good grid fill, could try though

[late citrus]

Hey @autumn acorn and @languid thorn , plus anyone else who commented, I just wanted to thank you for helping me through making this model. You've both been invaluable in your knowledge and more than generous with your time. Honestly, now that it's done I don't know what to do with it. I did initially begin this process to make and submit a skin to be put into the game, though now I think I was being rather naive as I think it's too low quality for me to put into skin-submissions. I guess if anyone wants it, I'll leave the model, texture, and sound here. Anyways, thanks again to all of you. I've had a lot of fun learning and making this compound bow 😄

[foggy vine]

Send in skin submission

[late citrus]

I'll think about it

[dire token]

YOO SOUND IS FIRE

[dire token]

Now you make more skins 😈😈

[peak thorn]

this aint no low quality, u should really add it to skin submissions. its a great model and nice sound, many crossbow players will probably want this

great job

🔥

[late citrus]

Aww tysm, I worked on it for like half a day just using random things I had lying around plus, uhm, "mouth sounds" I guess ha ha

[late citrus]

Ok ok, tomorrow I will, I think I just needed a bit of a confidence boost rly so thanks for that 🙂

[peak thorn]

np! its always nice to try new stuff, and who knows maybe this could be beggining for u to make more skins 👀

u already heard the other skin makers, impressive first model

[late citrus]

Funnily enough back in 2018/early 2019 I used to make mods but I never rly branched out and learnt this stuff. Better late than never!

[peak thorn]

for sure!

[river mist]

howd u make the sound?