Phantom Culprit: Weapons

Glock 17 Gen. 4

My chosen weapon was the Glock 17 Generation 4. The Glock 17 is an Austrian made handgun chambered in 9x19mm and is used as the main sidearm for most law enforcements around the world. The biggest reason for choosing this gun apart from meeting my needs for a handgun is that it fits the setting of my game. The Glock 17 being the main handgun used by police and military forces in the UK and my game being based in the UK it made sense, giving the game some authenticity. The Glock 17 is also highly customizable with different attachments, such as torches and laser sights, as well as different grips, slide and colour patterns. 

A Glock 17 Gen 4 (Image by Buds Gun Shop, https://www.budsgunshop.com/catalog/index.php)

The Model

I created the Glock 17 using reference images in Maya 2018. The gun was separated into 4 components to allow animation. These components being the slide, receiver, trigger and magazine. Each component was then  assigned a layer in Maya for organisational reasons.

The four components of my Glock 17, with it's skeleton shown.

Each part was accurately modelled with both reference images and a high detailed airsoft version of a Glock 17. Noticeably features on my model included accurate internals, the double action trigger and 1:1 scale size including under rail and barrel dimensions. Th sights are perfectly aligned too for use in a first person shooter.

My finished model complete with skeleton.

One problem I had with my blueprint reference image was the low quality which lead to some distortion in the image. The caused some parts to look too big/small and had to be manually corrected.

Finishing touches to my model including correcting the faces to all be triangulated to correct shading errors as well as having all the edges manually configured to be either hard or soft edges for smoother lighter on more rounded parts of the gun.

The Animations

To make my Glock come alive in my game it would need animations. The two animations for the gun are the firing animation and the empty gun animation. A reload animation was created for the character but not the gun itself due to time constraints.

The gun in an ideal state at the start of the firing animation.

The gun mid way through the firing animation. Note the shown internals where a bullet casing will eject from in game.

The animation was made by manipulating the skeletons joint location and saving them in key frames in Maya and was recorded at 60fps for a smooth animation. The animation length was also as close to the real cycle time of a Glock 17 which is close to 0.075 seconds.

The Textures

Due to time constraints with this project I didn't have any time to create a detailed texture for the Glock. The model does have a complete set of UV maps including texture maps and a light map.

My Glock 17 with its texture map and UV checking material.

As a solution for having no textures, I created basic materials in Unreal with close to real properties of the type of materials a Glock has in real life. That being a polymer receiver and a metal slide.