Project Goals
After completing my first indie release, Blagmoz, I wanted to branch out into the world of 3D games. I’ve always really loved FPS weapon reload animations, for whatever reason, so I decided that making my own would be how I dive into learning 3D. I wanted to create my own model for the gun, and the player’s hands, and I wanted the animation to be satisfying and have a good weight to it.
First Draft
I started by modeling some sci-fi style hands and arms, and then moved on to designing and modeling the weapon. To the right, you can see the first draft of animation after I rigged my models.
It took a lot of mistakes to get to this point, but I learned so much along the way.
Polishing the viewmodel animation
My first draft used procedural materials created in Blender, but I wasn’t completely happy with the results. After a quick trip into Substance Painter, and a careful session of UV unwrapping, I think the models look quite a bit better.
I also took a polishing pass at the animation, adjusting timings and editing the animation curves to make it feel snappier and more interesting.
I spent a lot of time studying references from hyper.
The video to the left is a Blender render using Cycles, and the sound effects were added in post with Ableton Live 11.
