Gun

Our second art test was to create a low poly gun. The constrains were 800 tris, a bit more than what we had for the first test, but the texture sizes were significantly lower. We only had 64x64 for the diffuse, double that for the specular and 256x256px for the normal map. This time the prop had to be cartoony and made to fit the provided concept.

I began with building my gun in separate parts. I managed to follow the shape of the original quite well but ended up with a few more tris than needed.

After I combined it into one object I began optimizing. This is where I made my biggest mistake- I lost my symmetry. For some reason I thought that I could save some tris by doing this weird edge look around the handle which just ruined everything. I realized my mistake too late. That's why I couldn't make my UVs properly and it was quite a mess in the end. 

The texture size was so small it was painful. As a texture artist this hurt a lot because I could only use solid colours and even those appeared blurry and created ugly seams due to the small size. 

(Actual size)

I did the normal map using nDo, it was fun to experiment but again, because of the small size, I couldn't get any decent results. I'm guessing there is some trick to doing textures so small, because I feel like I completely failed with that. 

Still got it done in the end, but it was a nightmare and I'm not pleased with the result. If I get the chance, I'd redo the whole thing.