STEP 1: First thing I do is Right click in the Left view and click "Choose background image" and find the image I will be working from. I am going to build the middle part of the gun first so I add a load of vertexs' around the outline and in key places, then I start building up the faces as shown in the next step.

STEP 2: Now using the FACE tool as shown, create a face by clicking 3 points ANTICLOCKWISE, this creates a face with the normals facing you. you should see a grey triangle on your 3d view, if its black select the face and go to the menu up top and FACE-REVERSE VERTEX ORDER this faces it opposite to whichever way that face was facing :) if you create your face right you wont need this but occasionally you get a rogue face that needs flipping. I carry on until I have a solid plane the same shape as the guns middle section.

 

STEP 3: As I was building the faces on the grip I wasn't watching the 3d view and built them all the wrong way :) so now I select all the affected faces and go to Face/Reverse Vertex Order to flip em over to face the right way. Sorted.


STEP 4: Now I selected all the faces and clicked extrude, now in the Front or Top view, I dragged the faces across to create the depth. As you can see there is an open side now (black) which has no faces so we need fill em in, now we could do it by hand, but theres a quicker way.


STEP 5: We select all the side-on faces again and Duplicate it, move it across with "X" restraining so it moves across but not up or down. The whole side will still be facing the wrong way so go to Face/Reverse Vertex Order to flip it so the grey faces are facing outwards as shown. To ADD to your selection of faces use SHIFT Left Click and to minus from your selection use SHIFT Right Click.


STEP 6: Now move the new side in and as close to the other vertexs' so it looks like its joined. Now Select all the vertexs' on that side in the Front or Top view and go to Vertex/Weld Together this should weld them all together, now we have a solid middle section.


STEP 7: Now I started building some of the other parts by creating a boxes and scaling em to size. Also I intend to create the scope and front grip/barrel from cylinders 1 Stack high and 8 slices(sides).



STEP 8: To add detail I selected all the vertexs' in the Clip and scaled them inwards in the Front or Top view as shown, this makes it slightly thinner than the rest of the gun.


STEP 9: I added a couple of cylinders for the Front Grip and Scope. Also I selected the vertexs' on one end of the scope and rotated them slightly as shown to match the picture.


STEP 10: I created a cylinder for the barrel then selected just the end faces by selecting them in the Front View, which also selected a load of others in the model, which I deselected in the Top view using SHIFT-Right Click and dragged selections over them until only the front of the barrel was selected. Then I clicked Extrude and in the Right View I dragged the barrel out twice and then scaled up that end part in the Front view.


STEP 11: I grouped the model into 3 groups, the Scope ends, the Barrel end and the rest of the gun. Now I created a NEW material(1), clicked the box for the map(2) and opened the map I created then selected all the groups and Assigned(3) the material to them all, as you can see the mapping is very wrong :)


STEP 12: Now select just the main Gun group and open up the texture coordinate editor. Select Gun(1) then Left View(2) then remap(3) and you will see the gun faces from the side view. I scaled it down and moved it into position over the map of the side of the gun as shown. Now do the same for the Scope and Barrel but choose Front View before remapping. You may have to close the TCE(texture coordinate editor) and select each group one at a time. Cant remember now :)


STEP 13: As you can see I selected the Scope End group, aligned it over the the Red circle in the Texture coordinate editer and you get a red lens on each end of the Scope. I did the same with the hole in the barrel end.


STEP 14: A few renders with an old Free version of truespace, Its about 400 polys' which is quite acceptable I think, but with a bit more thought it could be reduced considerably. I hope you found this tutorial useful, if you did drop by my forums in the 3DIMENSIONAL section for a chat or any questions you might have or to show off your models, I'd love to see em!!!! CYA's