Twice a month we revisit some of our reader’s favorite posts from throughout the history of Cgtuts+. Today we have a great 4 day 3D Studio Max tutorial by Ben Bolton, focusing on creating a next-gen weapon. This tutorial was originally published back in August of 2009, and proved to be very popular with our Max users. So let’s revisit it!

Creating weaponry effectively in a next-gen workflow requires detailed knowledge of a variety of very specific skills and tools. In this, the first tutorial in the next-gen knife creation series, you will learn to build a high-poly knife model using 3ds Max.

Efficiency is stressed as we discuss time-saving ways to employ supporting edges and floating geometry, and basic concepts such as symmetric modeling are reinforced. The final result will be a robust high-poly model, suitable for baking out normal and occlusion maps, that will later be applied to the in-game model.

Please note that, although we will be using 3ds Max to create the high-poly model, the theories and techniques discussed can be applied to any 3d application that supports subdivision modeling.

View Tutorial

Note: click the 'Monitor' icon to view tutorial in full-screen HD.