The Pistol is a sidearm weapon that can be bought as a replacement for the standard Blaster. While the latter is free and doesn't require ammunition, it suffers from a slow rate of fire and an even slower projectile speed, reducing a user's chances of surviving an alien assault significantly. Especially frontline engineers with a construction kit as their primary "weapon" will be delighted to hear that they can pack a semi-automatic gun with similiar damage output and precision as the standard SMG.
Concept art by alex_bo:
If you are modeling this beauty, you are invited to engrave your name on its side in the form of "O'Dowd & Name Firearms" (O'Dowd being the name of the concept artist).
If you want to, you can have a look at this previous apparoch by Pongoloid, who didn't have the time to finish the model.
For the model itself, let's aim for about 4-6k tris for the polycount, although going lower is desirable and going a little higher is okay. The texture maps we'll need are diffuse, specular, and normal, though you can also make gloss or glow where appropriate. All should be in 2048 squared resolution.
Once you're done with the first-person model, we'll also need a third-person version. This is simply a much less detailed model, since you won't be seeing it up close. Same design, but with way less polygons.
Pistol and sniper rifle aren't too different with regards to requirements, really. They both need reload mechanics and pretty much the same material and level of detail. The main difference is in their importance: The sniper rifle will be an often-wielded core weapon, the pistol is more of a sidearm that you pull out in desperate situations. Thus, if you plan to do both you could start with the pistol and move on to the sniper rifle to apply what you have learned earlier, or, if you only want to do one (and feel confident that it'll turn out great anyway ) you could go directly for the sniper rifle as it's somewhat more important (and a bit more "urgent" to be replaced, too).
PS: Unfortunately the Shrike is still in animation queue as we only have one gavlig, but we didn't forget about it.
I you have the mesh of pistol I can rework the model, pulish some details and creating some pieces weren't done. I say that to take profit to the work he done before.
If you didn't have the model then I would begin again the pistol.
sorry for delaying so much. I am sketching pistol model to learn hardsurface modeling in 3ds max. I have some issues related with functionality of a pistol. I take as reference this video to known more about how a gun works:
With that video in mind, I had to modify a bit the concept displacing the hole to evacuate the bullet shell after shotting as you can see in pictures I attach with this post.
As you can see I am still blocking the model. Don't be afraid, nowadays I have more sparetime to invest in Unvanquished, so I will report more frenquently.