In this massive 10+ hour tutorial. I'll cover the entire step-by-step process of Modeling, UV Mapping and Texturing a medium density Mac10 machine gun in 3d Studio Max, UVLayout (Demo) and Photoshop. We'll start out by building our model inside of 3ds Max using a wide variety of modeling tools & techniques, from simple poly modeling, to more advanced spline modeling, as well as a combination of both to create some of the more complex pieces. We'll also look at mesh cleanup and manual optimization before moving onto the UV's.

For the UV's, We'll use many of 3ds Max's built-in mapping tools, as well as the demo version of Headus UVLayout. I'll cover various mapping tools like Flatten, Unfold, Pelt and Relax....We'll also make heavy use of commands like 'break', 'stitch' and 'weld'. For some of the more difficult pieces we'll use the demo version of UVLayout. I'll also cover importing and exporting geometry from Max. With the UV's completed, we'll attach everything together, then organize and manually pack the UV's before moving onto texturing.

Before moving into Photoshop. We'll spend some time adding smoothing groups to any areas of the gun that look fauceted or rough. With the model smoothed out, we'll render out an Ambient Occlusion map using render to texture and MentalRay. We'll also save out a UV template to help with texturing...Once in Photoshop we'll start with the most time consuming and important texture, the Diffuse map. First we'll build up a base paint by combining and masking a few images together. With the base paint complete, we'll make a custom scratch brush and go over the entire texture, manually painting in scratches and damage on all contact surfaces. With the diffuse map finalized, we'll start working on the bump and specular maps using the diffuse as a base. With the maps completed, we'll move back into 3ds Max and assemble our shader. We'll also add a simple light rig and look at using 'Light Tracer' to get basic global illumination using the scanline render.

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