Lightning Energy Gun

AIM :
With this project my aim was to bring the weapon into Unreal Engine and get familiar with the workflow.
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CONCEPT :
I found an early stage vague concept for this gun on an Unreal Tournament forum from 2014, on digging a little deeper found the refined concept but I was already done with the modeling process and did not want to go back and make a lot of changes.
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PROCESS / LEARNINGS :
So I ended up learning more things in Unreal Engine instead of focusing on the model itself.
- I used UE5's Niagara VFX System for the lightning effects on the barrel of the gun. I learnt the basics of Niagara and I plan to do a Niagara focused project in future.
- I used the free Animation Starter Pack from the UE marketplace and attached my weapon to the mannequin.
- I used Maya and ZBrush for Low and High poly modeling and Textured in Substance Painter.
- As for rendering I experimented with Marmoset, V-ray , UE5 but I was most satisfied with my UE5 renders. Also did some post processing in Photoshop
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In conclusion, I learnt a lot from this project and I it helped me understand the unreal engine pipeline more.