AWM

Texture Tuesday / AWM

This AWM, short for Arctic Warfare Magnum, was created for an unannounced project back in 2018. The AWM features a detachable single stack removable box magazine which holds five rounds. Jonathan Choi, 3D artist at Ryzin was assigned this project and admits the most challenging aspect was the texturing. He says, “This was a gun I've recognized from many of my favorite games and movies, so I loved being able to work on this. It was a lot of fun to try and get down all the details as accurately as possible. as a whole this weapon was so much fun to work on.”

While researching this gun, Jonathan found that there were a lot of subtleties to certain areas. A lot of small parts were rounded in ways that he didn't notice at a quick glance. “Getting the subtle curves as well as some of the other roundness and more "organic" shapes to flow together and smooth nicely ended up being more of a struggle than I initially anticipated.”

Since this is a very iconic sniper weapon, it was very easy to find clear images online for reference blocking out the main shape and silhouette. Jonathan says, “I found that in my references some of the parts could look slightly different depending on the variant of the weapon so researching specific parts (such as the stock or bolt rather than the weapon as a whole) helped to keep the references I used consistent to what the client wanted. It was also very helpful to look up videos instead of images in order to get reference for some angles of the weapon you are not used to seeing, such as the underside of the bolt. Videos might not give the sharpest image to work off of, but they're great for giving you a look at angles that people don't usually take pictures of.”

We were instructed to give a fairly "clean" look to this weapon so there wasn't any heavy weathering in the texturing. That being said, Jonathan feels like since then he’s improved in his texturing skills and could find areas to add a bit more character to the texturing to show weathering in more specific areas. “I learned a lot while working on this gun. One of the things I took away from working on this project was where to focus my time in optimizing resolution for the geometry. If I were to start this project from scratch, I would definitely be keeping that in mind.”

Artist, Jonathan Choi:
https://www.artstation.com/jonathanchoiart

Art Direction, Alan Van Ryzin
https://www.artstation.com/polygoo