Ah, that makes sense. How easy is it to transition them from Marmoset to Unreal while maintaining the same quality?
There's a good bit of parity between Unreal and Marmoset's material rendering. As far as translucent materials go, those are pretty difficult to get right in Unreal. When I port this baby over to Unreal, I'll be glad to share my translucent materail setup with you!
Judging by your exploded views it seems that the triad of energy coil thingies rotated during operations, presumably to recharge or cool off. Fascinating stuff!
Yes, the energy coils rotated around a central axis. It seems to be inferred that the coils signify different power levels, as the connection points between the copper coils and the housing are red, orange, and yellow, respectively, which could've been tied into the red, orange, and yellow controls/indicator lights on the side. So, pressing the yellow button would've rotated the coils so that the "yellow" coil was selected, and then lighting up the yellow indicator light? I dunno. All speculation, but from what I've read about the original prop, the coil housing did indeed rotate.
Have you thought about rendering crosshairs or targeting scanner images?
When I get it in Unreal, I actually want to render a "video" screen on the monitor that functions as a magnified view of what's ahead of the phaser with a targeting crosshair rendered, yes.
About the power packs, could a user insert three individual phaser power packs if they needed to in an emergency? And how to you eject the panel to in order replace the power pack?
No on the Phaser II power packs being compatible, as those are actually a good bit longer and wouldn't fit into the recessed bay there. The rifle's power pack is actually pretty small. I know that may seem odd, but I was watching
Arena last night, and if those tiny photon mortars can pack the punch they did, I assume the technology contained in this tiny compact power pack can pack a similar punch. Ahh...the future!
As far ejecting the panel, I imagine one of the buttons on the side releases the power pack from the body so that it can be removed. I didn't actually model this mechanism, but that's how it works in my mind
@Donny - Looks wonderful! I particularly like the blending (or joins) between the rounded parts and the body (like the targeting block connecting to the body) or the back side parts to body.
I'm glad you noticed! Some of those curve joins were pretty complex/difficult to get just right, which may have been why I gave up on modeling this all those years ago.
This blended joint was particularly difficult, but I'm glad I persevered and got it right!
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