As I started modeling the SOCOM Pistol I thought about how the real gun is assembled and the motion of it's mechanisms. At this point I decided I would break the entire model up into the following constituent parts:

• Barrel: silencer, slide and barrel
• Lower Receiver: grip, trigger, safety, clip and clip release
• LAM Unit: dials, button and switch

By having separate pieces we can animate the gun more realistically by showing the slide kick back after each round is fired, screwing on and off the silencer and dropping the clip out to reload.

Because the silencer and LAMunit were separate models that tied together as accessories that would only be used by the player sometimes, I put them together on their own texture sheet. The texture maps for the accessories consists of three images that are each 1024x1024 for the diffuse, specular and normals.

The rest of the pistol is similarly laid out with a 1024x512 map for the diffuse, specular and normals respectively. To create these textures I used a combination of software including Maya, Photoshop and various plugins.

A few closeup shots of the accessories and their wireframes. As mentioned above I decided to separate these items to help facilitate higher fidelity animation and texture optimization...

• LAMunit: button, switch and dials can be actuated
• Clip: ammo clip can be removed and reinserted
• Silencer: can be screwed on and off barrel

These detail shots really show how much was achieved with the normal maps. Very few details are actually modeled into the final mesh allowing the texture to do the heavy lifting.

A final look at the SOCOM Pistol and how the slide moves back exposing the barrel and guide rod. Once again you can see the extra level of detail achieved with few polygons by leveraging the normal map. The trigger, safety, clip release and hammer can all be articulated independently for heightened realism.