United3dArtists Archive

It's been around a year since I started on the LVASL Mk1 concept over at the truespace forums. Since then I'd had several military obligations, modelers block and family commitments to attend to and now I'm back on track. After running into a few frustrations on the concept design stage of the armor I switched gears into a more productive area: the weapons. This rifle is in the early stage and represents about half an hour of development. For those wanting to know a little background on the armored suit this rifle is designed to integrate with go here: http://forums1.caligari.com/truespace/s ... ight=lvasl
The Mission Adaptable Vacuum-capable Reinforced Carbine, or Maverick rifle, is a weapon designed for use across a variety of environments and mission parameters. What makes it so adaptable is the modular receiver. It can be configured for a variety of roles such as marksman, automatic rifleman, grenadier and rifleman because of the ability to not only switch between ammunition calibers, but also between projectile, rail-gun type configuration and projected energy. The rifle can only be in one mode at a time and changing between requires the user to switch out the barrel, firing mechanism and magazine/ammunition source. This takes about five minutes, not counting the time the rifle must cool if under heavy use. The rifle stock is reinforced to absorb the high-g and high-speed impacts that one could encounter in low and zero gravity environments and is effective as a melee weapon. The rifle is constructed of a special alloy that is resistant to the cold temperatures of vacuum and coated with a special lamination that prevents rapid expansion of the metal due to exposure to the light of a star, the user's own propulsion system, or any other heat-source encountered such as an on-board fire. The rifle is small enough to be used in the confines of a space-faring vessel or station, but long enough to be able to engage targets in a gravity and atmosphere rich environment out to 1,000 meters against point targets using propellant fired projectiles. Sufficient testing has not been conducted to determine the range of the projected energy and rail-gun type configurations, but suffice to say that if the user can see the target, he or she can expect to achieve a hit when applying the proper fundamentals of marksmanship. Accuracy and range in vacuum are dependent on range and proximity to gravity wells, as well as the type of ammunition being fired. The rifle can be equipped with a variety of optics due to the rail interface system along the top of the receiver and various accessories can be attached to the handguards using the same system. Items to be issued with the Maverick are a 1-4x optic for riflemen, a 1-50x optic for vacuum and marksman, a 1-4x for machinegunners, and a 1-4x for grenadiers; 2x extend able and removable bayonets to be mounted to either side of the barrel, and at least 360 rounds of ammunition per rifle with enough magazines to hold it all. Magazine capacity depends on the type and size of ammunition required by the rifle's current configuration. When configured in the projected energy and rail-gun modes the rifle draws power from the suit, or a carried field rechargeable power pack. Users must be careful to not let the suit batteries drain as they also power on-board life support and targeting systems.

Great to have you back Ghost--Scout!
All your work has been educational and enjoyable so
I'll be watching you work this WIP.

I've done some more work on the rifle and an accessory. This update includes the sighting rail adapter grooves, as well as some of the same rail adapter grooves on the handguard facing the camera. Additionally I've made three blades and set them next to the rifle. All have the American styled Tanto blade; the one closest to the rifle was given the Organic Carving texture supplied with the program, cubic uv projection and some minor tweaking of the texture itself. The middle blade is the same blade with just a basic gunmetal gray color. Both of those blades are slightly curved. The blade all the way to the right is shorter and has a straight cutting edge. I'm debating adding in serrations; I know based on personal combat deployment experience in the Corps that serrations are very valuable and can cut through things easily that straight blades cannot. The American style Tanto shape was picked because of the fiercely reinforced tip of the blade, where all the force will be focused so the knife has outstanding penetration capabilities. As far as this "series" is concerned it would be useful to have if one had to resort to it to penetrate armor or other materials in vacuum or otherwise. I have not designed the guard, grip or pommel yet, but some utilitarian designs come to mind. I also reshaped the stock a little bit and will probably add a check-pad, adjustable for height and a butt-plate, adjustable for the length of pull for different sized shooters. Making this thing is so easy when I know so much about firearms! I made the images 1024x768 so that you can open them up and get a closer look.

I was playing around with SDS trying to learn some of the new features and started to learn how to get SDS to change the shape of an object on the fly by adding edge loops...a few of those applied to my rifle, exported using luv, imported into Carrara Pro 6, given the Steel Shader and placed in the moon terrain makes it look like this:
I will be working on it later this week to help give it some soul. I will also start to differentiate what the three different variants will look like and concept draw the optics.