Building Alliances: Whale Research and Harpoon Gun Modelling

 Building Alliances: Whale Research

Today it was me and Katie in. As the director, I wanted to go ahead and implement some feedback we had received last week. I made the decision to research whale types to make something more accurate to a theoretical flooded Nottingham, and I asked Katie to look into types of coral found around the United Kingdom.

The first thing I looked into was the website Whale and Dolphin Conservation for the information surrounding the whale species found in UK. The website states that Fin whales "are seen in deeper waters stretching from Scotland down to the western part of the English Channel" and that they are the "second largest species of whale". One of our original plans for the whale creature was a sense of scale, so this checked out perfectly. Another thing I might look at later for another creature design is the bottlenose dolphin, which can be found in some areas of Wales and Scotland.

Looking at the website NOAA FISHERIES, I found out that Fin Whales can range between the lengths of 75 to 85 feet, and one of the main threats to their existence is climate change.

I think this an appropriate species of whale to design since it fits thematically. Also making an undead whale would still with the same themes, and would add to the impact of seeing a creature like this in a game that does show the consequences of global warming for the future.

Harpoon Gun Modelling

I wanted to design a harpoon gun for my character I designed before since they need to be able to defend themselves within the setting, so I started looking at shops in Nottingham that sell firearms, so that I could have a better understanding of what this character would have access to in the apocalypse.

After looking at several shops and websites dedicated to this, I found that bolt-action rifles tend to be the most popular type of firearm in these shops. I was going to start modelling this straight away since I prefer to work in 3D for weapons to start off with, and I was going to use a specific weapon to base my work off of. One weapon design that I particularly liked for what I was working on was the harpoon gun from Gloomwood (New Blood Interactive 2022), since I could use this and modernise it to fit the setting better. I also plan to use Blender (Blender Foundation 2025) to model this gun.

I started off by blocking out the parts of the gun, starting with the body and the handle. Since last year I have made my workflow much more efficient, using the cut tool to sort geometry as I go so that I don't have to stop and change a lot of things at once later in the process.

Here I halved the object and applied a mirror modifier, which is something I used a lot for this model. This helped me make the gun symmetrical easily, as all I had to do was model one side.

Here I just used the extrude tool on the model to begin forming the trigger guard. I debated whether I wanted to actually have one since it'd make it look more apocalyptic, but I decided to add one because it would look too simple otherwise.

Here I removed the faces. I did this because I was going to connect the extruded guard to the handle by merging the vertices together.

I merged the vertices here, and made all the geometry manifold.

After that, I started bevelling the guard to make it look better. I didn't go overboard yet as I still wanted to keep a lower poly count for now, as well as not being sure what I wanted to add to the gun yet.

Here I made the trigger by extruding and merging the vertices to make it converge at one point.

After this I used a combination of the loop cut tool and the knife tool to create a grip.

After this, I bevelled the guard, as well as used the knife tool to add more form to the gun.

Here I made some final adjustments to the grip.

I then added a new cylinder, made the subdivision count lower, and positioned it where I wanted the barrel to be.

I extruded the barrel, and whilst not moving it, adjusted the size to create smaller extrusions on the end of the barrel.

I used the loop cut tool to add gaps which I was going to extrude.

I extruded the gaps here, making the barrel look more like a barrel.

++

Here I temporarily applied the mirror modifier so that I could use the Boolean modifier. I did a difference modifier, of subtracting the space of the barrel from the space of the body so that we are left with an empty space and no internal faces. After adjusting it slightly, I applied it.

After applying it, this is what it looks like. I then reapplied the mirror modifier using the same technique as before to mirror the two sides, and then I did some tweaking with the knife tool to make the topology better.

I then used the knife tool and by locking it to the X axis, I cut it straight across to make room for an extrusion.

I then made the barrel visible again, so that I could check how the model looked, and also because I was using it as reference for the tank I was making next.

Using a simple cylinder, the extrude tool and the size tool, I created the tank and moved it to where I wanted it.

Using the same Boolean technique, I temporarily applied the mirror modifier to the model, and then applied a difference modifier.

Here is what it looks like when reapplying the mirror modifier. Here I am halving the model so that it mirrors the side that remains.

I fixed the topology again, and was left with this for the base.

I did the same extrusion method using the knife tool first to create these faces at the bottom.

Going back to the barrel after making everything visible again, I started modelling the sight of the gun by extruding these top faces. I didn't apply a mirror modifier here as the way I was planning to join the back part of the sight together would result in internal faces with it.

Here I extruded the back part of the sight, and then began merging the vertices at the other side. This results in one part of the sight at the top, making it look like a railing has been welded onto the gun.

I then used the knife tool and the extrude tool to create this gap in between, and used the size tool at the other part of the top to create the sights and make them functional.

Here I just created two smaller cylinders and a larger one. The large one was going to be the gauge on the side of the gun, and the smaller ones were going to be used as holes for cables feeding in from the back of the gun, so I used a Boolean here again to make the holes. At this point, I was done with the mirror modifier, So I didn't reapply it as most of the detail would be on the direction facing the player (The gun will be on the right side, so the details should be on the left side).

To create the cables feeding in from the back of the gun, I started by creating a NURB path from scratch, and adjusting the vertices to create this line for the cable to follow.

I then went into the settings of the path, adjusting the depth to create the actual cable. After adjusting the vertices again, I decided it looked good, so I converted it to a mesh.

I did the same thing for another cable here, adjusting the depth, and making sure neither of the cables  collide with each other.

With this being done, I moved onto modelling the harpoon. I selected a cylinder, positioned it in the barrel, and pressed slash to isolate the object so I could see the entire object as I model it.

Here I tried the Decimate modifier to create less faces on the object.

This didn't work, so I removed it and created a new cylinder with less faces to start with. For this I picked only 5 subdivisions for the cylinder, as most of the harpoon would not be visible most of the time, and it is better for the efficiency of the model.

For the arrow head I used a combination of the extrude and size tools, and then merged the vertices to create the sharp tip.

I wanted to make a wire wrap go around the front portion of the gun. For this, I opted to use the same method I used for the wires coming out from the base. I used a Curve> Path and changed the depth to make it look like an object with gravity affecting it.

I then converted it into a normal mesh, removed half of it, and applied a mirror modifier with clipping.

Now happy with how the model looked, I moved onto UV mapping. because I used separate objects for the model overall, I could assign different materials to the barrel and the base easily. I started with the barrel.

For this, I made a new material, and set the surface type to Metallic BSDF for now. I then made the template for the UV map for now. I made the resolution 2048 x 1024 to give me ample room to work with for the textures. I then plugged the image in to serve as a temporary base to UV map onto to make sure the unwrapping isn't skewed.

This is what my finished UV map looked like for the barrel. I then exported the UV layout in the UV menu, and drew along the guidelines I set for myself.

After drawing along the guidelines, bringing the texture back into Blender and adjusting the material somewhat to get what I was going for, I ended up with this. I was happy with it, so I moved onto the base.

To start off with, I assigned the same material to the base for efficiency, and since I organised the UV map for the barrel, I had a lot of free space on the texture base.

By overlapping the textures for one part of the gun, we can make both sides identical AND save space, which is great for the overall speed and efficiency of this workflow.

With this done, I did the same process of exporting the UV layout and drawing within it, and then bringing it back into Blender.

For the wires and wraps at the front, I planned to use mostly use the same flat textures, so here I used the projection from view method as there would be no loss of quality and it would speed things up massively.

With this done, I moved onto the other objects. There was nothing different used here in terms of techniques, so I was done pretty quickly.

With this model complete, I moved onto creating renders of it. I also uploaded it to view here. Alternatively, I have it embed in a separate blogger post.

I next plan to move onto modelling a building in Nottingham to fulfil the list of work I set for myself in the list of group work as a director.

References:

Blender Foundation, 2025. Blender (Application). Steam. Available at: https://store.steampowered.com/app/365670/Blender/ (Accessed 25/01/25)

New Blood Interactive, 2022. Gloomwood (Application). Steam. Available at: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1150760/Gloomwood/ (Accessed  25/01/25)

NOAA Fisheries. Fin Whale (Website). Available at: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/fin-whale

https://uk.whales.org/whales-dolphins/which-whales-and-dolphins-live-in-the-uk/ (Accessed  25/01/25)