M60 machine gun

Last Updated on 31/10/2025

M60 machine gun — work still in progress… most of the parts are completed, so I need only to finish textures and make final renders. The model is planned to be used in the rendered animation, so some work needs to be done for proper rendered animation.

Rendering

This 3D model was rendered with the Arnold renderer in different lighting setups (different HDRIs). Now I’m experimenting with the ACEScg color space. Some textures and shaders are still not complete, so it’s a work in progress.

Texturing

Texturing was a bit complicated because a lot of textures (167 files) were needed back from Substance Painter (SP). Also, I need a nondestructive workflow to easily fix objects in 3ds Max, send them to SP, and get back textures.

Another problem was setting a lot of object IDs and Vertex Color and properly exporting them to SP. I wrote a simple MaxScript to export all of this using the .usd format.

To import textures back, I modified Clovis Gay’s script Substance Painter to Vray to adapt it to work with Arnold render and suit my workflow.

This streamlined process has significantly reduced my workload, allowing me to focus more on creative aspects rather than tedious technical details. Additionally, by automating the export and import of assets, I can ensure consistency across projects while maintaining high-quality outputs.

UV

All UVs are done with RizomUV. For I modified Rizom Bridge to support a nondestructive workflow. My version of the bridge does not delete modifiers from objects and uses .obj to send them to RizomUV. Also auto-fixes normals for proper work in RizomUV. This enhancement allows for a smoother transition between modeling and UV layout, ensuring that artists can maintain their original mesh integrity. Additionally, the improved workflow significantly reduces the time spent on reapplying modifications after exporting.

Modeling

Inspiration

When I was a kid, I had a poster of the movie Rambo hanging on my wall. Like a lot of boys at that age, I loved those kinds of movies. A muscular hero with a huge machine gun fighting with his enemies.
At the time I didn’t wonder what kind of weapon the Rambo was holding, but later I learned that the machine gun I often saw in movies was the legendary M60 machine gun.

This machine gun could often be seen in action movies of the 90’s, when the Vietnam War was a popular topic. Below you can see a small overview of movies where the M60 can be found.

Now with my modeling skills, I thought, why not make a model of the M60, which impressed me so much when I was a kid. The task now is to make a model of the visible part of the machine gun, followed by a firing animation.

While creating the 3D model in 3ds Max I watched a lot of videos about how such a machine gun M60 is working, what its modifications are, what ammunition is used, etc. All this helps to create a model as close to the original as possible.

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