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Simplified a few elements in the hope it will 
a,take less time 
b, bake better. 
Plus it should feel like it is designed this way rather than thrown together. I am also thinking maybe a bone handle rather than Amber is it would read better and be less complex from a construction and shader perspective.

 
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A bit further on with the high res. The ref is conflicting and the more you look at this gun you realise it is a bit thrown together so I have decided to change the design as I go to finesse it a bit more.

 
My New job means I have had to go back to using 3DsMax which I have not used for about 9 years. It is pretty painful but I am ready to try and make something. I decided to make a weapon to fire up some hard surface modelling and High to low poly baking. Not sure how closely I will stick to the original as I am really only testing out Max in the way i think i will use it day to day.

here is what i am using as reference. Its the PKD Blaster from Bladerunner
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Here is where I am up to with the High res, Still plenty to do but i am getting quicker.

 
Pushed up the brightness on the lights to get more over spill onto the pavement (closer to the toy shop colours also). Changed the camera to something closer to the original. I also put a basic sky in.
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My current blockout in UDK, i have started working up the diner exterior and decidde to drop the modular building approach. It seemed like overkill and more work than needed and time is against me. I have left this pretty dark as i want to add more artificial lighting to fill the scene. I changed the DD light to accent the detail in the diner more. Added a tiny bit of DOF and also hieght fog. Still lots to do though. I need to cap some stuff  because I am getting light bleeding out where i dont want it.
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This is my first very basic lighting test. I wanted to try out postprocessing with Look up tables (LUT) to break up the linear nature of the lighting and make it something more painterly. Tried to make the light bright in the brightest areas but low contrast in the shadows. The light has a redish fall off in the brightest areas and green in the darker parts.

This was textured grey in udk and i have painted over  the meshes  to get an idea of what it should look like with colour applied. The modular sections lightmaps are a bit screwed and i have made the Diner bigger as well. I am thinking of going back to a non modular solution at least for the diner. It was a nice idea but i dont want to wrangle with it for no good reason.

The top is the angle it will be viewed from. The bottom is the view similar to the NightHawks painting (for ref).
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Hooked up the red channel to world offset. When you paint on the dirt it sinks into the ground.
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This is for cataloging puropses only. Simple example of vertex colour being used to blend between two textures in UDK
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This is my first Blockout. Tried to get a good fit to the original scene but with a New York 1940s feel based on the ref I collected. This is for composition purposes mainly
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