shameless first page bump/double post, yes yes, I know.
So basically, I made another bolt assembly that wasn't just a generic block of whatever in there. I think it looks great in object/edit mode, but when I render it it looks terrible if the light source is anything but flush with the bolt area because of the shadows. I placed the light source at a level position to take this picture.

So yeah. I'm honestly undecided if that looks better than the last dealy that was in there. If anything it gives you a fairly accurate idea of how little I know about the mechanics that make up the bolt assembly. Oh well. I'll put the old one in for renders but keep this version around for a bit. Off camera, of course.
This is for the future, but at some point I think I'd like to really accurately model a common gun like an M16 and fully animate it from the bullets being loaded in the clip, to the clip being loaded, the body would turn transparent and the mechanisms in the gun would be fully animated. As you can see though this would be pretty loving complicated.
