Yeah possibly, but I'm modelling with my unwrap/texture in mind so I would rather have a mesh which is more UV-space efficient than save a couple of hundred tris which is pretty negligible performance-wise, compared to how much textures cost (which considering this is gonna be using like 4+ texture maps at 2048x1024 ... uv efficiency is important).

Also, I'm almost finished lowpoly and inside my budget. Got about 800 tris to model the flashlight attachment, the main version with eotech is done at 9040 tri.

quick stone study, trying to pick up ZBrush for environment texturing:

couple more quick studies/testing alpha's, first one is a bit shit:

You might consider the first 1 shite for what you're currently attempting, but hold onto it. You've made some pretty awesome elephant skin right there, and it might come in handy later on.

more textures for a scene im working on, snow and ice respectively:

Ice looks cool. I would be tempted to make the ice underneath a slightly more saturted blue with higher specular than the frost over the top. This might make it read a little better, at the moment it could look a little like frost covered metal.

The snow looks nice but at the moment it looks too hard/rough, it kind of looks like if I slid on it I'd end up grazing myself. To differentiate it from your ice material perhaps try pushing back the small details in the normal map to make it look softer and use some 1 pixel highlights on the specular to get that snow sparkle from the specular map. Some reference below

L = Snow MASTER

i swear to god, seriously, Zbrush's materials dont do certain textures justice. You could keep the normal and diffuse from what you've made, stick it in max, and it'll end up looking way better. ZB usually lacks contrast and adds too much gloss/ambient to make things rubbery, aside from Fast Shader

still need to tweak the normalmap, but its mostly there. 1024x2048, attachments are going on separate texture sheets.

also, filing cabinet - 512x256 textures:

Could add some name slots on the cabinet to make it more interesting.

That strikes me as Looking fairly low res, considering its a 512x256.

Perhaps try rendering it out without any view port filters on and maybe sharpening the texture.

Assuming this is just a box and not knowing anything about what kind of platform or game type this is for, I think you could add some more shape to it.
Id be tempted to have more loops close to the edges of the cabinet, as if you were going to do a mesh smooth - Once you make it one smoothing group (or maybe 2)
and have a specular map, you'll get a nice highlight capability.

Id also model one of the draws slightly open or ajar.

still needs a lot of detailing, broad strokes are there however:
gonna get to filing cabinets amongst other props in the week




mostly finished update:

Good job I know next to nothing about guns, other than I think they look nice, and I want to kill things with them.

Aesthetically, I know its probably true to life, but the magazine looks a bit silly that hue. Just personal opinion though

I was expecting OD magpuls...

Looks good though. Perfectly accurate. I presume its not quite finished? stock and grip look like they need some light scratching to add some interest, reciever looks great. Looking forward to seeing it with all its silly RAS gubbins... as much as i can look forward to seeing an M4