The Cartograph // 1873 Winchester

“How often the lone-dweller anticipates some sign, this Measurer’s mercy — must always must — mind-caring, along the ocean’s windings, stirring rime-chill seas, hands as oars many long whiles, treading the tracks of exile — the way of the world an open book always.”
~ The Wanderer by Apollon Maykov
-
It's been a short little while, but here we are – another project wrapped up! I made a Winchester 1873 rifle with some personal flavor, loosely inspired by the phenomenal skins seen in Hunt: Showdown. As a starting point for the weapon, I went for a different approach by settling on a setting and backstory for some character - in this case a cartographer hellbent on mapping out the stars zooming across the heavenly plains - and then basing a personalized weapon on that character. Thus, this small personal project has earned the in-production name The Cartograph, which kinda stuck with me - so the final piece bears the same name. I think for future projects, I'll continue adding these small project-special flavors with logos and such, it kinda makes freetime projects feel much more sound and solid! :)
-
The 1873 was Winchester's first centrefire rifle, manufactured from 1873 to 1919, with more than 541,000 produced by 1900. A favourite on the frontier since its debut, this underlever rifle was produced in a number of variants, from short trapper models and carbines to short and extra-long barrel rifles. You can recognize the trapper variant by its distinct saddle ring on the left-hand side of the rifle. It was originally chambered for the .44-40 cartridge, which was the first centrefire cartridge and which became immensely popular. The 1873 was later produced in .38-40 and .32-2.
-
Modelled in Blender
Textured with Substance Painter
Rendered using Cycles
-
The rifle comes in at a total of 16,576 vertices and sits at an average Texel Density of 104 px/cm.