PMG Tips and Tricks

Tips and tricks

Enjoy yourself
PMG'ing should be fun. The builds that aren't even that good, but were the most fun building are probably the best builds, feeling-wise. So having fun using PMG is very important.

Persistence
You can't become a PMG master in a couple of days. Sure, this guide will be of help, but most of it really depends on yourself. Being persistent is important. You will get stuck on a build, you will forget to save and lose hours of work because you pressed the wrong button or your computer or Flash crashes, and you will have a moment when you don't know how to build something. But none of these things should bring you down if you enjoy PMG'ing. When something bad happens, just take a deep sigh and get back up on your feet. Remember, practice is key.

Patience
Patience just might be the most important of it all. Patience comes in handy when you have to go back and zoom in for the 4th time to get that one shape just right. Patience is needed when a build takes shape ever so slowly. There are countless times when patience is required. Being patient when building will make you build slower, yes, but your build will be much smoother and better looking. In my experience, it's completely worth it. Quality over quantity, I'd say. Having patience really pays off.

Inspiration
Inspiration is like a cat, really. No, I'm not joking. Cats, as well as inspiration, come and go as they please. One moment you can feel like the whole build just comes naturally to you, and sometimes you really need to work hard to get it together.
Sometimes, you really want to PMG, but either don't know what, or you open PMG and you can't get things done. Both are the unpleasant result of a lack of inspiration.

Creativity
Be creative! Build outside your comfort zone sometimes. If you usually rely on shapework, build a gun primarily with parts. Play around with things, extend your horizon. Try out some textures, camouflage, you name it.

Style
You should find yourself a style you're comfortable with. Style in the PMG world consists of color usage, shading/lighting style, part usage and gun design style. You can find some great examples for this in the chapter about PMG Companies. When you have found said style, the best thing to do is stick to it. People will start to recognise you and your work, which is nothing but good for you. Keep in mind though, finding a style that you feel comfortable with doesn't come to you right off the bat. Sometimes it can take weeks, even months.

Stretch yourself
Don't think certain things are outside your reach. You're learning the most if you throw yourself outside your comfort zone, and try to build something you don't think you're ready for yet. This forces you to to be creative and think of new techniques on the fly.

Reverse engineering
There are a lot of recreated parts and weapons out there, and many of the people who made those recreations also share the codes so other people can use them as a sort of preset parts, so to say.  A great way to learn techniques or learn how to accomplish certain shading, is to import those parts or weapons, and take them apart to see how things are made. We call this reverse engineering.

Build at larger sizes
Lets face it; preset size is really small. When you build at larger sizes, building becomes so much easier. It's easier to correctly place shapes, grouping errors have less effect on your build, and you can easier add small details. (This goes for both versions, although .6 doesn't have grouping errors.) This tip goes hand in hand with the next tip:

Building in another PMG window
I personally always have two PMG windows open when I work in 0.7. Lets just say you're building your actual weapon in the first, primary tab. At some point in the build you want to add a custom red dot sight to your weapon. So the best thing to do now, is to switch to your secondary window and build it there at size 400. When finished, group the sight, copy the code and import it in your first window. There you just resize it and move it to the desired location.

Saving the code
It's been said before, but I'll say it again because it's that important. You should save your code at least every 10 minutes, and save when you've finished a certain part of your build that took some time to make. At first it'll probably interrupt your building process, but after a while it'll become a habit and you'll hardly even notice you do it so often.

Saving on your computer
After a good while you probably have made a few dozen creations. I highly recommend making some logical folders to save your creations in. An example of this, is saving your weapons by their type. Shotguns in the shotgun folder, assault rifles in the assault rifle folder, and so on. I myself have it a bit different; since I'm in a handful of companies I have them sorted in that order. Even with folders in folders for different branches, work in progresses, parts, and so on.

Getting stuck
It happens quite often, even to the more skilled members; you simply can't imagine what to do or how to do it for the life of you. But don't worry too much. Got stuck on a certain part of your creation? Just work on a different part of that build, or even work on something else. It'll come back to you with time. Yes, that may take days, sometimes even weeks. But eventually you'll figure it out.

Join a community
Sure, you can build on your own. But getting feedback is incredibly important, and there's no better place to get that than in a community. There are a few communities out there which you can easily join. The members in said communities can give you feedback on your work, which in turn you can use to your advantage and become a better builder.

Participate in a community
By this I don't mean simply uploading your work to a community, but also taking part of the discussion threads, participating in build-offs, tournaments, contests and more. Not only for your own sake, but also to keep the communities alive and active.

Giving feedback yourself
When you have joined a community, take a look at other people their work. Not only can you learn a thing or two by doing so, or can their work greatly inspire you, but when you critically take a look at other people their work, you'll start to do the same with your own. This can only mean you'll become a better builder.

Criticise your own build
Sometimes when building, you've got to take a step back and take a good look at your own build to see if you're heading in the desired direction. There are a few tricks for this. One trick I personally use all the time, is flipping your creation. Vertically works in some situations, but flipping your work horizontally really does the trick. Why, you ask? Well, because when you're building your weapon you're subconsciously getting used to the way it looks. Especially after a long period of working on your weapon, it can look completely different when flipped. And that's when you start noticing certain areas, details or aesthetics that simply look odd. Those are the areas you should work on more to get them right. My theory is that other people, who first see your weapon when it's finished and uploaded, see it quite like you when you see it flipped for the first time. Don't flip it too often though, this will decrease the effect it has on you.
Another one is to literally take a step back, and look at your creation from a distance. This won't help you see if the details are right, but if the general aesthetics of the gun are.

Zooming
Did you know you can zoom in in both versions? (Actually, in every Flash app) Just hit the right mouse button on the desired location, and click on "Zoom in". You can actually do that 5 times, and there's a button to completely zoom out at once. This can be of tremendous help, so I definitely recommend using it a lot.