realistic knife

Joost

update04:
I think I'm going to call this done. Unless anyone has any more feedback?






update03:





update02:

finished baking




update:

Started working on a knife earlier today.
Here's some progress on the high poly:









reference pics( feel free to use these, click on the images for full size):



Still a few little things to fix and add.
Could use some feedback. I'm planning on baking this but I think the edges might be a bit thin, can anyone chip in? Thanks!

silvershrimp

Looks good to me but I'm not really a hardsurface kind of person.
Looks like you've simplified the screws on the body from a star to an allen key shape. Don't think they are as flat, they look more pronounced. You've also made the star setting on the side and the thumb catch on the blade larger than they are and the serrated catch is sticking out more than it should. I think it's a trick of the photo that the belt hook is bent towards one side, on my knife the belt hook is straight. You've also missed the long hole in the belt hook. If it was me, I'd make it precise.

imperator_dk

Edge thickness depends on your texture resolution and the size of the asset in screenspace. A good rule of thumb is if the high poly aliases alot in a game-res viewport in your 3d package at its intended screenspace size, then it will probably alias a lot ingame too (remember to assign appropriate gloss and specular values to the object when evaluation this).

PixelsGenerated

Don't know if you were following this tutorial while making this knife ?

If notyou might be interessed the see it

http://cgi.tutsplus.com/tutorials/next-gen-weapon-creation-part-1-the-high-poly-model--cg-782

Joost

silvershrimp wrote: »

Looks good to me but I'm not really a hardsurface kind of person.
Looks like you've simplified the screws on the body from a star to an allen key shape. Don't think they are as flat, they look more pronounced. You've also made the star setting on the side and the thumb catch on the blade larger than they are and the serrated catch is sticking out more than it should. I think it's a trick of the photo that the belt hook is bent towards one side, on my knife the belt hook is straight. You've also missed the long hole in the belt hook. If it was me, I'd make it precise.

Huge thanks for the feedback! The belt hook actually is bent, I have the knife right here. I'm trying to make it as realistic as possible so I'll remake the crews and fix the serrated edges. oh and I'm still going to add the hole but I'm having some trouble with that.

I'll post an update later this evening.

imperator_dk wrote: »

Edge thickness depends on your texture resolution and the size of the asset in screenspace. A good rule of thumb is if the high poly aliases alot in a game-res viewport in your 3d package at its intended screenspace size, then it will probably alias a lot ingame too (remember to assign appropriate gloss and specular values to the object when evaluation this).

I'll probably use 2k maps for portfolio purposes.
There's not too much aliasing atm so I think it will be fine. Thanks for the help!

PixelsGenerated wrote: »

Don't know if you were following this tutorial while making this knife ?

If notyou might be interessed the see it

http://cgi.tutsplus.com/tutorials/next-gen-weapon-creation-part-1-the-high-poly-model--cg-782

I've seen that one a long time ago and it's a great tutorial. But I'm making this for my portfolio so I don't want to use any tutorials. Thanks though

Joost

Well I think I'm almost done with the high poly.
If anyone can spot any problems please let me know!

Here are some viewport grabs, I'll make some proper high poly renders when I finish this.








I just noticed the belt clip is a bit too close to the edge but I'll fix that.

Fixer

Looking sweet. Wish I had some info to give you but its looking good so far. Cant wait to see the final results.

Joost

Fixer wrote: »

Looking sweet. Wish I had some info to give you but its looking good so far. Cant wait to see the final results.

Thanks! Making low polys is probably my weakest point. Could really use some feedback on this.
I tried to preserve the curvature as much as possible since this is going to be a portfolio piece. It's at about 5.1k tris atm but I'll probably reduce that a bit more. There's probably some n-gons in there still, I haven't checked yet.





Crits would be much appreciated!:thumbup: thanks

billymcguffin

You can definitely cut down on faces where the blade meets the handle. Most of the circular things could probably do with fewer polys.

Joost

this better for the blade?

Not sure if I want to go much lower on the cylinders, I don't want them to be too blocky.

Thanks for the help.

Joost

Just finished baking it. Came out pretty well, there's a few errors if you look closely but nothing major I think. Still need to clean up the AO a bit though.





I forgot my tablet at work so i'll probably take a break tomorrow and start texturing it on monday.
Crits/comments always appreciated!

Bek

komaokc wrote: »

Still need to fix this one, but is this too high poly for a little screw?

You don't need the vert in the center if that hole is planar. There's no reason to cap cylinders with a vertex in the center. Instead just connect the boundary verts. I'm not sure how relevant this is today, but it is still worth a read.

You seem to have a lot of wasted verts on the flat surface of the handle, particularly around the holes for the screws.

Joost

Thanks for the tips! I'll try and clean it up a bit more tomorrow. The vertices around the holes were to avoid thin triangles, but I guess it might be better for performance to have less verts?

Bek

I'm not sure—that's probably something that would vary significantly per engine/project etc. If this is for a portfolio though I'd lean towards less wasted verts.

Joost

Bek wrote: »

I'm not sure—that's probably something that would vary significantly per engine/project etc. If this is for a portfolio though I'd lean towards less wasted verts.

Alright, thanks for the help! Will post an update tomorrow.

Joost

Started blocking in the materials in marmoset. I've still got some weird normal map errors though, does anyone have any idea why? I've got smoothing group splits at uv splits and used xnormal+handplane to bake. Rendering in marmoset tb2.

It's pretty subtle, you might not even see it with proper textures applied. I want to know what's causing this though.




weird shading:



normal map:


Help would be appreciated!

Joost

some texturing progress:

Joost

More progress. still need to add dirt, a bit more edge wear and some gunk on the blade.

billymcguffin

Hey komaokc, looks good so far, though the scratches are a bit too uniform and strong. In the flat sections away from the corners there would probably be fewer scratches.

I have a similar knife, and the way the finish comes off is less like traditional scratches and more like it rubs off. you might want to try setting the scratches to dissolve blending mode due to the noisyness of the texture, but now that I think about it, that would probably look terrible so don't bother.

Do you plan to add a logo or something to the handle to add a bit of interest?

Another thing is that I think the glossiness should be upped across the board, and the DOF should be disabled for WIP shots so we can see the details more clearly.

Looks good so far.

Clark Coots

you mentioned earlier the belt clip is too close to the edge, doesn't look like it was re-positioned to match the reference yet. looking nice though

Joost

Totally forgot about the belt clip, I'll fix that asap!

Thanks for all the feedback, billy!

I'm basing the edgewear on the actual knife which I have here, but I'll do another pass to match it more.
I could add a logo to the side without the belt clip, but the UVs are mirrored so I'd have to either redo the unwrapping+baking+texturing or use a separate texture map for it. I could just add the tribal logo, but that might be a bit clich

billymcguffin

Neato. The only reason I asked about the logo is that as it is now it's not particularly interesting or eye catching. It's just a grey knife.

After looking at your references more closely, I admit that my advice about the scratches was off base. However, it looks to me from the reference that the "rim" edge part of the handle is a smooth metal with black paint, while the sides are some sort of grip tape kind of a thing, whereas your render looks more like the whole thing is metal with a roughish finish.

You never showed the other side of your model; does it have that cool ribbed texture that your reference has? Because that's definitely the most interesting part of the knife to me.

And you do plan on adding dirt and grime right? That'll definitely help as well.

Joost

billymcguffin wrote: »

Neato. The only reason I asked about the logo is that as it is now it's not particularly interesting or eye catching. It's just a grey knife.

After looking at your references more closely, I admit that my advice about the scratches was off base. However, it looks to me from the reference that the "rim" edge part of the handle is a smooth metal with black paint, while the sides are some sort of grip tape kind of a thing, whereas your render looks more like the whole thing is metal with a roughish finish.

You never showed the other side of your model; does it have that cool ribbed texture that your reference has? Because that's definitely the most interesting part of the knife to me.

And you do plan on adding dirt and grime right? That'll definitely help as well.

Yup you're right, this is still a wip. Still need to add a lot.

The handle is all the same material, it's just the lighting that makes it look like different materials. One side of the handle has a ribbed texture and a logo but the other side is just a rough material. I'm not sure if I should stick to my reference 100% or make both sides ribbed to make it more interesting.

I appreciate all your advice, thanks!

Joost

Getting there.





Still need to work on the handle a bit. I tried to add grooves but due to the texture resolution I kept getting a moir

billymcguffin

Looking very cool.

I would suggest lowering the gloss/reflectance on the dirt/blood/rust on the blade. Right now it doesn't read as a different material from the metal to me.

Also I think it would help if you added some more grime around where the clip meets the handle.

Joost

Thanks! I agree, the dirt/grime looks a bit weird. I'll have to tweak the material a bit. And that's a good suggestion. Will have another update tomorrow

Joost

Update:

Think I'm getting close to finishing this now. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know!

billymcguffin

Hey, those oily smudges on the handle look great, they definitely help to break up the monotonous grey.

I'd say maybe try increasing the gloss/spec intensity on those edge scratches as right now they're not catching the highlights I would expect.

enoki

This is coming along very nicely. With how realistic and micro-detailed you're going with this, for me texture work for the metal of the blade doesn't feel quite right just yet when I examine the full size image.

Joost

billymcguffin wrote: »

Hey, those oily smudges on the handle look great, they definitely help to break up the monotonous grey.

I'd say maybe try increasing the gloss/spec intensity on those edge scratches as right now they're not catching the highlights I would expect.

Thanks, you're right about the edge wear, I'll tweak the material a bit.

enoki wrote: »

This is coming along very nicely. With how realistic and micro-detailed you're going with this, for me texture work for the metal of the blade doesn't feel quite right just yet when I examine the full size image.

Thank you!
I agree about the blade. There's too much detail atm. It's supposed to be a smooth titanium with some faint polish lines and really faint smudges.

Joost

I think I'm going to call this done. Unless anyone has any more feedback?

silvershrimp

Came out really nice.

Joost

silvershrimp wrote: »

Came out really nice.

Thanks!