Legion Artifact Weapons

Calvin

I wanted to share some of the artifact weapons I made for World of Warcraft: Legion.  I hope everyone's enjoying the game!  


Bonus warlocks pets

Bigby

Theyre great designs but sadly artifact mechanics are the reason why I hate the expansion. Those wouldve been amazing epics or legendary though. Apocalypse is my favorite thus far.

CJE

Beautiful work Calvin!

Ratchlar

It's nice to know who is behind some of the art in World of Warcraft, I really like the art style of the game and like seeing who worked on what. I'm a beginning 3D artist and am still learning a lot, so I am curious as to how you approached creating these weapons. Did you create a base model in 3Ds max, and then import to Zbrush for the details? How long did it take to make one complete weapon?

Calvin

@Ratchlar
These took 16 - 24 hours each.  I start with a base mesh in maya and then import it into zbrush.  I use zbrush to make a rough model that I then retopo.  For simple designs it's sometimes faster to just do it all in maya, but for complex stuff like skulls it's faster to use zbrush.  I don't do any details or texturing in zbrush; that's all done by hand in 3d-coat.  

radm0bile

Love the hell out of these! Fantastic work! 

Ratchlar

@Calvin
Thanks for the reply! Is 3D coat how you achieved that outline glow effect on some of the weapons such as Scythe of Elune, and the variants of Ashbringer and Blades of the Fallen Prince? I've never used 3D coat before, and don't know much about it besides its basic features. Is Zbrush better at doing retopo than 3D Coat?

Hexadecimal

Gosh, I started leveling a druid just because I liked the Scythe of Elune so much. So fantastic!!

Kogoshi

Absolutely incredible work, I'm currently trying to learn from artists at Blizzard and reverse engineer some of WoW's assets, you wouldn't have any tutorials to share would you? I specifically would love to know how you texture them in 3D Coat  

Mateus

They are all beautiful!
Where are the bows?

Dracowyr

Fantastic work! Enjoying this expansion so far, but I just need to find the time to play!

Calvin

Thanks for the comments, everyone

@Ratchlar
To make the glowly outline I duplicated that part of the mesh, reversed the normals and then did a push modifier in Max.  I haven't retopo'd in zbrush but I use dynamesh and zremesher when I'm doing the sculpting part.  

@Kogoshi
I haven't done any tutorials, but if you're familiar with painting in photoshop you should be able to pick it up pretty quickly.  I used the default circle brush for everything in this thread.  I recommend turning on sharp shape (old style) in the brush settings to make the transfer feel a little more like photoshop.  

Kogoshi

@Calvin  
Thanks for the reply! I've been messing around with 3DCoat and I'm going to use it for my next work   

gfelton

Beautiful work, the textures are fantastic!

AntonioNeves

those details are really nice! 

Jaykrass

Please replace Corrupted ashbringer back to Shattered Ashbringer...

Linko

Very nice  weapons.

I suggest you to try to bake them on a plane and generate a grayscale from the textures (you can do that with Blender Game Tools it's automatic) to paint in overlay on it.

Also i don't understand your inverted normal to do the highlight line of your models, can you post a making of please?

Calvin

@gfelton
@AntonioNeves
Thanks! 

@Linko
@Ratchlar
I made a little tutorial about the glowy stuff.  It's a really simple thing that sounds more complicated than it is.  

SylveriaDreams

Awesome work on Legion! Thanks for sharing your tutorial; I'm going to experiment with this technique on some assets I am making.

Ratchlar

@Calvin thanks for the tutorial!