[FINISHED] Bowie Knife

aclund3

Hi everyone!  Here's another small personal project where I was experimenting with materials and baking.  I was originally inspired by the Man in Black’s knife in Westworld.  As I was working I modified the knife to be more of a 'recently uncovered/discovered and now in heavy use' type of game asset.

Please leave any kind of critical comments and let me know what you think!  Anything you think.  I'm here to learn, and would really appreciate your feedback!

Here's a link to the 3D model on Sketchfab if you'd like to fly around.

Modeled in 3ds Max, baked and textured in Substance Painter, and rendered with Sketchfab.

Seal40k

you did a good job adding dirt to the knife.
However, the sharp area of the blade looks like it has not been used a lot.
I would imagine it to have some small notches from all the cutting over the years and also more scratches on the sharp end.

aclund3

Thanks for the feedback @Seal40k! Much appreciated

The notches and deeper scratches... I totally agree that they would help with the story and age of the blade, but am unsure of the best method for adding that detail. Do you think it could be accomplished through the materials in Substance Painter?  I'm guessing I couldn't get the notches into the silhouette that way, which would be important. So, maybe the proper way is to sculpt those details in Zbrush, rebake and all that?  I guess I'm curious how you might go about putting those in?  

Seal40k

hm...i would probably go for zbrush as well and bake the details into the normal map. I think substance alome will not do the trick here.

aclund3

It took me awhile to dust off my ZBrush abilities, but I think I achieved some nice subtle notch action on the edge of the blade in the end. Forgot about the extra scratches at the front of the blade that @Seal40k also suggested, but I'll keep it in mind for next time  Time to make something new and wonderful.





Please feel free to leave any feedback for next time.  Things I did well, things I need to work on (polycount, cough, cough), things you like, things you hate.  All critique helps

aclund3

Finally got around to doing a proper render of this bowie knife in Marmoset Toolbag 3!  Incredible what a good rendering engine can do

Please feel free to check out the knife on Artstation for more shots and info.





Thanks again to the polycount community for the help on this project!