Lord Of The Rings - Assets [WIP]
polycounter lvl 8
Hello fellow Polycounters 
, for my first asset (FPS) through a 3D Studio Max -> Zbrush -> Mari pipeline I will be starting on the classic Urukai Sword and hopefully successfully from there continue onto more
Here's something I'm fairly worried about it was either an awkward vertex or 2 triangles, regardless I will tackle it!
I was working on Handle in Zbrush to start and my hand got tired from only using a mouse...So I saved the document and now it's a nice overzoomed picture lol..Will be saving the tool next time, the more you know.
Story: I have a overwhelming desire for anything that is LoTR and I recently have picked up Zbrush brute forcing my way through its Ergonomics and UI. Essentially what I've done is watched a good 15 or so hours on basic interface, tools, and hard surface modeling. Now it's time to have at it with practical experience.
, for my first asset (FPS) through a 3D Studio Max -> Zbrush -> Mari pipeline I will be starting on the classic Urukai Sword and hopefully successfully from there continue onto moreHere's something I'm fairly worried about it was either an awkward vertex or 2 triangles, regardless I will tackle it!
I was working on Handle in Zbrush to start and my hand got tired from only using a mouse...So I saved the document and now it's a nice overzoomed picture lol..Will be saving the tool next time, the more you know.
Story: I have a overwhelming desire for anything that is LoTR and I recently have picked up Zbrush brute forcing my way through its Ergonomics and UI. Essentially what I've done is watched a good 15 or so hours on basic interface, tools, and hard surface modeling. Now it's time to have at it with practical experience.
Replies
Oh wow, picture perfect example, okay thanks! I'll give your technique a try when I get home, each leather strap ring a subtool of its own. I was really missing the leather concept when brushing that heh.
After that I went ahead and started focusing on MichaelElphick's technique towards leather straps around the handle by masking and extracting each one then adding some small amounts of deformation. Not sure how I will go about making them not so obviously clip each other and then after that I'll flatten and fix out their sides. I also took the liberty to attempt to make a chipped/weathered handle and I'm still thinking about how to approach detailing the innards of a wooden handle.
After that I attempted to make a few nicks on the side of the blade and then hpolished all the edges to give a sense of variation, however, I'm not sure how realistic that is :P. And once again I'm not sure how I will be detailing the innards of the blade because it should be a quickly paced beating of the hammer and quick smelting to mass produce the sword so i'd imagine it being very crude and rough.
Once I'm done with the zbrush detailing (a good amount of time still) I plan to take the displacement and normal maps and then paint the diffuse and specularity? in Mari. My Mari background is just like my zbrush background except with a little more time into it so I'm extremely weak on texturing and sculpting but will try my best to make a true finished product!
And once again thanks for the critiques/guidance!
After I was done with my high poly in Zbrush I decimated it to about 2 mil poly's (as that's what my apps usually can handle but this is proving otherwise, however, if I go any lower I feel I'll be losing fairly significant detail that I would want to retain like subtle noise)
Basically my process for making this game ready has been
Base Mesh in 3d Studio Max
Export 2 .obj (1 Handle, 1 Blade)
High Poly Sculpt Zbrush
Export 18 .obj (a grueling process of 16 leather straps and the Handle and Blade and decimating each one of them as batch decimation and batch exporting seems to crash
Retopo each of the 18 .obj's one by one in Topogun
Export each of those one by one in HeadUVlayout and UV them
Export each of those one by one in 3D Studio Max and pack UV's into 1 to 0 square
...
And now I'm stuck as I believe my highpoly version is too high at 2 million polys and Topogun would just crash (as would Max) when I try to generate maps and I'm not sure how I would go about lining the Retopo'd mesh with High Res mesh in Zbrush to properly generate maps (as I feel Zbrush is the only app that would have the ability to survive this mesh)
Any help would be kind and great and on a side note I feel as if when I export or combine meshes into one .obj there's something behind the scene messing with my vertices or normals.. but I'm just not sure at this point I feel above my head in technical stuff!
http://www.livestream.com/vigilnights/video?clipId=pla_69d386b0-0c57-444a-a1e5-4c820a55e9d2&utm_source=lslibrary&utm_medium=ui-thumb
http://www.collectoybles.com.au/catalog/images/lotrswordurukhai.gif
also the wrapping around the hilt, although yes it is a thin cloth material, you should over exaggerate it a bit just for visual interest, because 1, right now your wraps arent even overlapping, and 2, they're barely noticeable at all.
theres no purpose in subdividing a mesh 5 times so that its at 2million polys, just for you to put 1 or 2 little dings, and some slight corner wear that will be lost in the bake anyway. if you're going to make this all beat up.. then beat it up, otherwise itd be fairly safe to stick to max and not have to worry about your scenes crashing because of an unnecessarily dense mesh.
Also, I do still want to bring this piece in and out of Zbrush for the experience and practice and I feel one of the things that made this mess - is my overall bad workflow/improper use of using the various remeshing/decimation tools in zbrush (which led to me giving the sword way too many polys in specific areas and overall destroyed my ability to sculpt on..unless absurdly high iterations of subd)
And lastly I'm a little weary to ding the sword up too much as it's suppose to be fairly uniform equipment but I do want the effect that the sword has been used a fair amount and through various elements. And by that I would like a maximized product in the normal from 3d, as opposed to some photoshop to fake the effect...Maybe I'm just being fairly dumb though heh.
Thanks again for your honesty
@Timspanjer - Thanks I'll be watching this before restarting and may use/pick up a few good workflow ethics and tips
__
Time to restart! And Over exaggerate the components for better baking!
with the advice ya have been getting ya are going in a good direction. i would keep your re-topoed version, and adding details in Zbrush and textureing in it is the way i work ill add a link to my site below with the weapons and shields in Skyrim and a few in UDK.
http://asguardviking.wix.com/langenesjesse
I would not have the straps be a separate mesh i would try to sculpt it on the handle and use the normal and displacement maps to make it pop. But its all up to you.
Let me know of any questions and hope this helps a little. below is something i think may help ya a little.
http://www.digitaltutors.com/11/training.php?pid=107&autoplay=1