Improve metal scratches?

Dagon

I modeled this knife today. The edgeflow is messed up I'm not good at modeling blades I find them very difficult to get right, The handle has so many loops because I planned on making the oval groove but never got around to doing it and though it is easier to make it using floating geometry which I will probably do.

Things I need help with:

edgeflow - At the moment it's pretty messed up.

Blade and Hilt Scratches - How would you paint scratches/wear and tear?


Paint-Over Render (minor scratches when I try and add more it looks blurry



Clay and Wireframe Renders

Count Vader

I would say with scratches, don't be afraid to photo-sample, it'll give you the most realistic look, esp. if it's something fairly linear like a knife where placement/orientation of edgewear can be relatively straight.

Alternately, use a square brush with a slight rotation/size jitter. Paint in rough/sloppy scratches, then add a layear mask to refine.

Dagon

Thank you for the tip on the customized square brush I didn't think of that. I modeled and textured this axe, but I only painted scratches on the edges of the head. Best result I've had yet. It is all painted with brushes except for the wooden handle. My normal map bake is messed up. I used blender to bake it quickly. I get the same result in Xnormal as well. The edges of the normal map have serious issues which happens quite often with almost all models I make. I am still trying to figure out how to fix/avoid it.

Survival Axe -

C86G

Is this tiny pic your reference? If so, have a look at this:

https://www.google.de/search?q=gerber+lmf&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=nALGUpCZN4PTtAbGloHABg&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1920&bih=968#q=gerber+lmf2&tbm=isch

You can get texture example there, too.

Count Vader

If you post an actual high-res image of the normal map it might be easier to identify what the issue could be lol

Right off the bat tho, i'd say check your padding when you bake down the normals (or anything for that matter)

DWalker

The sharpened bit of the axe is much too narrow - it should extend at least to the next segment; in the reference it seems to extend to the segment beyond that.

You seem to have quite a few wasted polygons on the axe head; many of the inner polygons aren't adding anything to the shape, let alone the silhouette.

Dagon

Here is the normal map.


Blender Bake:


Xnormal Bake & Settings:

Count Vader

hmm.. and you use a cage when baking right?

Dagon

Just baked it in Xnormal with a cage and no difference. I'm at a loss as to why it is doing this. On the other hand I set Edge Padding to 4. Which made a significant difference although not perfect, next I will bake it in an exploded form which should solve most of the problems but the edges will probably still be weird despite lowering the edge padding to 4.

Count Vader

Yeaa I'm out of ideas, sorry dude
I never actually use xnormal, i base in the default max Render To Texture thing and never have any issues :S

ImsumDave

You could try adding a chamfer to or supporting edges around edges where there are harsh corners.

Also, if the handle has a clear coat varnish, or is stained and sealed, the specular and gloss should be fairly uniform. If it's unfinished, specular and gloss would still be uniform, but would increase in areas with heavy use (polished where the hands would rest most often).I'd also decrease the contrast of the specular for the metal bits. The ware pattern is a little too homogeneous and the contrast between areas in the specular makes that stick out. You could think about what you can add to break up the material a bit: some paint on the axe head, a grip on the handle, and/or amateur carvings in the wood of the handle.

Dagon

Finalized. It's not perfect but it is the best result I have come up with so far. With every complete model I get a little bit better. I tried to add paint on the axe head particularly in red but it didn't look that great and the axe is pretty much a farmer's axe rather than a fireman's axe which are usually red if I am not mistaken. I also didn't optimize the mesh since I had already textured the whole thing but with my next model I will focus on optimizing, Modelling & Texturing better. Thank you guys for the C&C Greatly appreciated.


Final result -

Mossbros

Most of the Normal bake problems you are getting are from intersecting parts, other than that it's a pretty good normal map. The edges look bad due to the padding.

Explode the model along with the matching high poly and bake out the parts separately and combine them.

As for the scratches, use a very small brush and do about 4 or 5 layers with different types of scratches with varying opacity's.

So you will have light scratches, barely visible scratches, edge scratches, dent scratches and what not. Then you adjust them based upon visual preference.
Keep the scratches on a different layer then copy them over to the specular channel to make them pop out more without having to go 100% white within your diffuse.

Count Vader

I use this texture a lot to sample scratches from: http://cgtextures.com/texview.php?id=98245&PHPSESSID=vtncohqdscap5eqpgh7pl7oef6

You can grab either the yellow or gray part, fill with whatever color and bam instant scratches mask you can use in a ton of ways/places