Medieval Gear

Xazas

After making a sword and a shield ([thread=131240]see here[/thread]). I found that I really like doing this medieval stuff. The goal is to make at least one complete piece per week to pratice modeling and texturing. I hope I can improve enough to let some of the things I produce be the start of my first portfolio.
The style I aim for is realistic, however I will not focus on historic accuracy nor do I aim for any specific time period or culture and rather do what I like and what I think looks good.

I hope to get some help and feedback from you as this is what I feel helps most on improving my work.

So after sword and shield I gave the two handed axe a go and this is the HP so far:


I decided to go with rather simple shapes and forms for now and will try more complicated stuff later.

LP is already done, next up will be baking and texturing.

KazeoHin

I honestly saw the title and thought you were going to make a MetalGear Solid set in the 1400's. I am dissiapointed that this is not the case but so far your work is awesome, so I'm not even mad.

Xazas

KazeoHin wrote: »

I honestly saw the title and thought you were going to make a MetalGear Solid set in the 1400's. I am dissiapointed that this is not the case but so far your work is awesome, so I'm not even mad.

Oh man that would be so cool! I am sorry to disappoint you but thank you for the nice comment.

Meanwhile I baked it so here is the lowpoly+normalmap with basic diffuse/roughness/metallnes values and I put in an ornament I had in mind for the axe.


However I ran into a slight shading problem. I had this kind of wavy lines pattern showing up before after I added my normalmap but It did not affect me so much. Now I am wondering what that could be? Is that a tangent space issue? Normalmap is baked in Blender, render is from Substance Designer Viewport(Can't afford Toolbag untill next month so I'll have to stick with that.)
I know it's bary visible and maybe I am overthinking this but it keeps bugging me.



Because I don't want to blow up the post more, here are wires, UVs and normalmap:
http://i.imgur.com/tWD5nMk.png
http://i.imgur.com/6sb2wSc.png
http://i.imgur.com/31gsnbF.png

At some point I thought I had to triangulate the LP and I am not sure if it was a good one. And of course I did not make a backup before.

Bek

That shading is from the normal map; since it is image based and controls surface shading — what you should do in this case is reduce the gradients along surfaces by using extra geometry and/or hard edges (by uv seams). The better your lowpoly shading looks without the normal map, the less work the normal map has to do.

Currently your wires are quite odd which is contributing to your bad shading. Get rid of those two vertices on the flat area of the axe that all the outer edges are connected to.

Another thing you can do is bake the normal map at a higher bit depth (16bit) but whether or not that will end up being used in engine or not will determine whether or not it is worth doing. After texturing the slight shading problems might not be noticeable anyway.

Xazas

Thanks for the help Bek, I added ad few vertices and redid the topoloy on the flat part which definitly improved the shading on the area where it goes from the round part into the blade. However the wavy lines are still present, but I hope they won't be noticable any more after texturing.

Are the new wires good as they are? Or are so many vertices wasted there? All in all the model is at 1.4k... I guess that would be ok for a first person game weapon, or is it to much? I know that depends on a lot more.

new wires: http://i.imgur.com/j6VbAIG.png
still wavy lines : http://i.imgur.com/dUaIb48.png

Xazas

Got it textured, critique is very welcome. I haven't done much wood like that before and I am not sure if it looks very good. I know the presentation is not the best, I need to get Toolbag soon.

Xazas

This week it will be a dagger.
It is not a combat weapon, more of a status symbol of an aristocrat. The texture will not include much wear and tear and will be more about getting materials like gold, siver and gems right.

Here is the highpoly I've made:


The empty space at the pommel will be filled with a symbol, which I still have to decide on and bring in later via heightmap/normalmap.

Xazas

I am a bit behind my own shedule and also I am out of ideas what else to do with the dagger. Got it textured so far but I don't know how I could it make look more interesting. Any suggestions? I don't really want to make wear and tear and dirt.
Meanwhile I'm thinking what to do next. Not another weapon for now.
And I finally got Toolbag2.

Xazas

Well, seams like people are not that interested in medieval weapons, or the stuff is just boring :P

I changed my mind about not making another weapon, so here is my initially HP for this week. Next comes sculting wich I will most likely scew horribly up because I suck at sculpting. But hey, that's the challenge and I want to learn something.

atomicguppy

You have some cool stuff here. I think the biggest issue you have right now is material ID. The ax feels plastic almost. Try going in and playing around with your spec map. Also, the scratches on the blade feel a bit like you just copy pasted some scratches randomly. When doing wear and tear try to really think of how the ax is getting used and what that would do to the blade, maybe even vary the length and depths of the scratches.

Overall, pretty good stuff. Keep at it man, this stuff is all about getting tons of practice. I am excited to see this crossbow.

Xazas

Exams are over I finally got time for the important things again.:)

Atomicguppy, thanks for the encouragement and critique. I needed to read a bit more about using the right values for the metal of the axe to realize why it looked like plastic. After adjusting the values I think it looks now more like metal. I know that the scratches are still to uniform, I will work on that later.



Here are the roughness and albedo maps;



I had no time to work on the crossbow any further but I'll do over the next day.

stevston89

Why is your wood glossier than your metal? Also what workflow are you using? Metalness? I would take a look at the gloss/ roughness map again. The metal should be much smoother. Also it's weird the every scratch on the blade is at the same angle/ direction. I would recommend taking a look at this tutorial and looking at this thread.