Katana Grip wrapping help

skyline5gtr

Hey guys, im having a hard time thinking of how to tackle the fabric grip. It wraps around the handle and cris-crossed. Best thing i cant think of is to make a spline and do it manually around the grip.

iconoplast

You could do that pretty easily in the texture. If you want geometry to support it, think of the fabric itself as the main piece and indent the space that isn't covered by it.

skyline5gtr

I dont want the geometry , i wanted to model it HP so more from a practice POV. maybe i could just use NDO

stevston89

It's actually really easy to do. Just make one of the sections and duplicate it down. Something like this:



Of course this isn't a perfect example just a quick mock up.

skyline5gtr

what a unique approach i didnt even think about that, the only issue is that the grip is not straight so i think id use the bend modify

Neox

so more from a practice POV

i'm kinda missing your practice here, next time you should try yourself and fail and then let other show you how they would tackle it

skyline5gtr

I have, and thats why i asked. Been stuck on the shape for a while. When i said i wanted the practice, i mean i wanted to learn how to do the shape cause i could not figure it out

genwu

To capitalize on what Neox said, I really don't think you've tried and failed enough. That's really the best way to learn anything. Anyway, a 2 second google search gave me this http://cgi.tutsplus.com/tutorials/model-texture-and-render-the-legendary-katana-in-maya-part-1--cg-2631

Which is literally what you're doing...step 80 specifically...Goodluck

skyline5gtr

genwu wrote: »

To capitalize on what Neox said, I really don't think you've tried and failed enough. That's really the best way to learn anything. Anyway, a 2 second google search gave me this http://cgi.tutsplus.com/tutorials/model-texture-and-render-the-legendary-katana-in-maya-part-1--cg-2631

Which is literally what you're doing...step 80 specifically...Goodluck

Yea i found that yesterday, but they dont do it correct cause the middle doesnt intersect but it did provide some insight. But i found some good ref and a video on youtube that help tremendously
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPO3Ditr3bg&list=HL1401817203&feature=mh_lolz

Thank for everyone pushing me in the right direction

skyline5gtr

Here is what i came up with, using each twist as an object and aligning correct then duplicating around
, big thanks for the help guys. Didnt even think of that technique

Greg DAlessandro

how would you uv that twist?

Stockwell

Yourname942 wrote: »

how would you uv that twist?

You wouldn't, most likely, just bake it in

skyline5gtr

Stockwell wrote: »

You wouldn't, most likely, just bake it in

bingo I just wanted to actually learn and push myself to model a complext twist shape i have never done

Neox

it doesn't really look like your reference tho, may you could try overpainting your reference with how the mesh could look like to solve this issue.

Dickie

here's how I'd go about it (excuse the wrong proportions, it was a rush)



above is the kind of shape you want, the ribbon/grip is wound around another ribbon on the other side which creates that distinct diamond pastern, that shape can be described by 3 intersections.



I created the above 3 shapes from splines, started with rectangles with rounded/filleted corners (I do love splines)



Created a rough handle shape and made another rectangle to describe the path of the ribbon.



Converted that rectangle to an editable spline and deleted 3/4 of it so I was just left with a corner, shift+dragged it down and welded the ends.
I also filleted that corner but waited till a little later on to actually do it to make sure it fit snuggly with its mirror image.



Now time to actually make the shape, created a loft with the path and intersections I've already created.

If you're not used to using lofts I can explain but there are lots of videos on the youtubes which explain it in more detail than I could with just text, the most important and often over looked step with lofts is to turn on generate mapping (I usually turn on real world mapping as well) which are pictured in the top right hand corner.
Can't stress how important they are, as with those you can just grab a tilling fabric texture and then use that whilst baking your high poly to extract texture information so much quicker than trying to paint on fabric pattern onto the low poly.



Anyways I opened up the curve editor and fiddled with it to get the twist right (this is when I filleted that path's corner)



created an instance and rotated it around, jiggled it a little to get a nice shape that I was happy with.
Then just made a dozen or so copies and selected them all and applied a bend.

Hope that helps

peanut™

+1 Good one Dickie, i won't build anything like that any soon, but this may become handy for the future, nice tutorial.

skyline5gtr: I once saw a guy at zbrushcentral that did a tutorial on this very part of a katana with highend results(it was a fancy sword in that case), i can't remember who it was. Maybe have a go and search over there ?

cptSwing

Yeah - great tutorial!

divi

nice result with the loft, but that's not how katana grips are wrapped. same technique should work though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSYPALS433M

Dickie

ah *blushes* that's what I get for not doing research but yeah wouldn't be hard to appropriate the above for the proper shape

Lamont

To add what Divi posted: Make sure you have the wrap UV mapped, then you can make a custom displacement map and apply it in the noise in ZBrush with the UV setting to get a very nice cloth texture.

Dickie

Let's try again..



The post was a little image heavy last time so I'll be brief and group it together.



1. the new splines I used, number one's just a rectangle with a wonk. The profile is just one spline this time as I controlled the scale via the loft deformation (found this gave me nicer topology)

3. (I dun goofed on the order) the deformations I used on the loft to create that shape.

2. Some of the problems I couldn't resolve in a short space of time.

I kind of prefer it with only a half twist (top in fig 2.) as it has less distortion but the full twist is more accurate.

Made a quick substance with just some fibres on it to show off the power of spline modelling a bit more but this just highlights the odd crease/texture stretch.

If anyone has any improvements on this method I'd be happy to hear them.

peanut™

Amazing, i can now model sumo underwear ... thanks 3dsmax