Hand painted Low-Poly Sword (WIP)

Alexander.W

Hello there,
I am practicing texturing right now and I thought I start off with a Sword. I will post updates on the project in this thread.

I already ran into a problem with the Texture-Paint feature in Blender. On certain faces the paint brush doesn´t work correctly. I hope you can help me with my problem. I already tried recalc. the faces on the model and I tried to unwrap it differently as well but with no success the error still occurs.:(

Alexander.W

Figured it out, for anybody who might have the same problem in the future and finds this thread: I accidentally used the Vertex Color feature once and drew something on the Mesh. I just deleted the Vertex Color map.

Updates on the texture will follow soon...

Alexander.W

Here is a quick update of the Texture I am working on. Keep in mind that I don't have a lot of experience with Hand-painting Textures.:(

Feedback and critique will be very much appreciated. I have only been focusing on the handle the rest is just a quick color sketch.:)



More Updates will follow..

Dennispls

Your UV map could have been laid out better. The sword has less space than the handle for instance. The hilt of the sword is rather big on the model but very small on the uv map making it look really low res.

turpedo

Besides the UV crits given so far, I would pick a direction from where your light source is suppose to come from and paint your textures according to that. That should help you break down your value structure.

It is good to have value separation between your materials, but I think you went too bright on your blade. I find it easier to get believable metal if I start from a darker value and then build it up slowly.

Alexander.W

Thank you for your feedback. I just made this prop to practice texturing so i don´t mind starting over. Here is my new UV Layout. Let me know if this will work better.
I also changed the Layout to minimize Stretch (as you can see on the handle). I'm not sure if that was a good idea. Let me know what you think.

Dennispls

It is looking better, however I would try to overlap some UV's as it is not necessary to have both sides of the blade on the texture. The UV islands do not always have to be physyically attached either (the hilt area). You could take that part and scale it up a bit. If you do it right you might even fit it on a 512x256 map (or lower depending on what you are trying to achieve)

skodone

theres also still enough space to scale things up more
and i second the suggestion to overlap both sides of the blade to
one uv then you can really get on with details on the handle

iadagraca

I agree with skodone that you should set up the UV's to mirror as much as possible. Saves you a ton of work which will help you spend time on quality.

You should also incorporate more shading like shadows and such, unless you're going to Bake AO to it.

Alexander.W

A little update that i wanted to share:
Let me hear what you think. I am not sure about the scratches, they seem a little bit out of place but i was just experimenting.
I did not have time yet to texture the rest of the sword, I dint have a lot of time for cg lately.


And a wireframe.

Dennispls

The contrast between tones is still too high. Try to blend it a bit more so that the transition flows over smoothly.

As for a good way to improve, I would highly recommend the Tyson Murphy handpainting tutorial on 3dmotive.com

Dethling

agree to Dennispls.

Also remove the horizontal highlights on the blade, they create a blocky blade and now nice flow.
For the top cut: as soon as something has impact on the silouthe like this one, I would model it instead of only painting it.

Alexander.W

Thanks a lot for the feedback.:)

I worked a little bit on the texture on the blade and changed a few things. I'm still not happy with the marks and scratches. I think the contrast is better now and without the horizontal highlights it does feel a lot smoother.

For the part on the bottom, I know there is a little seem visible on the very left. I'll fix it when I have some more time.

I still did not get any satisfying results on the Handle so I left it black for this update.

Alexander.W

Update:

The hilt looks ugly I know. I am not sure what to do with it. At first i wanted to implement some sort of gem but that didn't look to good without more geometry to work with.:( Any ideas?

Gannon

I wouldn't worry about moving forward with the rest of the design until you clean up a few details.



Model -
• More triangles!
Smooth out some of the facets you don't plan on playing off of in the texture Get a smoother looking blade
• Push the silhouette of the hilt.
your forms are timid, Don't be afraid to take them too far and then pull them back for the best readable forms.

UVs -
• Increase the amount of space given to your blade.
Turn this into a rectangle texture to reduce wasted space and have a better texel density.


Texture -
• Use a larger brush to create your gradients.
Makes the entire process faster and easier on your wrist.
• Make sure it's a solid brush with the opacity control set to pen pressure.
Makes your shapes less muddy or unclear.
• Use your lasso tool/masks to define areas!
An artists best friend to contain brush strokes and help define edges.

All of that said, you're showing progress. Your blades shape overall is more interesting than where it started; You're mirroring your UVs like you should; You've got some pretty consistent highlight placement ( a detail a lot of artists forget ). Keep making progress. Can't wait to see the final

AutoExit

Your texture isn't tiling. You can solve it easily by painting over it in Blender.