[Chivalry] – Mason Vanguard – Kraken Set

jackalope

Hello all. I will be entering with my friend Tim. I will be constructing a Halberd, and he will be creating the helmet.
We decided on a Kraken theme.
Here are some references we liked, and some initial sketches.

jackalope

Did some concept sculpting for the halberd

dudeface

Ha, love the anchor/kraken halberd idea!

jackalope

dudeface wrote: »

Ha, love the anchor/kraken halberd idea!

Thanks


Took the model into Max for some refinement.

Slipstream

I like the idea behind this. And the execution on the halberd especially is awesome looking. Can't wait to see more

dzibarik

A cool idea, but I wonder how it would fit in the game. I've never seen nautical themes in pre-1500 battle equipment. But I really like where's it's headed.

jackalope

Thanks guys. Unless I'm corrected, with all the lions, and birds, and boars, and such in history it seems as if there is room for a nautical theme in this game even if there aren't a lot of historical examples.

Hopefully more progress incoming tomorrow.

jackalope

Refined the model and brought it into zbrush for detail sculpting.

Noth

sea shell helm would be dope

Nolt

I am really liking that Kraken halberd design! That is cool! Maybe do some kind of sea weed leather inlay in the handle?

jackalope

That's a good idea. To be honest I've been struggling with what to do with the handle.

Nolt

Maybe just think about continuing some of the theme down it rather than some regular leather wrapping.

jackalope

I've been working on the low poly, UV mapping, and baking, but today I got a suggestion to change the shape of the spear head and increase the girth of the tentacles.
The old one is on the top, and the changed one is on the bottom.

What do you guys think?

Nolt

Didn't think there was anything wrong with it before but changing the girth of those tentacles helps the weapon read better.

jackalope

After some consideration I decided to stay with the old design. Even though I agree with you 9thKnight, that the tentacles are a little stronger with increased girth I don't think it's a big enough improvement to justify doing my work over.
It might be possible to just adjust the low-poly in the end. We will see.

Nolt

I think if you do your edge loops right, you can just go back to the low poly and increase the girth with no problems.

jackalope

Haven't posted much because I figure no one want's to look at low polys and UV maps. I changed up the model a little and because of that I had to redo the bakes and start the textures over a few times.
I decided to go with a brass kraken with an inset steel spear head. I'm about 50% of the way with the textures. Obviously some areas are lacking textures completely, and the rest needs more work done. The master shader distorted my colors a little bit so they are a little odd looking right now, i need to adjust for that. But enough excuses, here's results

Dobrin

Hey man, I really like your idea and design! As for low poly and UVs, I think you should add them too, 'cause being a newbie, I look at works here and try to understand how it all works together Hope to be able to participate in such a cool contests soon as well. I wish you good luck with this set. Oh, and btw, how is the progress on the helmet?

Noth

Since you have unique uvs on the squid, you could really nick it up in the highpoly, or add them with ndo2 or something, theres room for a lot for battle damage and weathering. I can see some normal details I think, crank it to 11! Brand new weapons are boring! This design looks like it's seen a few battles, past down generations. Cool stuff. : p

jackalope

Thanks Dobrin, I'll post wires and texture flats later probably. As for the helmet, to be honest my partner and I are struggling to find a design that fits the theme and stays in the 1200 poly limit. Hopefully that will happen soon.

Great idea Noth, I'll definitely add battle scars and weathering while I'm refining the textures.

W4LTR0N

I like the sculpted squid!

jackalope

Been working on textures

jackalope

Here's the latest on my texture.

Noth

Nice blade detail, the steel mat looks good too.

Nolt

Really nice work you have going here. My only comment is maybe shine up the metal a bit more and maybe darken the wood a little. That's just my opinion though. The shape is great, very distinguishable.

Scoot_da_Poot

I agree with 9th, I love this! but the wood pole is drawing my attention away from the kraken awesomeness. I'd try desaturating the pole a little. Over all, very cool!

Shooo~

Damn. Amazing conception !

jackalope

Thanks everyone. I was actually planning on doing exactly that to the wood. And shine up the brass a tad too.
Good to know we are all on the same page.

jackalope

Texture tweaks.
Also with 300% MOAR BLOOD

N4meless

Wow! amazing i like the concept and your final object is pretty cool perhaps the wood look too much like bark

Nolt

N4meless wrote: »

Wow! amazing i like the concept and your final object is pretty cool perhaps the wood look too much like bark

Yeah, I think you still need to tweak the wood a bit. Maybe try a smoother wood. Right now it looks like wood that has been weathered a bit due to heat.

McGuire

The blood mask for the spear tip doesn't make any sense - right now it looks like you've sliced someone along the back edge as opposed to skewered them with it.

tl;dr - MORE BLOOD!

jackalope

Thanks guys.
You were right about the wood. I needed to step back and just rework it. Any thoughts on the new texture would be great.
McGuire: I think the glare of the light was concealing the fact that the blood was more symmetrical on the spear point to convey that it was used in a stabbing way. Let me know if this different light angle shows what you were thinking.




So my partner got real busy with his job and won't be able to submit the helmet. I'm hoping I'll have enough time to do it. I got the block out he had and I have worked on it a little bit. Heres what I have.

jackalope

Now that i look at it the wood probably needs to be darker, but I'll fix that tomorrow. It's already way past my bed time.

JO420

You could also get away with using a painted wood look,it would help provide contrast to the tip,so it doesn't detract from its squiddy glory. The Exposed wood as it,takes away a bit from design because it seems like the top of this halbred was finely crafted,but when they got to the wooden part,they said "Fuck it,that'll do"


This is a bit out there, but on the sheaths of Katanas, they like to use this black,polished wood. I think that look,with some gold ornamentation running down the length of the pole would look cool.

jackalope

Made the highpoly for the helmet


Also still playing around with the handle texture on the halberd. Thanks for the input JO420. I tried a bunch of different things and I thought I would try out a painted wood look that has been worn down. I don't know that I am completely happy with any part of the handle. Not sure what this one part is giving me so much trouble

JO420

I like the changes,maybe bump up the spec on the metal element that holds the blade to the wood.

Imperium101

I love the weapon: great concept, great modelling and texturing.

As for the helmet, I believe in need more sharp edges.

Good luck,

TheMightyKnight

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=140143

jackalope

Did some sculpting on the helmet


Also I think i've settled on engraved steel grips for the halberd.

jnumber9

I love the halberd!

ps: thank you for the lighting tip

Nolt

Nice squidy helmet Matches the halberd nicely

jackalope

First pass on textures for the helmet. I miss the environment map you get on the weapon, really makes the metal look better. But you have to work with what you get.

Ranulf

Just wanted to say this is my favorite weapon of the contest. Awesome work!

JO420

The helmet is looking really good so far. What it could use is details to imply a look of construction. I could see the helmet made of several over lapping plates bolted together,

uk_resistant

Looking good,like the design.
Just one tiny thing but I would smooth out the geometry on the front, i find it weirdly distracting

jackalope

JO420, thanks man that's a really cool idea. I'll check that out today, although I wouldn't want it to stray too far into the unrefined industrial look. So it will need to strike a balance.

uk_resistant, thank you for making that paint over. Unfortunately I'm running pretty hard into the tri limit. So smoothing things out might be difficult. But I'll try to massage around some tris to see what I can do.

jackalope

NEED HELP!!

For some reason there is a seam running down the center of my helmet
...
[EDITED FOR THE SAKE OF THREAD CLEANLINESS]
...

Any suggestions would be great.



EDIT: So I did a quick test and just unwrapped the helmet with no UV seam down the middle. It totally fixes the problem, but that doesn't solve the issue of it being there when I want to utilize the UV space by mirroring the UVs.

jackalope

Did another set of troubleshooting by creating a new material from scratch (instead of using the master material. The seam disappeared when I used that, so it must be an issue with the master material, probably user error. So I will check that out later today.

jackalope

Ranulf wrote: »

Just wanted to say this is my favorite weapon of the contest. Awesome work!

I totally missed your message when I read through my thread, sorry about not responding. Thank you so much that's very flattering

I worked some more on the texturing today.

Nolt

Man, I like those tentacles on the sides

jackalope

Thanks man.

I've been working on getting a real clean normal map bake, and painting out the seams of my maps. Also added rivets.