Marrow: My first serious Mudbox sculpt
polycounter lvl 3
My first ever (serious) Mudbox sculpt. It has a bit of artifacting at the blade's edge, which is partially the normal map but also something wrong with that part of the mesh as I sculpted. I'm still pretty new to Mudbox in general and am still learning. I've only used it three or four times total, and only tried to do a serious sculpt once before which ended in failure because I rushed it.
Well, without further ado, here's Marrow. It's a two-handed sword with a bone hilt and backbone, and teeth (shark?) on the backbone. I don't expect it to win any awards or anything, but for a first I don't think it's bad.
Well, without further ado, here's Marrow. It's a two-handed sword with a bone hilt and backbone, and teeth (shark?) on the backbone. I don't expect it to win any awards or anything, but for a first I don't think it's bad.
Replies
I don't understand what you're asking. If you're asking if I made the textures, yes I did - I painted it in Mudbox.
In the last generation's rendering pipeline:
Diffuse
Specular
Gloss
Normal
In the current, Physically-Based Rendering pipeline:
Albedo
Specular and Gloss -or Metalness and Gloss
Normal
There are others, but let's keep it simple for now. For a 3D model to properly be in a game engine, they usually need these maps. Otherwise, they're just pretty things to look at.
So, with that in mind, did you make any of the textures above?
For an absolute first attempt this isn't too bad, you're right. You can be proud of this for picking up mudbox and actually making something instead of giving up. But if you want to improve, there's a bit you can work on in future sculpts. Accurate material definition is super important, you've gone a little mudbox-happy on all these surfaces. Why would there be grooves on the blade? Surely that's sort of inefficient. And there's bumps, too, usually a blade would be "sharp" and "smooth", but it comes across as a soft organic material because it's a bit wobbly.
This goes for your textures, too, they're a bit soft and airbrush-y, and I can't tell if this is just diffuse+normal, or...?
Keep it up, though, and keep striving to get better.
I'm still learning what to do and what not to do with Mudbox, and I'm still learning a lot about Maya. I only just started using Maya this March because of the 3D character design class I took as part of my degree. Also still learning about topology. I'm not as much of an artist as I'd like to be, which is why I'm doing it. lol I started my degree with the idea that I wanted to do programming, but the more and more I do that, the less I want to do it. The more and more I do art and design, the more I want to do it. So that's where I am right now.
To answer your questions... Yeah, I think I did go a bit "mudbox-happy" on it. lol
Here's an imgur album: http://imgur.com/a/49pKH#0
From left to right:
Diffuse + spec + normal
Diffuse + spec
Normal
Spec + normal
Spec
None
EDIT
Please ignore the three different normal map layers, only the top-most one shows (logically). The others are from trying out the different map extraction options. :P
END EDIT :P
Wireframe display enabled, and viewing the level 0 mesh at 2,764 polys.
I do have a lot to learn, that's for sure.
The imgur album and information about which image has which maps enabled should also answer @JadeEyePanda's question(s). I'm still learning about some of the map types, how to use them, etc. But I can tell you I sculpted and painted this for use in Skyrim as my first custom weapon. So I'm still learning about Skyrim's shaders, as well, and what types of maps it accepts and how to display them. I can safely say, however, that my specular is a bit too high for Skyrim's engine. :P
Thank you both for posting.