Handpainted Shield (WoW Style)

qwedeath

Hello! I've started working on stylized shield just for practice, planning to do sculpt and make mixed style with normal + diffuse map. Here is some block out and my concept, i hope you'll like it


Rough model, it will be replaced with optimized and clean one

Updates here:
[SKETCHFAB]294a8d13d16245cc98045f6301ea44b0[/SKETCHFAB]

qwedeath

Update:
Fully redone model so topology is more clean now, added bend modifier, added handle and other elements from the concept

qwedeath

Update:
Some little tweaks on topology and unwrapping

qwedeath

Some sculpting progress, just polished main forms and anded basic details and deformation

Spoon

I was very skeptical in the beginning, but this is starting to look promising!

qwedeath

@Spoon I will try not to disappoint you
Update:
Sculpting progress

Mateus

Looking good. What is the red part?

qwedeath

@Mateus thanks! Maybe you mean handle?

Croftyness

Cool shield. There's not a lot of vertical topology at the moment. This may be frustrating when you try and put details into your sculpt. It's suggested you stick to quads, keeping them squared with an even density across the mesh.
Throwing divisions at it will solve the problem on face value. However will present problems later.
ZRemesher and Reprojection are simple enough solutions. : )

qwedeath

@Croftyness Thank you for advices and tips! I highly appreciate this. Never used Reprojection before i should give it a try someday For optimizing mesh for sculpt im using Dynamesh

Croftyness

Ye Dynamesh is really helpful. You can duplicate/clone your current mesh and use the ZRemesh feature on that clone. It will give you decent topology to work from.. After this you can scroll up the divisions of the clone/remesh and click the reproject at each division (with the original in viewport). It means you can keep your dynamesh features at the same time transferring them onto fresh topology. Nice edges, even topology and access to a low sub divided mesh with polygroups. Well worth it.

qwedeath

Ah i got your idea man! This will really help on making clean sculpts. Never thought of resetting High poly sculpt topology to clean one, thank you for that great technique

qwedeath

Update:
Roughly playing with color schemes

rls

looks good.

my favourite is the middle of the second line (green, brown & orange), it's nice to see all version you tested.

pigart

Looks nice but you really need to do something about the red part in the concept.I'm guessing it's cloth but it really doesn't look like that. Plus the fact that it is floating just puts everything off.

Dethling

Nice work.
I like the first color sheme, except the "wood part".
Not sure if brown would work with this sheme, but I think it's worth a try.

qwedeath

Thanks guys! Yeah i really need to do something about this cloth thing and i need to experiment with colors a bit again

Fenyce

I really like the first color sheme (silver turqouise), but I'd add brown onto the wood, I also like the 3rd in the first and the first in the 2nd line. (But I'd give the wood a "woodish" color or make it a least pretty obvious that it's painted wood)

Tectonic

red and cyan are great complimentary colours, try going with different hues of those and it will look rad. I think the cloth looks out of place, but I like the crescent shape. you might consider changing it to a metal brace with bolts instead of cloth.

qwedeath

Update:
Baked normals + new color schemes. I am thinking about removing this cloth wrap so i've done additional coloring without it. Thanks to you all for this thoughts aboout color and cloth thing

Tectonic

I think if you remove the wrap you should add something else to the wood in a different material otherwise the top bit will look plain compared to the rest of the shield. maybe you could add another of the sphere thingies?
heres a paintover for ya

qwedeath

Thank you for your advice on design i think it is really better

qwedeath

Update:
Redone model and fully redone sculpt, sized up wood grain and redesigned some elements. I hope to start texturing today
Here is mesh + baked out normals

Tectonic

lookin good! I think the only thing is your texture seam is pretty noticeable on the top ball. I would just copy the UV's and normals/texture from one of the bottom ones. this will remove the symmetrical texture and hide that the rest of the shield has mirrored UVs.

qwedeath

Thank you @Tectonic so much for help and tips, didnt see this
Update:
UVs fixed, nailed some basic colors

qwedeath

Update:
Texture progress

qwedeath

Update:
Finished texturing, added emissive map, added spec map. I think it is pretty done
[SKETCHFAB]294a8d13d16245cc98045f6301ea44b0[/SKETCHFAB]

Tectonic

it turned out awesome, well done!

almighty_gir

I have to disagree... it turned out looking rushed. it looks like ytou baked some maps, used them as overlays and called it a day. There's nothing in here that looks actually hand painted.

It lacks the subtlety you see in WoW assets (since you said you wanted to go with that style).

You should check out examples like this:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=2342458&postcount=6161

and this:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/blood-elf-bust

Pay close attention to saturation and light levels. notice how they rarely shade things with black lines like you've done, everything has colour and everything has nice complementary contrast.

Your shield looks like a cheap plastic toy made of the brightest colours with no explanation as to "why".

X-One

Hey,

It may be a little late if you're calling this done, but I feel like you should push the texture a little more.

On the colours themselves, I feel like all of your hues are over-saturated. I'm a fan of bright colours, but I think some variety would be nice. I also think that each of your materials does not have enough colour variation (as it seems like all you did was value shift for your shading with the exception of some reds in your gold material).

I also feel like you have far too much black in your texture. Generally, you want to avoid using very much pure black in your textures, especially if you're trying to emulate WoW-style textures. Lighten up those blacks, and add colour to them.

Lastly, all of your details have pretty much one frequency. All of your scratches, grooves, and lines have very similar thickness throughout. Try and add some variety and vary the thickness within a single stroke. (Think about your surface and make your details larger/smaller where they make sense). I know you've mirrored your UVs down the center, which makes adding unique details tricky, so maybe stick your larger details closer to the edges, or in areas where you're not going to commonly see both sides at the same time.

I think you could get a lot more out of your design with some more time refining your textures.

ambitious_nomad

The style is most definitely not Warcraft style nor really feels really hand painted. Because of the dark lines you have added it almost has a comic book vibe. Your textures don't look bad but I don't think you were able to accomplish what you set out to do. X-One and Gir have some good advise. I would start on reworking those black lines also I would give it some spec/gloss variation seeing how it has none. I would also go in and add highlights and more subtle details. There is a lot of good in this model and I think you are on the right track but it has to be learned. I am not an expert though so take my advise however you would like.

I thought this video might be nice even if you don't use blender they show some good hand painting practices that you could learn from.

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbfFAKJ2t7g[/ame]

qwedeath

Thank you guys for this critique and advices, i know that i've missed wow style, i've tried to make something with my own style, sorry for the misinformation
Ill do completely new texture with diffuse map only.

almighty_gir

you don't need to do diffuse only, check the second link i posted. a lot of this is down to your current understanding of materials in general, not just your technique.

learn some material theory, and think how you can apply it to this.

riceart

so because someone posted my video ^^ i need to respond in this thread. As almight_gir said you dont need to use diffuse only. This technique that i used in this video is something like blizz discovered 3dcoat and started to paint models in 3d, its cool but only one step from painting in photoshop. Your technique is current gen "wow" hots, diablo?, lol, etc. so you sculpt/bake/composite everything in photoshop/3dcoat and on top of that you still paint a bit. The problem with your texutre is that your do not know how material should look like, everything is too saturated, if this green something is a wood then sell this to us to actualy belive its wood, right now it looks weird, metal looks to saturated and looks like orange something?
regards, drunk rice

qwedeath

I will start texturing from scratch today, thank you all again for these advices and tips!

qwedeath

So i've restarted this from sculpt, trying to follow every advice that i've got. Trying to study from WoW items and learn materials and designs.

ambitious_nomad

Lookin good. I love the beaten metal on the center of the shield and the scratch marks. Also the wood looks good. One thing that is really bugging me though is it is all completely symmetrical. Scratch dents and general wear and tear are never symmetrical.

pigart

ambitious_nomad wrote: »

Lookin good. I love the beaten metal on the center of the shield and the scratch marks. Also the wood looks good. One thing that is really bugging me though is it is all completely symmetrical. Scratch dents and general wear and tear are never symmetrical.

This x100. You have a bunch of small scratches, dents and etc that make your whole shield look noisy. If you want it to look like a shield from WoW then make it look clean and easy to read. Just add a few bigger scratches.
Also, you should really think about turning symmetry off.

qwedeath

Canceled

Poinball

Why ?

qwedeath

I have feeling that i've got failed concept from the beginning in terms of material defenition. I need to learn handpainting texturing a bit before i start something new, ill do some paintovers on wow models on this week so maybe this will help. Planning to start something new or restart this with some tweaks on concept. Thanks all of you for tips, i think i've learned a lot

Uberren

Perhaps you should try working off of someone else's concept. It looks like you're comfortable with sculpting already. Having a good concept to work off of may be more comfortable for you.