Claw Hammer- Learning PBR Workflow
polycounter lvl 7
I haven't done any hand surface for a while and though I'd create this as an opportunity to learn the PBR workflow. Wasn't modeled after any hammer in particular, just ones I found online and one I have lying around at home. Currently just finished the HP, I'm thinking this will be for a current gen FPS game so the LP will be quite a few tris to reatain the shape at a close distance, I'm thinking probably 4k maps, but I don't know if that's a bit overkill for an asset this simple. Any advice would be awesome.
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Nice model so far. One thing I noticed was some strange pinching around the claws. Mainly where they taper and where it curves back around. You're going to want to iron out those pinches if you intend on this being a first-person weapon as they would be in the player's face, and could be distracting.
The edges could probably use a little softening too. Try to match the edge width of the hammer's head, where it starts to curve up.
Looking forward to your PBR approach
Where the claws meet at the bottom I went with this geo, which is still causing some smoothing problems, but I haven't come up with a better way of doing it yet.
Where the claws taper at the bottom is a bit of a mess so I'm going to find a better way to do them, or just space out the edges more. Any adbice you have would be awesome!
@BeardedMike Thanks for the advice that's good to know. Cheers
I meant both. Where it curves to make that "U" shape and where the claws taper. You have the right idea with the geo, it's tough to completely eliminate pinching especially on a curving surface. There are a couple ways I know, off the top of my head, to remedy that. (I'm not sure if you're using Max or not, but the principles are still the same)
One would be to ensure that all the planes are perfectly flat at their respective angles. You can take the scaling tool, select the planes you want to flatten, switch the gizmo to Local and then scale inwards to flatten the planes perfectly without completely messing up the angle.
Another way would be to remove the supportive edge loops and assign smoothing groups to planes where you want those hard edges to be. Then add a turbo smooth modifier, with "Separate by Smoothing Groups", add maybe 2 iterations. Then add another Turbosmooth modifier on top of that one, with normal settings. You may need to play around with the two iterations to get something you like. Here is a great video tutorial that covers that process (skip to around 5:27).
I hope that helps in any way shape, or form haha