Zelda Sword from new workflow. Critique Requested!

KnobbyNobbes

Hey everyone. Finally nearing the end of figuring out my new stylized PBR workflow and I wanna show off. That said, I also feel that, somehow, my current texture work isn't quite up to par. I can tell something is wrong/needs to be changed/fixed, but I can't put my finger on it for the life of me. So, it would be a great help if all of you wise folks on here could maybe give me a pointer or two? My guess is that it  has something to do with the metalness, or with the roughness on the metallic parts. Its kind of hard to tell what the 'goal' should look like because I am going off of such a straight cartoony reference.

I also kind of feel that I am in a wierd place where it either feels too cartoony, or not cartoony enough. Kinda leaning towards not cartoony enough. However, I've tried making it more stylized but I cant seem to do much more without the look going waaaaay too cartoony.

First is the reference Image:

Next are what I have so far. I kind of went a bit further with the 'old and forgotten' style and added some moss to the sword (or what I sincerely hope other people think looks like moss).


Sorry if they aren't quite as good of images or not close enough to see. I'll upload better ones if you ask. Don't really have any experience 'presenting' models for good images.

KnobbyNobbes

Ok, update. Tried making the rust more colorful and tightened up its edges with a histogram filter. Think it really helps define the look.

Ran into a little problem with the rust though. The blade of the sword was a solid 1 of full metal, and the rust on top was a full 0 for non metal. Problem with that is the rust gets this sort of... outline around it that only appears if you have the rust have a metalness value. Didn't really know how to fix it correctly, but I did find out that lowering the metal value of the blade down to .7 rather than 1, makes the outlines disappear. So my metal blade isn't fully metal, but I think it probably still looks fine. Has anyone else run into this problem?

Same goes for the blue metal parts of the rest of the sword, they are not full metal either. Find it makes it too shiny. Speaking of which, I am not really sure how I want to treat the blue metal parts. As far as I can tell, my choices are either:

1. Regular metal with a blue paint on top
2. Regular metal with a treated/heat color changed surface.
3. Metal that is blue all the way through.

Right now, I am treating it as if the metal is blue all the way through, with the scrapes/scratches/indents all having a light blue tint, but I don't know if I am ham-stringing myself with that decision, like if it would look much better in some other way. My current approach lacks a lot of realism, I can tell, but I can't really think of what else to go by, when the concept art is so lacking in detail. If anyone has an opinion, let me know.

Other than that, I think my sword is progressing nicely. If I don't hear back from anyone within a day or two, I'll call it good, turn everything into smart materials, and try applying them to my next sword.

One more question: I plan on having this and other swords go into UE4, and I was wondering if anyone has had any experience/thoughts on giving an object a special environment map to reflect. Not full reflections, but just the stuff that gets reflected in the metalness parts/low roughness parts. I was thinking that that might be a really good way to add a little bit additional oomph to the look of a sword/prop. Also, maybe an additional AO map that would be colored in engine to match the color of a room, as sort of a fake GI thing. Any thoughts?

Oh, and here is my sword currently in SP with the basic PBR metal roughness shader:

And here it is with the UE4 shader from Substance Share:

Tetranome

One thing that really sticks out to me is the moss. It's too bright & saturated, has too much built in shadow/AO and fades out in opacity rather than thinning out and then stopping. You've also plugged it into a WorldSpace normal map channel I guess, and I would make it a bit more random than just that. Grab a brush in photoshop and edit your mask (or in painter if that's your thing) and paint the borders rather than leaving it to opacity.