The Hobbits Sword "Sting"

Chase_Miller

Project i'm starting is a 3D Hobbit Sword for UE4. I want smart materials so we can turn the swords emissivity on and off with ease in UE4 so I will be texturing in substance painter/designer. 3D modeling/UVs will be done in Maya

Chase_Miller

My reference image

Chase_Miller

Alphas Iv'e made for the sword

Chase_Miller

Modeling Done! Off to texturing in Substance.
  

Chase_Miller

Sword textured in Substance Painter and smart materials configured in Substance Designer and added user friendly Input Parameters! ONWARD TO UE4!

Chase_Miller

UVs

Chase_Miller

All Done! I made the UE4 project available for download for FREE in the link to a video I made for it.
video link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmENBLe0CcI
Substance Painter Render -

UE4 snapshot -

almighty_gir

I would try to handle the glow a little different to this. Just making the entire blade go blue is... lazy, and doesn't really look that good.

There are a couple of ways to do this instead:
1. duplicate the blade and push it out, make it a transparent glowing shell.
2. make a plane that goes up through the blade, and texture it so it has a a glow that appears only at the edges of the blade.
3. mask the glow on the blade (but not the runes) by fresnel, so you only get it at glancing angles.

Chase_Miller

Thanks for the feed back! The goal was to make it look as similar to the movies as possible. Would you happen to have a reference to the look you are describing? 

Tobbo

Cool piece. Along with what @almighty_gir has said. 

The metal texture on the blade itself shouldn't have a splotchy grunge to it. If anything it should probably have slight straight marks.

http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e340/fbiguy2006/DSCN0248.jpg

almighty_gir

well...



To me this looks like the sword itself isn't glowing, it has a glowing overlay effect, you can clearly see the metal underneath reflecting things. If you want to go into a further examination of the glow, Tolkien describes it as a common property among most elven blades forged in Gondolin, and it functions because the blade can detect the corrupted souls of orcs.

Orcs in middle earth are actually elves, corrupted and twisted (interestingly, they KNOW this. Orcs hate themselves, they hate what they are) by Morgoth. Although there's no direct evidence for this next part, i would surmise that if a blade can detect whether an elf spirit is corrupted, then it (like the elves themselves) either exists in, or can at least see into, both the mortal and spiritual planes. I would then guess that the glow is the spiritual plane manifesting around the blade... Reasonable when you consider that magic in middle earth tends to come in the form of exaggerated natural phenomena (or at least, natural for that world... including the spiritual realm).

The blade's glowing effect looks fairly similar to the other ethereal things that happen in the movies, from the undead army, to the ringwraiths when Frodo/Bilbo wear the ring.

That is the look i would personally try to achieve. Not the blade itself changing colour, but the air/atmosphere around it.

Chase_Miller

Tobbo said:

Cool piece. Along with what @almighty_gir has said. 

The metal texture on the blade itself shouldn't have a splotchy grunge to it. If anything it should probably have slight straight marks.

http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e340/fbiguy2006/DSCN0248.jpg

Great point Tobbo! I agree, thanks for the great ref. image. I'll fix the blade

Chase_Miller

almighty_gir said:

well...



To me this looks like the sword itself isn't glowing, it has a glowing overlay effect, you can clearly see the metal underneath reflecting things. If you want to go into a further examination of the glow, Tolkien describes it as a common property among most elven blades forged in Gondolin, and it functions because the blade can detect the corrupted souls of orcs.

Orcs in middle earth are actually elves, corrupted and twisted (interestingly, they KNOW this. Orcs hate themselves, they hate what they are) by Morgoth. Although there's no direct evidence for this next part, i would surmise that if a blade can detect whether an elf spirit is corrupted, then it (like the elves themselves) either exists in, or can at least see into, both the mortal and spiritual planes. I would then guess that the glow is the spiritual plane manifesting around the blade... Reasonable when you consider that magic in middle earth tends to come in the form of exaggerated natural phenomena (or at least, natural for that world... including the spiritual realm).

The blade's glowing effect looks fairly similar to the other ethereal things that happen in the movies, from the undead army, to the ringwraiths when Frodo/Bilbo wear the ring.

That is the look i would personally try to achieve. Not the blade itself changing colour, but the air/atmosphere around it.

I gotcha, Great explanation. 

Chase_Miller

Fixed splotchy grunge on blade and added feathered brush lines. Also cranked up emissive glow. This is just Substance Painter renders. Next i'm fixing UE4 files.  

Chase_Miller

This is currently where I am in UE4, I got the letters on blade to light up first, so that's cool. but now i'm trying to achieve the sword glow without blowing out all the details of the blade. 
All Ideas/help/criticism is welcome.

Chase_Miller

After hours of masking and tweaking values, I finally achieved a fare superior glow. Thanks almighty_grl and Tobbo for the excellent feedback.