Katana Critique

YaboyZay

Decided on making a katana I found online. Been feeling like my skills have improved over the summer but still can be better. Any suggestions on changes I should make on the model would be greatly appreciated.

(Reference)

(Renders)


(Low Poly)


(High Poly)


(UVs)

Brian "Panda" Choi

The whole sword could use a slight roughness noise to break up the specularity a little more.

Solid start.

Nuclear Angel

I agree with Brian on the breaking up the Roughness. 
But you should also let the woodgrains follow the shape of the sword. Like in the reference you posted. 
The Blade Collar is also very similar right now in color to the wood. While in your reference it has a contrast to the handle in color and material definition. 
At the edge of your scabbard you seem to also have an error with your baking. As there is a visible seam there and also missing the rounded shape. 
Your blade is missing the blade ridge going across your blade as well. So right now it is clearly missing that. 
Your UVs are very tight in some areas. Let your Shells have some room for edge padding. 

Your presentation is very bland right now. A sword on its own is very hard to present, so give it some thought and dont just put it over a grey background. Give closeups and more interesting angles. 

Ashervisalis

So you'll notice in the reference, the wood is sanded down so it's flat, but your normal map is not smooth. The sheath is also a lot shinier than the reference. These might be artistic choices on your behalf though, so I'm not going to suggest changing these. Just like was said before, I'd say you need to adjust the flow of the grain to match the direction of the object. Regarding your UVs, there is a ton of wasted space. You can cut the longer UV islands in half in order to increase the resolution of your texture, just remember to use the option which I can never remember the name... The opposite of UV projection, for the texture options.

YaboyZay

Hello everyone, I have read you comments and for the pass few days I been working on my low poly to fix the baking errors. If anyone has any tips on fixing up a low poly to get better bakes or would explain their workflow would you mind share? I been trying to use the quad draw to over the high poly model and made some progress but it could be better.

These are my bake attempts


These are low poly models

MarcoAntonio

Oh myyyyy.... Too many polygons there. This should be considered a high poly not a low poly. Besides, there are problems with the normals. Did you made any normal baking or are you just using smoothing groups? Another problem is the wood from the handle. Why did you not rotated that texture as the reference suggest? Besides, I recommend you to use a procedural wood material. 3dsmax has a good one you can use a base.

YaboyZay

@MarcoAntonio i know about the wood texture problem. I rotated it but i found out some of my uvs need to b fix first. I decided on fixing my low poly first because the bake could be better. I see where you say it has too many polys I'll fix it. Do you have any techniques for turning a high poly to a low poly.

MarcoAntonio

YaboyZay said:

Do you have any techniques for turning a high poly to a low poly?

mmmm... There are a lot of ways and which one you choose depends on what are you working on. For this kind of asset I would make a base mesh and then I make a high poly model from it by using edge supports and turbosmooth. Then I take the base mesh, clean it up, add some edges so it fits the high poly and not much more. With this I go to marmoset and make some bakes. It is important that your low poly object has enough sides on the borders so the silhouette matches the high poly. In the process, you need to take into mind how far is the object going to be seen.

If you want to see what I usually do you can look into my lewis machine gun post:
https://polycount.com/discussion/200140/
It is really outdated (at that time I used xnormal which I left after finding marmoset) but it may be useful to you.

YaboyZay

Hey Artists, I have decided to go back and try to finish up some projects I had stop working on. I've baked and textured the Katana and was wondering if I can get some critiques on it. 

Ashervisalis

I like it. It's a really simple design and looks so clean.

YaboyZay

@Ashervisalis Thanks. I was thinking about going back and possibly doing a more challenging design

Brian "Panda" Choi

Do that.