Emberclaw Sword

Shelluna

Hey everyone! I just wanted to show my work and progress of this sword I'm working on from Max Davenport's Emberclaw concept
mainly to motivate myself and grow here

Comments and critiques are always welcome!

Shelluna

Okay I think I'm done with the base model. Going to attempt to sculpt in Zbrush now.

Shelluna

Progress on the face

Shelluna

Done with sculpting. Moving on to coloring now.

ArtfulRunner

Hey Danginator,

Great work so far. Im excited to see this guys bakes and textures. Its a cool concept and I think you are doing a really great job nailing the vibe of the concept!

One small area you might be able to polish up though would be the hardness of the surfaces in the sculpt. Some parts feel a little bit like clay and just a tad soft. Might be something you come up against as you start to paint the diffuse. I marked up and painted over a quick little image to illustrate. I hope you dont mind. And good luck... looks fun!

Ashervisalis

I'm diggin this sword!

Shelluna

@ArtfulRunner Thank you so much for the critique! I see what you're saying. So I tried to achieve that sharp smooth look by using various brushes such as Flatten, Polish and Planar, but couldn't get the result I wanted. Maybe it's the way I'm applying that isn't making it look right?  I'll go back and see if I can tweak it a bit more. 

@Ashervisalis Thank you! I'm glad you're liking it so far!

Shelluna

I tried polishing it more and redid the cracks using Michael Vicente’s Orb brushes. It was one of the best things I’ve downloaded and I wish I knew about it sooner! I also did a quick paint on the blade and face.

Shelluna

Progress on painting

Tits

Looking great!

Shelluna

@Tits Thank you so much!

Camisado

Looks awesome so far!

Shelluna

@Camisado Thank you!

Shelluna

I think I'm finally finished! So I've learned a lot more about sculpting in Zbrush. Some problems I've faced were baking my normals to my low poly. I learned to next time add creases or extra edge loops around the edges before smoothing the model in ZBrush. My normals weren't lining up correctly in some areas after baking so I had to spend a lot of time fixing it in Photoshop. I also found out that the UV's in ZBrush gets erased after dynameshing. I nearly had a heart attack when I found that out and couldn't export the polypaint lol, but thank goodness there are programs that lets you bake textures.

The sword has a diffuse, normal and emissive map. I initially wanted to add some metalness and roughness as well, but I just couldn't get the materials to look the way I wanted, so I decided to just take them out and maybe apply them to future projects instead. Overall though, I'm still quite satisfied with how it turned out.

Any comments and/or critiques are always welcome!
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/9elXrv