Low Poly Karambit

FredCM

Hello!

I have recently finished this karambit for my portfolio. The idea was to keep it low poly, but not too low, as I wanted it to be more detailed.

Comments and critiques are very welcome, as I am trying to improve the quality of my hard-surface artwork. A few more renders and a Marmoset viewer is also available at my Artstation.

It has a total of 2,094 polys / 3,944 tris and was rendered in Marmoset Toolbag.

Cheers!

JD_Sculpts

i dont have much experience in hardsurface but to me it looks clean, topology aswell

lluc21

Overall it looks good, but it has a few issues that are holding it back.

1- It looks like you tried to bake from a high poly mesh, but it didn't turn out very well, as it seems like you had very sharp edges on you high poly. For game ready models you want to have the beveled edges a bit softer than they are in real like, so that they catch light properly, otherwise they disappear on compression.

2- The topology looks ok for the most part, but there are many edges that are not serving a purpose. Generally on game art you want to have geometry that adds to the silhouette and avoid geometry on flat places. 
Here many of the lines that could've been collapsed: 

3- The textures look good, with good color and roughness variation. The only thing that is bothering me are the fingerprints. They have a red tint to it, as if it was rust, but it doesn't make much sense to me.

FredCM

JD_Sculpts said:

i dont have much experience in hardsurface but to me it looks clean, topology aswell

Thanks for the feedback!

FredCM

@lluc21 very nice tips of yours! You were right, this mesh was baked from a high poly, and its edges were not soft enough. This is something I will keep in mind, as well as making a better optimization of the mesh.

I tried to make those fingerprints as if they were old and dry blood. But I may have missed something to make it looks more like blood than rust.

Thank you a lot for your feedback!

lluc21

The problem I see with the fingerprints is that they are too perfect and regular to be a blood stain. I think it should look something like this: 

Notice how it has some blood buildup in some places, and almost nothing on others. You can probably convert this image to an alpha and work directly with that. Of course this is fresh blood, but you can find plenty of reference for what you're looking for online. The good thing is that most pictures of blood are over a white background, so it is very easy to get an alpha out of it.

FredCM

@lluc21 nice! This is the kind of detail I wasn't aware of. I will add this to the fixes I am making.

FredCM

@lluc21 I tried following all your suggestion and here are the modifications I made:

- Baking: I made the edges of the high poly mesh much softer than it was before, and I enjoyed the final result (even though it was not extremely noticeable). below is a new render, that was made with the new baked maps. But If you want to, you can take a look at the marmoset viewer at my Artstation.



- Topology: I got rid of those 3 edge loops on the sides of the blade, however, I couldn't change those diagonal edges. The reason for that is because if I did so (in any manner - deleting, connecting to a different vertex, etc) there would be shading issues, as most of the side of the blade consists of one single smoothing group. This is very likely the reason why I made it the way it is.



- Fingerprints: I found a couple of regular fingerprints photos on the web (I picked only CC0 ones) and used them as alphas. I think that was a good idea since I believe dry paint would not behave way too differently from dry blood. I also tried getting my own fingerprints, using black paint and a piece of paper. But I just didn't feel comfortable with the idea of making my fingerprints available publicly 😆 Anyway this is how those fingerprints came up:



Please, let me know what you think!

lluc21

The blade is looking better now, but there seems to be some issues with the baking, you should only have one highlight line, and not two:
 I am not sure as it is hard to see with all the grunge on top, but you might have a very low ray distance or maybe you don't have the UV seams as hard edges.
I'm not buying the fingerprints though. You should look for more reference on how blood looks like on a blade, maybe you need to give it a bit of height, I can't really point to where the problem is, but it doesn't read as blood still. Ultimately if it doesn't work out it might be wise to just get rid of it.
For the handle, looks like you don't have a high poly for that? The edges look too sharp still
One more thing that I just noticed while looking at the marmoset viewer is that there are hidden faces on the inside of the handle. Of course this is something that you would only notice if you look for it, or if you are looking it from very close on the viewer, but it is good practice to remove faces that will never be seen, especially when you're using texture space on those faces.

FredCM

@lluc21 the UV seams on the low poly are hard edges. I tried increasing the ray distance on the baking settings, but it made no difference. I also tried "inflating" the high poly mesh with the Shell modifier, so it could cover the low poly entirely. But that double-highlight issue simply won't disappear. The low poly mesh I used for baking is different from the final low poly mesh (on Marmoset Viewer), but their UV's kept the same. The difference is that I've placed support edges around the hard edges of the baking version, in order to avoid messing up with normals. So, I really don't know how to solve this issue.



I actually made a high poly version of the handle, and I've made its edges softer, the same way I did with the blade. But I guess it didn't get that visible.



I'm afraid this wouldn't be a good idea to delete the hidden faces of the handle, as they are not that hidden. And if I did so, the way I made its topology, I would create holes on the mesh. Besides, I made sure to scale down their UV's in order for them to fit the gaps on my UV layout.



Regarding the fingerprints, yes, maybe the best to do is not to use those fingerprints, as you said.

And thank you again for your tips! I've been learning some good dos and dont's from them.