Challange #10 LightSaber: EQ

EarthQuake

Polycount is 585 or so, a 256x512 normal/diffuse still a lot of detail and stuff to paint in the diffuse and then need to paint a spec map as well, ill post the maps when its done.
Heres shots from lightwave:

and a render from max:

EarthQuake

did a quick blade in like 2 minutes

Since a couple people asked im using 4 intersecting planes, and self illum set to 193, 239, 196 to give the glow a nice green color in max.

heres the map for the blade, could be smaller but really i dont care.

EarthQuake

Ok im calling this done.

MoP

Looks cool, although I think the dark grey of the hilt would look better as a lighter grey, maybe with a little colour variation and subtle noise/texture overlay on the diffuse map (use the same texture overlay on the spec, diffuse and normal maps for a nice effect, use the Photoshop normalmap filter for the heightmap).

I also think the button would look cooler if it was a different colour to the gold trim on everything else.

It would look so much cooler in the renders if the blade's maps actually went to full transparency before reaching the edge of the geometry... looks kinda half-assed when there's a glowing edge that terminates because of geometry. Just go round the edges of the opacity map with a big blurry black brush (alliteration!).

Nice work!

EarthQuake

Brome was trying to tell me this on irc but actually dosent terminate because of the geometry(it ends close to the edge of the geo, but its not cut off by it), what i did was paint a very faint outer glow, and then went over that and painted a center glow to it that has a little bit of randomness to it, so the look i have there is intentional. The diffuse actually does use the same texture as the spec, just with less contrast. I had more contrast on it but it didnt want such a rough look to it. Adding some color variation is definately something i should do and cant see why i overlooked. Thanks for the comments man.

MoP

Well, it sure looks to me like the geometry is cutting off the edge of the alpha map. It goes from dark blue/grey straight to black in a straight line, making it really obvious that you're using a number of planes, rather than just looking like a cool glow.
Sure you don't have your monitor brightness set too low? The edges of that glow are perfectly sharp and square, and glows should not be sharp and square

EarthQuake

Oh ok yeah i see it now, i had to up the brightness of the render in ps to notice tho, when i checked it before i just upped the brightness of the alpha(which dosent make any sense)