Fantasy Sword WIP

fearian

Hi! This is my first thread on polycount and its not that big.

I'm just finishing up my uni term, and I'll be going home for christmas in a few days, but I can't take my PC with me. So I would really like to model something completely finished before I go home - I've never made anything with a full low and highpoly mesh, bakes it textured it, spec mapped etc. etc. And I really feel like I should have by now!

So because It will be my first time doing all this stuff on one model, I thought I'd post my progress here so I can get crits at every stage. I'm looking for some hard crits, but if I miss anything I'll try and revisit this in the new year when I have more time!

Blah blah blah. On to the work! I want to make an interesting fantasy sword after being inspired by alot of awesome stuff in the last dominance war. so after doodling for about an hour I came up with this, and painted some rough colours over.



I guess thats not much but I want this thread up to get me motivated!

BradMyers82

Alright man, sounds like a good way to learn the whole process.

Your concept looks good enough, get at it!

fearian

quick question I've often wondered about,

http://www.pixlode.com/upload/578d_swordhelp1.png

for the handle, I was thinking about making it a seperate element. Is this bad practice? should it be once continuous model or is this a good way to save polys?

Autocon

one of the main reasons people use to make a full solid mesh, other then animation purposes, was that there game engine required it. but now there a plenty of next gen aka current gen engines that dont require this.

its a great way to save polys, there are some problems you could run into by doing this but for a sword handle you will be good

fearian

OK I think I've spent to long on the low poly. I need sleep!

http://www.pixlode.com/upload/1c2f_swordhelp3.png



anywhere I should cut down on the polycount? add more detail? I set myself an arbitary limit of 500, but I've probab;y been wastful somehwere...

Snader

i think you could get rid of some sides on the handle,and if you really want to bring it down a lot you could get rid of the extra cuts on the cutting part of the blade

this wouls dave quite a few tris as well:

bounchfx

that's one of the biggest mistakes I made when I started modeling, I thought that it all had to be one continuous mesh. made animating some stuff really obnoxious hah. I would totally recommend building parts separately, it's easier than trying to mesh everything together (especially when they are literally not made as one piece, such as the blade of the sword, the handle, and the rest.), plus you'll save some polys that way and you can attach it all together later if you'd like.

it looks good so far though!

BradMyers82

Yeah, what bounchfx said. Always break the mesh into peices if you can.

Snader made a good outline for you, and I can't tell from the pic; but the inside part of the sword (part that snader didn't draw on) should be a seperate peice if it isn't already.

Coming along nicely btw.

fearian

Well, Im back on this project! I got sidetracked by being away for christmas, but after being back at uni for a week, I got cracking and started cleaning up the mesh and readying the highpoly.



Any crits? Also, A point in the right direction to how to bake this to my low poly would be much apreciated. Im looking around, but the more help the better

Shogun3d

I would check the leather bindings on the handle, as in your concept they cross together at an angle. That might be a bit tough but you can also pull off just having angular straps wrapping down the handle in one direction at say 45 degrees. Other than that I like the details you added to the handle thus far although the skulls were not in your original concept



Andrei Ichim provided a simple but great normal map tutorial especially those unfamiliar with them and still learning (like myself in which I always go back to referencing to). You can find this tut here.
http://www.game-artist.net/forums/spotlight-articles/43-tutorial-introduction-normal-mapping.html

00Zero

yo, nice progress so far. that handle is gonna look like poopoo when you get a normal map from it. not because it looks bad, but because the normal map would barely catch that detail since its so small and it seems like it goes straight in very steeply. you should consider another handle design, one with more varying shape. perhaps leather strap binding crisscross thing.

its just, when you get the normal map, it will show this, but it will be like 2 pixels in width, and you might as well draw that by hand. so..it wont really help out.

you see your skull would make a great normal bake because it has a lot of varying angles in respect to the normal vector. whereas the handle is flat with a tiny sliver of extrusion. remember normal maps cant catch things going vertical (or straight in).