Warhammer war hammer

Pope Adam

starting a war hammer from Warhammer concept. Class project. Hi Poly wip.

oh yeah, it's not supposed to actually fit into the WAR game... just using the concept.

Pope Adam

a bit further along... this is actually incredibly fun!!

i max modifier stack

Japhir

looks nice! very accurate so far! details on there that i couldn't even spot on the concept .
IMO the feathery bits shouldn't bend out that much but stay a little more flat (otherwise it'd be a nasty handle). and all the details stick out a bit more than in the concept, but my guess is that that is for a better normal map or something like that right?
good luck!

00Zero

i really doubt he could normal map the feather things on the handle. youd have to have geo there with an alpha map or something.

good work so far. ZEEEBRUSSSHHHH dents and wear

BradMyers82

Looking pretty slick man, I really like it so far. My only crit up to this point is that it would be nice if you gave those little skulls some volume. Nice Job!

Pope Adam

hey guys thanks for havin a look... i need some help here though. I've sculpted out the griffon a little bit and impoted back in to max. I'm curious, what would be the best way to get this to look good while keeping the tri count down? I only have 1000 tris to work with, and I'd like to keep it below if at all possible.

I've been considering simply baking the griffon on to a single flat plane, then alpha off the rest of the griffon. This would obviously be the cheapest way to do this. Otherwise, would yall suggest I simply build a low poly around this? it will be difficult to keep the tri count down doing this, since it is a rather complex shape.

Thanks in advance PC. Cheers

Pope Adam

okay, so i did a quick text on a flat plane and put it next to the hammer... i think it looks pretty good like this so i'm probably gonna follow this method for now until i'm told otherwise. little wip here

more to come

almighty_gir

just a little bit of warhammer geek coming out here.

that hammer is supposed to be Ghal Maraz, the emperors hammer. it's actually a warhammer and should have a much longer haft...

but it's not your fault mythic fudged up a lot of the concept art :P

Autocon

the griffin looks fantastic adam. top notch work right there

Pope Adam

oh hey thanks Mr Autocon! appeciated :P

Gir - it would be really easy for me to lengthen the handle and just double the UV space. I might do that... is it's actual length about double the size it is now?

and - here's the update. I ended up alpha mapping the gryphon since it looked pretty good in the test. here's wehre im at now. first pass at normals

seforin

hmm im wondering though , though this hamme looks great, the eagle from diffent angles, will it look proper as a plane?


perhaps a really simplified (dirt simple) silloute of the griffin might be better from different angels sake?

The hammer itself looks great I love it !

Office Dreadnaught

Coming out nicely. Only thing I would say is the talons around the orb at the bottom feel like theyre sticking out a bit much. Also not sure if its intentional or not but the engraving and patterning feel like they protrude much more than the concept, its a bit more subtle, but thats pretty nit picky. Good stuff.

Pope Adam

Sef: Yes, i agree that the gryphon isn't going to look too hot from many angles... i was a bit torn about hwo to go about tackling it, but with my poly budget, it was the best solution for the time being. It actually looks decent from about 15% angle all the way to 85%. surprisinglly it holds up pretty well almost all the way up until you look at it head on. I'll post some shots tomorrow to demonstrate. Thanks!

Office Dreadnaught: Indeed, I did take a bit of liberty with the design. I kindof pushed the designs a bit further than the concept as you noted, this was just a design choice on my part. the feathers below also flare off much more than the concept suggested, but i really liked how it turned out in the high poly so I just ran with it.

Thanks for havin a look fellas.

Question: the concept has this hammer shown in all gold material, which i find terribly boring, also i don't know how I'm going to paint this texture on to make it look believable. Anyone know how I might go about painting this thing to look right? I'll be tackling that end of this project tomorrow afternoon.

Thanks again everyone
ADM

almighty_gir

that's the kinda scale the hammer should be, i'd keep the haft the same length it is now, but add a leather bound grip at the bottom.

looks awesome though, really fast work!

edit: just remember that gold reflects quite a few different colours. it was always hard to achieve when i was painting the miniatures. one thing you could try, is having different colours in the spec. something that turned out good for me on the mini's is to have a really low level of purple and green in the shaded areas, and have the brightest highlights almost silver, to show ware, and give off a mystical look.

a little history on the hammer itself, it was given to Sigmar by the dwarven king after sigmar rescued him from a tribe of orcs. the name means "skull splitter" in dwarvish. and with it, he managed to slay almost a thousand orcs, and destroy the first and most powerful necromancer of all time. it's also able to repel vampires from its presence being such a holy weapon (manfred (a vampire) said he couldn't go within 100 feet of it).

so try playing around with colours to give off that heir of mysticism maybe?

Medestruit

Yeah, it's more of a 2 handed weapon. I was a bit confused by that in your original post where you showed the plane with the concept and your model over the top...your scale is technically correct for that, but it seemed more of a 2 handed weapon. Glad I wasn't just crazy

There's something about that top point that just seems odd to me. I would think it would start as the same thickness as the handle and then smoothly transition outward to that larger point...if you get what I'm trying to say

Pope Adam

I hear ya fellas. thanks f or the lore!!!! awesome!!

Here's where I'm at now. will be fixing my normals and tightening up the color tomorrow.

Cheers

ps: i took a bit of liberty with the textures so far.

Snefer

Looks good from a technical perspective, but I agree about the shaft. I think the concept have a very short grip for the hammer, but you made it even shorter instead of longer, wich would have made more sense. Now it looks like something a warhammer-fan would like to have to hang above the fiireplace, not a weapon, because there is nowhere to grip it.

Pope Adam

i agree, this weapon would be very impractical to wield any way other than ornamentally, or held possibly with a kick ass libram in the other hand. Apparently this was not this weapon's original intention.

in an earlier post, Gir posts that this was a very magical weapon that could repel vampires from incredible distances. This made me imagine the mace as a more magical holy weapon. I believe that it's ornamental qualities compliment that idea.

Should I move away from this idea?

almighty_gir

actually... strictly speaking, the weapon itself had nothing to do with the repulsion of vampires. it was more Sigmar than the weapon, as sigmar destroyed the first necromancer, Nagash cursed all vampires to fear the faith of Sigmar, because they refused to come to his aid in the fight against the Empire.

because of that, anyone wielding a hammer of sigmar (sigmarite priests wield hammers in the immage of Ghal Maraz) has the ability to repel vampires, through their faith. but since the hammers are linked to the faith, they recieve some of that power.

it's all a bit weird =x

still i love what you've done, it looks awesome i might have modeled some of the rivets though.

whats_true

Gir, I don't think that that is the hammer of sigmar. The emblems are completely different along with the entire hammer itself. The hammer of Sigmar has a skull, this one has a Griffin, for example.


The texture looks good. Could use a little bit of reflection on it to make it bling.

Saidin311

Any chance of peeping the flats? I'm just curious on your uv layout more than anything. Looks pretty ace sofar although it definitely looks like some sort of lop sided one handed mace thing (I'd imagine it being very difficult to steady one arm/hand holding this) rather than a real war hammer.

Pope Adam

Gir - Ahh well, this is a hard battle to win lol. Anyway, the hammer might not be the best weapon for beating the crap out of people, but lets remember that this is a fantasy weapon for use in a fantasy universe - not real life. There, i'll stick to that one lol!

True - Reflection: incoming!

Saidin311 - Thanks! Here's the flats as they are right now. The normal maps are really doing almost all of the work for me on this one. Sorry no wireframe right now... doing some other renders in max at the moment otherwise I'd have thrown it on top off the diffuse.



Cheers guys. thanks for everything so far!

almighty_gir

looking great dude, the normals look very clean, i like

Autocon

hey Adam in Zbrush when baking your normal if you first go to Color and change the RGB to 128/128/255 then create a new Texture the size you want it will give you that nice even Normal Blue background so you wont have that ugly white behind your texture.

Pope Adam

ah, true true. I eneded up deleting all the backgrounds when i was having a wierd problem with the glossiness affecting my alpha planes...

i actually exported the high poly sculpt back in to max and got my normals there.

Thanks Gir!

nrek

This is looking pretty sweet dude. The griffin really turned out great. And as for the practicality of the weapon...http://www.iconsoffright.com/images/Meat_Train_4.jpg ...seems to work for him.

stoofoo

Hey man! High poly looks great! Keep at it!

I'd probably darken that gold color for the metal, though. Maybe shift it towards an olive sort of color? Use reflection/spec to give it the gold color and it will look substantially better!

BradMyers82

Hey, great job adam! Your really progressing quickly with this. I agree with stoofoo's crit. Spec is always the trickiest bit, but its so important for a highly reflective object like this. Awaiting the final textures