Fretwork Crossbow

Gabriel Fors

Hiyathar.

I've been toying around a bit after work today and started making a crossbow from a concept I made a couple of months ago. It started out as a basemesh that I was going to load into Zbrush, but it sort of became a proxy-modelling exercise instead. Heh. I figure that I'll try to make the proxy as good as I can, and then I'll use the low-poly version as a basemesh.

So, this is the concept:


And this is the model after nearly two hours of work (I try to time how long this takes me. Good to know.)


Tell me what you think so far.

efren_chavez

I like the concept, it is very ornate and interesting.
Judging from the screen-shots, I think you are modeling one half of the model and then mirroring it. One thing I think it would help is making the model several pieces, right now it seems like you have one chunk of geometry. That could help you think how the object is actually built and may make it easier to rig and/or detail in Z-brush.
I definitively would like to see a first pass texture for this, I think that the concept allows for a colorful, interesting texture.

brandoom

Cool concept. Definitely not something you see everyday.

Are you planning to zbrush it?

Flava-Fly

Getting the natural flow and craved feel of this wood will be the make or break of this! Looking forward to see how you progress.

Quokimbo

I have been working on a crossbow myself. Yours looks ace!

Gabriel Fors

efren_chavez wrote: »

Judging from the screen-shots, I think you are modeling one half of the model and then mirroring it. One thing I think it would help is making the model several pieces, right now it seems like you have one chunk of geometry. That could help you think how the object is actually built and may make it easier to rig and/or detail in Z-brush.
I definitively would like to see a first pass texture for this, I think that the concept allows for a colorful, interesting texture.

Yeah, I've been thinking that I ought to extract the "bow" part of it. The plan has been to use multiple pieces all along, but I sort of got impatient.
The bird is supposed to be carved out of the stock, so I'm going to let that be a part of the model. I really want to be able to get the wood texture of the stock to carry over to the bird.

Textures are still a long way off. I have to proceed on this on the night's I'm able to stay after work, and those are regretably sort of rare.

brandoom wrote: »

Are you planning to zbrush it?

Yeah, definately, as long as I get someone to actually install it on this workstation.

Flava-Fly wrote: »

Getting the natural flow and craved feel of this wood will be the make or break of this! Looking forward to see how you progress.

Yeah, most of the time working was acctually spent re-arranging the geometry so that I was able to approach some flow in it. I'm gonna do a lot more of that sort of work on the stock to help the fretwork-work.

Quokimbo wrote: »

I have been working on a crossbow myself. Yours looks ace!

Thanks, man!

Gabriel Fors

So I managed to squeeze another hour or so in after work today. I followed your suggestion efren_chavez, and separated the pieces. Now the entire wood bit is one chunk of geometry, and the metal bits are separate. Spent some time rearranging the geometry on the wings and merging the decoration to the stock, in order to make the geometry a bit smoother.



I probably won't get a chance to work on this again until monday. Too bad, I'm having a lot of fun with this already.

Gallows

The update looks a lot better. I'd say just clean up that edge on the back two spirals. Can't wait for a texture!

Gabriel Fors

Another minor update. Managed to get another 90 minutes or so of work done yesterday. Added the frets on the front of the bow. Not sure if I think those turned out to well, but most of that will be done in Zbrush anyway. Did some minor fixes in the geometry and tried to get somewhat even-sized quads all over.



Next update will be Zbrush-updates, if all goes as planned.