knife needs texturin crit + tips

SSquir33

i sifted through some texture tuts and picked up handy tips. this is what i have so far but im not sure if im doing it right. sorry for boring colour scheme.
am using the xolihul shader with the cubemap.

trying to go for multiple-material look, trying to separate the metal parts from plastic. etc.

is there any way of the clip showing a true brushed metal look or is it down to the spec rather than diffuse? also i dont know how to the get that tip of the blade lookin like a shiny metal rather than a white strip -.-

and somethings bugging me, while texturing, what is the best setup for xoliuls shader? no cubemap n one light?etc, cheers yall

OtrickP

Works very well, a little flat but that could be changed by adding some more hightlight to the glossy plastic edges of the handle, the crisp inner blade edge is too perfect. I'd like to see the maps

ZacD

It needs a anisotropic spec to look like brushed metal, here's a pretty good link at explaining it, but its about hair, which is surprising similar to brushed metal.

http://stephenjameson.com/tutorials/anisotropic-shader-for-hair/

tda

Zac beat me to it, nice article btw. But yeah, for any kind of material properties that play off the lighting you want it to be strong in your spec and only hinted at in your diffuse. Same with the sharp edge, the diffuse should be a dark grey and the spec should be almost pure white.

While texturing with xoliul's i usually like to set up one material with what i imagine the final properties will be like, cubemaps, 3 lights all that jazz, then i copy it and turn all the effects off. While i work on the texture i'm able to alternate between these materials depending on whether i want to more clearly see my diffuse or the end result. There's no point only texturing with the default light and then turning all the effects on after you're done as it'll end up looking totally different, but at the same time, it's nice to be able to see your texture more clearly sometimes.

ayoub44

GREATE WORK , try to put more details to your texture and some scratch can help .. i see you are using one point light , blue ? use 3 point " yellow , white , blue " that will make the piece more COOL

briantsang

shouldn't the blade have a ZT logo? :poly136: I got this exact same knife. hehe

Don't have any texturing crits, but I agree you should add some more lights in it to show more of the geometry of this. I can't tell by just one picture, but do you have the handles hollowed out?

nice work so far

SSquir33

brian:u rock for havin a zt knife. THe the lil hole near the clip hollows in, but the handle itself , i faked it and stuck a middle peice in. I know i know:poly141:.wouldnt adding the ZT logo be copyright infringment ?? heh

well heres a couple mins fiddling with the spec, looks less fake, set up a 3 point light setup. im too used to be spoilt with MR's fancy light settings so i did my best here .thanks for the link zacD on anisotropy

i wouldnt call it finished, but i wouldnt want to push it further as this is a stepping-stone project that helped me learn ALOT about texturing methods. but i also made ALOT of mistakes haha.
the anti alias is bitty here. i think its because of how thin the edges are in the psd. im gnna flatten the image and blur it a lil hopefully thatll solve that.

Racer445

The way you get brushed materials without anisotropic shaders is heavy utilization of specular, and more importantly, gloss maps. The end result is decent for being rather hacky, and I made this example in about 5 or so minutes, so if you put more effort into it I am sure it'll be cool.



How I got this:

1. I used a stock base metal texture for the diffuse. I then used surface blur and reduce noise to smoothen it out, since you want the spec and gloss to do most of the work here. I also upped the saturation since the spec should have minimal color on this particular material, go look at some ref photos.

2. I found a great photo of a brushed metal in my collection, then combined it with the "dumb web graphics motion blur technique" of making brushed metal. Looks right good, that's the specular.

3. I inverted the brushed patterns on the gloss. This helps to fake the anisotropic shading and give everything motion. Brushed things generally have a very flat look to them, so I darkened the glos to give it a fairly wide highlight.

SSquir33

ahhhhh gloss maps are so cool but i dont know what im doing bahaahha. a cleaner setup here. having fun with xoliul.

sltrOlsson

Instead of being an asshole and post "google it", i'm goona be an asshole and post a link to the wiki explaining it

Never tried or "needed" to do brushed metal. But i thought about it from time to time. That looks super nice for 5 min racer!