Macuahui-wha? Weapon
Hey guys,
I figured it was about time I posted one of my projects up here instead of just lurking the forums preying on the weak and ill.
So I was recently inspired to do a quick-ish weapon project and after getting some inspiration (no it wasnt Orb and his crazy awesome work on Crasher, why do you ask? *ahem*), Ive decided to work on a Macuahuitl. A macuahuitl is an Aztec weapon sorta resembling a sword made with sharpened pieces of obsidian. Theyre uber cool and allegedly capable of chopping people to fine bits.
Just so you get the idea:
I was thinking of making the blades on mine out of jade instead of obsidian to give it a bit more of a regal feel. Maybe it was used by a war chief or somebody on the battlefield who was of some importance and or rank. I also had the idea of it being adorned with decorative tiles with traditional looking Aztec carvings running the length of the weapon. They had larger double handed macuahuitl that were, as tall as a man and could decapitate a horse with a single stroke. So I was planning on going that route and making it a heavier weapon sort of half way between a sword and an axe.
Here are some silhouettes of some different concepts. I was thinking something along the lines of 2 or 3 with the pommel of 5. Feel free to let me know what your favorite aspects are, or if you think theyre all terrible.
Here is a quick block-in as well as the route I was thinking of going with the UV shells. All of the same colored pieces would be identical in geometry and share the same UV space.
I'm a bit torn with how I want to mirror the geometry. I was considering mirroring the half of the weapon from front to back to overlap the UVs but I'm not sure if it would be the best route in this case. The thought was that one half of the weapon would have a decent amount of battle damage (hence the missing piece of obsidian/jade) and the other less. So maybe I could get away with mirroring the side with less noticeable damage to save time texturing and get more UV space. I guess I could mirror both sides but I think it would be a bit too obvious when it's not viewed in profile. Opinions?
I figured it was about time I posted one of my projects up here instead of just lurking the forums preying on the weak and ill.
So I was recently inspired to do a quick-ish weapon project and after getting some inspiration (no it wasnt Orb and his crazy awesome work on Crasher, why do you ask? *ahem*), Ive decided to work on a Macuahuitl. A macuahuitl is an Aztec weapon sorta resembling a sword made with sharpened pieces of obsidian. Theyre uber cool and allegedly capable of chopping people to fine bits.
Just so you get the idea:
I was thinking of making the blades on mine out of jade instead of obsidian to give it a bit more of a regal feel. Maybe it was used by a war chief or somebody on the battlefield who was of some importance and or rank. I also had the idea of it being adorned with decorative tiles with traditional looking Aztec carvings running the length of the weapon. They had larger double handed macuahuitl that were, as tall as a man and could decapitate a horse with a single stroke. So I was planning on going that route and making it a heavier weapon sort of half way between a sword and an axe.
Here are some silhouettes of some different concepts. I was thinking something along the lines of 2 or 3 with the pommel of 5. Feel free to let me know what your favorite aspects are, or if you think theyre all terrible.
Here is a quick block-in as well as the route I was thinking of going with the UV shells. All of the same colored pieces would be identical in geometry and share the same UV space.
I'm a bit torn with how I want to mirror the geometry. I was considering mirroring the half of the weapon from front to back to overlap the UVs but I'm not sure if it would be the best route in this case. The thought was that one half of the weapon would have a decent amount of battle damage (hence the missing piece of obsidian/jade) and the other less. So maybe I could get away with mirroring the side with less noticeable damage to save time texturing and get more UV space. I guess I could mirror both sides but I think it would be a bit too obvious when it's not viewed in profile. Opinions?
Replies
I got pulled away from this weapon project until....well....yesterday.
So here's a quick WIP of the sculpt. The new clay polish feature in ZBrush 4 RC2 made pretty quick work of getting a pretty convincing jade/obsidian effect.
One thing: if this is as tall as a man, then wouldn't the person using it need more room to space their hands apart, or would they hold onto the edges of the hande? If so, shouldn't the stones/sculpted faces be on the inside and the handle be on the outer edges? Maybe I'm wrong, but the only references I saw in a quick google search had simple handles for easy gripping.
It might look better with jagged pieces all the way down the blade.
If you wanted to go for obsidian with the blade there, I think the surface would be cleaner with sharper lines where the pieces have been chipped away. It's a form of glass which might give you some cues as to how it'd fracture.
jmt - Yeah, your absolutely right. I moved the jewels up onto the raised part of the grip and extended the grippy texture all the way down. The handle got a bit truncated while I was working on it but I'll pull the end back into the body.
Jackablade - I tweaked my polish on the axe style blade to try and get it looking more like obsidian (or jade, whatevs). Looking at the render again I think I'm still going to push the pinching a bit more around where the blade has been chipped. I'm also going to clone the lower blade so that they go all the way up the body. :thumbup:
I've also sculpted one of the tiles along with a more damaged version. I'm thinking I'll be able to get away with two unique tiles plus the extra damaged one.
Looks like a cool project.
I'm not quite sure what I want to do with the pommel...traditionally they are simpler and made of wood like the body, but I can't help but think there can be something more interesting I can do with it. :poly122:
Alex3d - Thanks man, I appreciate the comment.
Vailias - Thanks for the heads up on the pressure flaking process. I might go back and try a pass with this kinda vibe and see how it looks. :thumbup:
Justin_Meisse - Yeah, I see what you mean. The main reason I have them on there is to add a little more variation to the silhouette, a little something in between the axe style head and the blades running down the sides.
Thanks guys.
I'm still not digging the pommel. I'm going to get together some more reference and brainstorm to see if I can come up with anything more interesting.
Updated ZBrush render:
And a quick and dirty marmoset render of the low res:
The lighting in your presentation however is very bland - hopefully UDK will help you out there.
Also is there any reason for seperating the stone from the wood? With the way you have it right now, you could easily tile the wooden part.
I ended up creating a shader in UDK that applied the specularity to the jade using a mask stored in the alpha channel of the color map but I ran into a couple of lighting roadblocks and ended up running low on time. So in the meantime I created another pass in the marmoset toolbag to try and get some interesting lighting.
The reason I have the stones as separate meshes was to get a bit more interest in the silhouette from the side. Also, when I was playing around with my normal map bakes I found that they became a bit too unconvincing from certain angles. In the end I just figured it'd just be better to give them some geometry and not try too hard to fake it.
Here's my updated render with the new lighting. I've also got my 512x1024 map on it which is why there's a bit of a drop in the texture fidelity compared to my previous post.