Ice Cleaver - Northrend

Darkmaster

So I decided to make a weapon from a WoW concept, but not have it end up being 14 polygons! I have gotten a lot of comments from friends about how the monochromatic look hurts the design, and how the practicality of the weapon is somewhat questionable. I just wanted to get some feedback here about whether this is an okay model to have in my portfolio, or if the design raises so many questions that it's not even worth keeping around. Below is the concept from Blizzard, my sculpt, and the final in game shot. All thoughts and comments are welcome, thanks guys!

uncle

Just few fast comments:

Sculpt:
edges on the blade are too sharp(not visible on LP tho)
straps look little loose

Texture:
specular needs work
Lack of colour variation really is pain... probably biggest flaw

More maybe later, until then polish up this bitch.

Alex3d

You did a great job on the sculpt there, but the normal map is not really showing through. Texture seems too low rez, and you do need to spend more time on your specs.

Cordell Felix

It looks like you are taking off smart smooth when you sub divide the mesh in zbrush., the blade parts are very angular.

use edge control on the base mesh before you bring it into zbrush, you want that blade smoothed, even on the zbrush model.

As mentioned above, work on your spec because the model is very flat.

jmt

If I was doing this, I would change the design a little.

1) Make the handle look more usable by making it narrower, rounder and have the leather wound tighter

and 2) Add some color variation. There are several interesting features that could be different hues: purple, green etc.

Darkmaster

K well I will definitely make some adjustments to the spec, and try to boost up my normal map for sure. I was getting some weird smoothing in the blade when i subdivided, even with my control edges, I still couldn't get the smoothing that I was looking for. So I just divided normally, and then killed the hard edges in my normal map for the outside of the blade.

What do you guys think about introducing maybe a warm tone in the celtic design?