WIP Casual Axe
After a truly shameful Skyrim binge, I needed to ease back into 3D and my eagerness to do so by working on any of my many unfinished projects was close to zero. So, I hopped on the bandwagon started by a couple of my friends from school: Casual Axing, in which a cool fantasy axe concept is found and modeled, textured, etc. as quickly as possible.
I started from this sheet of concepts that I found, and I modeled for about 4 hours yesterday before being cruelly reminded that 3D programs have an unfortunate tendency to crash at the most inconvenient of times and that saving is often a good idea.
And then I started over. This is where I'm at after about an hour and a half.
I'm kinda feeling like the top part where the head attaches to the haft should've been more cubic and less cylindrical, so I'll change that before I get into sculpting, and I need to better define the leather straps before sculpting, and I'm thinking I could probably do that simple geometric pattern a bit more easily in Maya than Zbrush.
Feedback would be appreciated. Also, this is the first thing I've done that's neither photo reference or my own concept. What's the etiquette on modeling someone else's concept? Is it enough to just give the original artist credit?
I started from this sheet of concepts that I found, and I modeled for about 4 hours yesterday before being cruelly reminded that 3D programs have an unfortunate tendency to crash at the most inconvenient of times and that saving is often a good idea.
And then I started over. This is where I'm at after about an hour and a half.
I'm kinda feeling like the top part where the head attaches to the haft should've been more cubic and less cylindrical, so I'll change that before I get into sculpting, and I need to better define the leather straps before sculpting, and I'm thinking I could probably do that simple geometric pattern a bit more easily in Maya than Zbrush.
Feedback would be appreciated. Also, this is the first thing I've done that's neither photo reference or my own concept. What's the etiquette on modeling someone else's concept? Is it enough to just give the original artist credit?
Replies
Tweaked the model a bit. Tried to tighten up the wrappings, as well as just make them a bit more interesting (not that you can tell in the mostly-side views that I've been screencapping, but before, the rotation on the individual chunks was only on the X axis, now they're rotated in X, Y, and, occasionally, Z). Resized and repositioned the bolts as well.
I just noticed how straight the handle is right where the spike goes through it. I may have to fix that when i go back to sculpting. Speaking of which:
Early attempts at hitting up the handle in Sculptris. For the first time since starting to learn 3D, I'm actually kinda enjoying (or at least, not hating) the sculpting step. I think it's, in part, because Sculptris is so stripped down compared to Zbrush and Mudbox. I can't get hung up in minutiae like subtools or creases. It feels a bit more natural than the more technical, UI-heavy sculpting programs I've tried in the past. It's unfortunate that I can't easily hide parts of my model and instead have to just rock separate files, but it's still an improvement over "How can I avoid sculpting on this project?"
Working a bit on sharpening up the edges. Someone on Facebook pointed out that the previous shot looked "more like a slim jim" than wood, so hopefully the sharpening of edges and better definition of cracks will help make that clearer.
Sculptris seems to be more interested in crashing than in giving me the geo I would need to get any more detailed (detailed knotholes, better cracking in the middle etc.), and I'd like to move on, so I'm going to call the handle mostly done, with one major caveat: I'm looking at some reference for the cracking and rings at the top of wooden posts and the like, but I can't figure out how to start sculpting in that detail. Does anyone have any tips on how to sculpt in something like this?