Viking Weapons (W.I.P) Go High poly?

Dagon

I'm trying to make a Viking weapons, shields and helmet pack although with better quality as I have modelled many weapons before but I have never sculpted the models to gain good detail like I see many other artists do. If I model the base meshes like I have done already and then high poly -> sculpt -> retopo and bake. Would that work and gain the quality similar to this? http://static.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/images/1754-1-1322406460.jpg

and this guy's http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=91568&highlight=skyrim

What would I need to do to gain such detail is the method I stated above ideal?

And here are the screenshots they're pretty bad though for some reason Blender just didn't want my models to look nice haha....


I forgot to mention that they are all out of scale so don't need to comment on that I'll be arranging that later on.






Here's the helmet references:

http://listverse.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/300386l.jpg.jpeg
http://www.nuclearblast.de/shop/artikel/bilder/viking-helmet-with-chin-strap/162921.jpg?x=1000&y=1000
http://www.heavenlyswords.com/images/C/22-230948.jpg

rkwongwai

Im still in school so Im not sure if what Im saying is the best way. You have your base mesh already done so you wont need to retopo the high unless there are some serious changes made to the topology. Just quadify that base mesh and bring it into zbrush. Sculpt in your detail and texture it up. Then take that high poly and your unwrapped base mesh into xnormal and generate out your maps. I looked at your helmet reference and you can get those details in there pretty easy with just normals. The big bolts might want to be added to your low though because of their size.

Dagon

Cool thank you Great advice! Can't wait to finish these up.

Shiniku

Before you take these into mudbox or zbrush, could you show us the wireframes? Reason is, it's very important to have even quads across your model. If you have rectangular faces you'll get weird distortion with your sculpting.

And for armor and weapons you can do a lot of the high-poly work in 3ds max. Then just do details like scuffs, hammer marks, scratches, etc in mudbox.

For your high-poly I would construct your model out of a bunch of pieces (like how you've got the bands on top of the helmet separated out) and then just bake that detail down to a normal-map for your low-poly, which could definitely be simpler than what you've got here (I'm just assuming, can't see wireframe, but you do have some unnecessary parts modeled out that could just be in the normal map.))

Dagon

Here's the wireframes and unfortunately I seem to have a lot of triangles especially when it comes to tips of swords, axes and helmets...

LMP

What you have now are somewhere between low poly and high poly, a nice medium poly. You'll need to reduce the amount of geometry for low poly, and add more for the high poly.

Shiniku

Triangles aren't too bad - they should still work okay in your high poly if you subdivide a few times. Sometimes they're unavoidable. And of course they're fine in yourlow.

Before taking those into zbrush you'll need to add a lot of cuts so that all faces are roughly square shaped. Right now the swords and handles especially have really long rectangles which won't sculpt well at all.

Dagon

Ok will do Shiniku! I also realized I have two choices based on what Shiniku and LMP said. When I sculpt the detail either I do retopologize back to low poly lower than I currently have or I cut back on the poly's now based on the models I have currently. But if I do so then sculpting them wouldn't work too well as Shiniku stated that rectangles won't sculpt well either. I keep these models for baking and just duplicate them and then add all the loops to "square" out the rectangles. That's what I understand right now.

rkwongwai

Your poly count is fine. The average poly count for udk first person weapons is 5k +. Just add a quadify mesh modifier to those and you'll get even topology for zbrush. No need to go in there and individually cut those lines in.

Dagon

What about sculpting the weapon detail? If I import the swords or knives into sculptris the blades will become soft and all round and weird... How would I go about not messing up the models when importing them to be sculpted?

For example here's the references to some of the weapons:


Knives:
http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/7484/viking2qh1.jpg
http://files.myopera.com/florianek/blog/litlauss_blog.jpg


Swords:
http://www.weaponsemporium.com/WE-Gotfred%20Viking%20Sword%20SH1010.jpg
http://www.kwikwap.co.za/bauchop/photos/aged%20viking%20sword.jpg
http://thevikingweaponsstore.com/images/Valiant_Armoury_Hedemark_Sword.jpg

rkwongwai

Im not familiar with sculptris. If it's anything like Zbrush then I think the problem would be when you subdivide. In zbrush if you want to keep your hard edges then you divide with a crisp modifier and use a smooth modifier for more organic look. Not sure if sculptris has anything like that. I recommend zbrush if you can get your hands on it.