Hammer Time

Patackular

Working on a hammer and feedback would be great. The fabric handle-wrap is what I am least happy with at the moment.



Might as well ask while I am here, but having used hard surface modelling for the hammer head part in Max, the topology seemed problematic to the sculpting. Am I doing this wrong or is this just one of those things?

zakhar2

I guess it depends on what your topology was. If you had all evenly spaced out quads you shouldnt really be having any issues in zbrush.

ariofighter

I have seen some peoples good success doing straps like that in max or maya first and importing a more 'finished' shape into zbrush. That way your adding detail in zbrush instead of trying to sculpt the whole thing from scratch. Just an idea.

Patackular

@zakhar2: Yeah, I have tried to maintain even topology, but that hasn't been entirely possible given the hard-surface construction edges needed.

A friend suggested subdividing a new base mesh with smooth turned off, but then I would not achieve the sloping edges I want in places. He also suggested using morph targets to store and project these details on to a a new base mesh, which i might do, but I think I may get away with the subdivision level I have here.

@ariofighter: I think you are right. Although it may be tricky creating the shape for the handle-fabric in Max, it would probably be more efficient than sculpting it in ZBrush.

Patackular

I have managed to get what looks like a decent normal map projection from my sculpt, but I wanted to get some advice on unwrapping hard-surface objects.





In order to avoid getting black edges I have read up that separating flat surfaces up from each other, as UV islands/using unique UV's, is a viable solution. My only worry is that this creates lots of seams and is going to making texturing more of a headache. I have seen other hard surface models being spilt up a lot, but I am more used to organic modelling and I am unsure to whether I have too many seams.



I wondered if someone could help me out and tell me if this is a sensible way of tackling this.

KyleHickey

hello pata,

I like your axe, and you low poly seems ok, you do have a few too many edgeloops in certain areas.

your unwrap is sensible and you are making good use of space. The general rule of thumb is to seperate your UV islands where you would seperate your smoothing groups. So any place you would like a crisp edge, is a good place to split your unwrap.

you should post your projections and texture when you get them done.

looking forward to progress.