[DS2] Mace, Jeebs

jeebs

Hello there
It's good to see so many entries in this contest.
I don't think I ever participated in here, so this is my first time.
Good luck to everyone

latest update:



I didn't do any skeches, straigt from the head I model base of the mace, for now I think that it would look great if I combined 4 demon head around, so here it is:

Impala88

wow, from what i can see so far it looks based on a Diablo sort of demon? Love the horns (if it is a demon ) you need to give it big pointy teeth!

jeebs

thank you I don't know where I got this Idea from, when you look at a lot of great art in a long time you start to forget it but it still stays in your mind until it sort of mixes together unnoticebly and then you produce somthing new.. yes I'm adding teeth right now

Skyerzz

Woah this is looking really cool man!! What are you doing with the whole in the middle of the head?

jeebs

I don't know yet, just wanted to make something there, perhaps a some kind of dark crystal or somthing like that.

jeebs

added the teeth now,a little bit more work with the model and the time for sculpting

kelli

Looks great so far! Can't wait to see it sculpted. I'm curious, what are the horns hollowed out for on the top?

Baj Singh

Intriguing design, looks heavy and solid enough to cause a lot of damage. Nice start.

jeebs

a little bit of sculpt:

Impala88

that's awesome. Have you thought how the base of this skull smashing head is going to work blending into the handle? Continuing the ridge feel from the horns might be something that'd look cool, but it also might create too much noise, depends how the colours you choose work on it

Loving the face btw! that bottom jaw is so beefy! although maybe bring the chin more into a point.

Looking forward to the progress you make on it!

jeebs

Thanks for your comment, I didn't think about the handle yet, my imagination can't handle that now . Anyway I sculpted some more and now will try to think about blending to the base.

AimBiZ

Nice intense faces though doe to no eyeballs it almost looks like they have their eyes closed which looks kinda comical, or maybe it's just me. Great progress non the less!

Maph

Awesomely great start man! Can't wait to see a handle on that one.

jeebs

some update:
finished the head of the mace, of course there will be places to fix, and also I'm thinking on making different faces, as you can see now their texture looks different, but the proportions are the same, so I'm thinking of changing them... I'll have to experiment a little. also this model looks pretty difficult already, and I'm starting to get a little worried if I will manage to fit into 1500 tris.
anyway here's the sculpt

XRevan23

great sculpt man

PredatorGSR

Looks cool up close, but how does it read from a distance? Does all that detail distract from your larger shapes?

Zocky

Wow you have some insane sculpting there!
Love how it looks so far, keep up!

the_rabid_rabbit

man that is looking awesome im rather envious

EvanG

nice looking mace I am excited to see how you finish this one

jeebs

thank you for the comments.
I didn't sculpt anything else, just wanted to show how it looks from a far.
the handel is still in wip state.
It does look strange, perhaps theres too much detail, don't know. any ideas of what to do, if there is anything to do at all. Perhaps it would look better when finished.

Orb

I don't want to be rude, but I think you over detailed it, and it doesn't fit the darksiders style anymore, which seems to be more chunky in the details. I think you're gonna have a lot of trouble also to fit on 1500 poly , you should try a quick baking test, with a decimation for exemple, see how it looks.
Yeah maybe try to simplify it a bit, having more readability on the shapes, cuz the design is pretty badass but hard to read with so much details.

Orb

just an other thing, try an other matcap, with less highlights and cavity and make a bpr render (like you're faking a baking) and see how it looks, maybe it will look less detailed with a better matcap also.

jeebs

you are right, thank you. I will create a quick low poly and see if I fit into 1500, also see how it will look, there's still time so I can begin from the begining.

jeebs

Made a quick low poly, and baked normal map and AO map, and it looks pretty good with 512x map, but I also had to make alpha map otherwise the teeth would use too much of topology. I maade some experiments just for the future but for this challange I will be starting from the begining.
this model takes 1200 tris by the way.

Skyerzz

Man this does looks sooo cool though. How much would taking one head out, making it three heads, save you? I don't think we get to have alpha maps so maybe you can make the teeth larger kinda like this so there are less of then?

Either way I look forward to what you do next

Orb

Nice test man! The ao really helps a lot to read it better! Maybe you dont need alpha if you have 1200 tri, could use some extra triangles for those theeth!

edit: yeah maybe not, that's a lot of theeth actually xd

Spug

Looks great, and I totally agree with orb, use them tri's!

jeebs

thanks for the support

I already started modeling another type of mace.
This time I tried to do it with a little bit more of darksiders style.

EVIL

you couldn't use the alpha map anyway, since bobo said the weapons don't use alpha maps.

I like both designs although I have to agree with orb on the style.

that said I like the direction you are going with the new one!

jeebs

Thanks EVIL

some sculpting update
decimated it a little bit to play around in 3ds max.

jeebs

some more sculpt:

jeebs

made a small low poly test today:
1300 tris, 512x map AO and normal

glenatron

Wow, that bake came out really damn nice! Loving how chunky this one feels. Keep going on the rest!

jeebs

Thanks glenatron
I sculpted a handle and now high poly is almost finished..

Impala88

now that's a badass mace.

BoBo_the_seal

Looking really nice!

jeebs

glad you like it
made a little low poly test again.
starting to like the results.
rendered with marmoset tool bag, it's exactly 1500 tris, again 512x map.

David-J

Looks great. A bit hard to read now. Make sure the different shapes read well with the texturing.

cheers!

Pierate

Damn! This is starting to look awesome (not that it wasn't already), really looking forward to the final result

jeebs

what do you mean hard to read?
thanks

Today I played with textures.
Tested different variations lighting, combining different AO.
Right now diffuse has a base grey color with AO on top of it, also some other maps based on Bobo tutorial, which was great by the way, thanks a lot , I also added some other maps presenting different lighting. combined it all and got this:



and also made a small animation presenting it from all direction.

churro818

I love it, keep pushing the texture. it looks like its begging for an emmisive glow of some sort. Also how did you go about making the animated gif?, would love some insight on that. great job!

jeebs

thanks, I actually have thought about emmision from the mouth and eyes from the start of this challange . that's why I made an open mouth.
For the gif, I simply made the animation with 3ds max, saved it as .png format, then placed those pictures into photoshop and made a .gif..

jeebs

This is how I imagine the weapon should be textured, with emmisive map:

Spug

Dude! I am in love with this asset, so good, and all the angles read really well. My only crit, is that your texturing/colors are not reading now. GO BACK! The texture version that is goldish is so subtle and very good. IMHO lol, I would do something along these lines. I hope it helps, but I really like the idea of the emmisive map, but dont go too overboard with this. Make sure you use it to draw attention to the focus areas of your asset. Add in a lot of grunge/use to this. Make it look like there is dried blood on it, and has smashe many faces along the way. Just make it very very subtle, and implied. LOVE IT!

jeebs

your paint-over looks gorgeous! You made me realise that I was going towards a wrong direction. thank you for doing this. and at the same time I feel like I'm writing in the someone elses thread . I feel a little embarased that I missed this... thanks for the help, really apreciate it!

Joopson

Now get this thing into Skyrim! Haha, in my dreams, maybe.
Looks awesome. Really great.

Maph

Great work man, but can I ask why you have so many UV islands? The mace's head looks like an easy enough shape to unwrap in much less UV islands.
That seems like a pain to texture (unless you're using 3D painting like the cool kids of course).

EiGHT

I second Maph, that could of been done with 2-3 islands.4 at the most.

Spug

Agreed with Maph and Eight, and if you follow their crits, you will have a lot more texture res to play with and, when you half it to 512x512 it will look a lot better, and help with seams.

jeebs

Perhaps you are right about the seams. I didn't have any problems yet tho..
I am painting in 3d environment so it's no problem texturing (unless I will have problems later, don't have a lot of experience).
I don't think the quality would change much since it's already 512x map, ant it looks pretty good I think..
I only did it with many islands so I could save more space on the map.
at the beginning when I was testing bakes, I did it with fewer island, they didn't fit properly so I didn't know what to do. I cut it few times ant somehow shoved it into map.. but at that time it was symmetrical by two axis x and y. I didn't really like it because all the scratches on the surface were symmetrical, wanted to change that so the count of the islands doubled...
I thought that it was ok that way, but if your telling me that it's bad then perhaps I should go back again. Damn more work..
I appreciate for your comments, that way I can learn something new. thank you

Spug

No problem dude, I would highly suggest doing it as a couple islands. Because A, it will work better for you and be easier to paint flat, and B, another artist will be able to grab this and work with it if need be, and edit it accordingly.

And btw, this is all you son, your work is very inspiring, and you should not be embarrassed in the slightest, you are a great game artist. We have people all the time who think stuff looks good, because you look at it too long, and when another fresh set of eyes are on it, they give you better perspective. GOOD LUCK!