Looking for gun engraving patterns

THE 5 · Nov 2010

Almost everytime I do a weapon I am looking for some Engravings, cuttings or tatoo-like lineart to enhance them and give them some fine detail, you know, these classical ones with leaves, wild animals, feathers, etc. liek these
http://www.shootinguk.co.uk/imageBank/cache/p/Purdey_Woodward_shotgun_engraving.jpg_e_396a279009743b84848c0932fe048b5b.jpg
http://www.engravingarts.com/jpgs/ShtgunAltaDoorPg.jpg
http://www.willyb.com/files/Engraving-1.jpg

Other than drawing the engraving myself I mostly just pick a random brush (leaves, Flames, Tribals) and paint all over the place resulting in some random noise that looks "interesting" but not to realy good closeup.
Yet I were not able to find any engraving patterns or atleast bigger pictures I could produce tileable maps from. Googling "gun engravign gives nice results, but there are none realy usable for a pattern.
CGtextures also gave up on me at this specific request

I'd like to have two or three patterns of that sort.
So if anybody stumbled over such patterns or knows where to find them (free), pelase let me know!

sprunghunt · Nov 2010

try typing "william morris wallpaper" into google.

However you'll never find a proper 3D version of those patterns availiable. I would make them in a 3D package since then you'll get some good quality displacement maps from the result.

THE 5 · Nov 2010

Thanks for the tip Sprunghunt! I never said I need anything 3D thoug, I'd be completely happy with 2d for now ;p

Is late so I'll have a closer look at those wallpapers tomorrow, but they do look promising.

CrackRockSteady · Nov 2010

I bought a book a while back called Steel Canvas: The Art of American Arms. Basically hundreds of pages of high quality photos of detailed weapon engravings. I've used it several times in the past doing engravings, just scan in some of the images and pick and choose what I can use best, and make the rest up.

Here's the book, if it interests you:
[ame]http://www.amazon.com/Steel-Canvas-Art-American-Arms/dp/078581891X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1291151216&sr=8-1[/ame]

But as far as engravings for making a tileable pattern, they may not be much help. Most weapon engravings are fairly unique, and rarely use a single tiling pattern over an entire weapon.

THE 5 · Nov 2010

CrackRockSteady wrote: »

But as far as engravings for making a tileable pattern, they may not be much help. Most weapon engravings are fairly unique, and rarely use a single tiling pattern over an entire weapon.

Yeh, I am shure that I can fabricate some repeative, seamles pattern for PS though, but it's not that important either. Some larger patterns would already serve my purposes, just not the small bits you can find on gun pictures, they are way to specail and only fit to the weapons shape.

Mark Dygert · Dec 2010

You might have some luck finding "leather stamp patterns" too. Leather stamping is how they get the detailed patterns into saddles and other leather stuff.

http://www.klendasaddlery.com/design.htm
http://www.tandyleatherfactory.com
http://www.eleathersupply.com/

I remember there being a site that had 2D drawn patterns but I can't find it right now...

THE 5 · Dec 2010

Thanks for the suggestion Vig!
I found a few patterns that seem usable, most of them are verry "flowery" or celtic though.

Do these tendrils here have a specific name I could google for?
http://www.shootinguk.co.uk/imageBank/cache/p/Purdey_Woodward_shotgun_engraving.jpg_e_396a279009743b84848c0932fe048b5b.jpg
It seems they are called "scrolls" engravings, thoug I barely find any usable images when googling that

Mark Dygert · Dec 2010

Yea I've seen it referred to as "scrollwork". You might want to also search for "Iron scrollwork" "wrought Iron pattern". A lot of Victorian and French ironwork have fancy patterns like that.

I have this book, and I've used it quite a bit as reference for railings and what not, it might be worth checking out.
http://www.doverbooks.co.uk/pp/Architectural/1100_Decorative_French_Ironwork_Designs.html
There are probably more out there too... so yea scollwork, and ironwork might be another good path to check out.

Some of the scrollwork patterns are pretty easy to do in high poly, a few paisleys rotated and scaled around can work nicely too.

divi · Dec 2010

those things are called acanthus leaves if i remember correctly.
most results might be for stonework though and quite possibly not as intricate.

THE 5 · Dec 2010

Thanks for the tips guys! I still did not find THE thing but I know wthat to look for now

So far I produced 2 patterns and a random brush.
testscrollengravings.jpg?t=1291218010

I think I'll stick with the brush for speedpaintings etc, the patterns are pretty much useless :P Seems like one can't come arround doing such stuff by hand if it's supposed to look anything other than random or cheap.

If someone finds a nice big image of a large area engraving afterall, feel free to share yur discovery

Mark Dygert · Dec 2010

I think the hard part of finding patterns that work is that engravings are super personalized and specific to the shape and size of the object which is one reason people use them, take something that everyone else has and make it their own.

This kind of illustrates what I mean... through photochoppery. Using the Transform tool in Warp Mode or maybe even liquify with a few different corner scrollwork patterns you should be able to hack something together?

THE 5 · Dec 2010

Yeh Vig, using snips of images was my original intention, but I was looking for some sort of one click sollution. You're also right with the personalization, if I'd just use a random pattern it will never look convincing. I need to make it unique to make it fit to the object, either by painting or photochoppery

I'd try to sculpt this stuff too, but I have no experiance with hardsurface sculting yet. Putting some shapes together in Max seems like a sollution to this, but they seem hard to model. I'll keep on experimenting with these engravings

m4dcow · Dec 2010

Search for flourishes or filigree and you should come up with some stuff.

metalliandy · Dec 2010

Some pretty good scans from the Kelmscott Chaucer HERE

THE 5 · Dec 2010

m4dcow:
Good suggestion, most of the results I get are stock ($$$) though

metalliandy:
Thanks, this was quite usefull

metalliandy · Dec 2010

My pleasure!

THE 5 · Dec 2010

One more word to google, thanks dustin

I did not cincider buiyng a book because of just that issue, but hey it's christmas soon and they aint too expensive. I'll have a closer look at these

Looking for gun engraving patterns

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