War Hammer AXE

PolyTech · Feb 2011

Working on my first Zbrush High poly projection C&C Welcomed
The Low Poly is at 2882 polys and the high is at 9 million

My Low Poly

My Zbrush Ready Mesh

Wish i new how to properly render from Zbrush

Mike Yevin · Feb 2011

go up to document, then export :thumbup:

as for the piece, your off to a good start, ive seen a bunch of others try this is the past. in my opinion the damage looks a bit too uniform over all the shapes going on, i would try and break it up a bit possibly with some less damaged areas (if that makes any sense, sorry been out at the bars for a while :poly136:). other than that im diggin it

PolyTech · Feb 2011

Mike: I agree ill tone it down towards the mid sections where less contact would occur with regular use. thanks for the Crit

burtonyang · Feb 2011

The axe is coming along really great, I can't wait to see the finish of it. Some of my suggestions are in the handle, it would look cooler if it had a unique shape to it to fit the hand.

PolyTech · Feb 2011

Here is the concept and the wood handle i am working on. i am at a stand still on the wood, because i am not really sure what it needs but it needs something.

Mike Yevin · Feb 2011

i would suggest taking a less realistic approach to this weapon as it comes from the war hammer universe. stylize it up a bit, focus on making an interesting silhouette, and try not to go overboard with noisy details. again just a suggestion, because now the wood is really lacking compared to the blade

PolyTech · Feb 2011

I do want this Weapon to be recognizably from the war hammer universe, but i do want to go realistic on this model.

So here is my update on the wood. I am smoothing it a bit because i assume after a wile of use it would smooth out where the hand would be rubbing.

burtonyang · Feb 2011

I would suggest adding some minor chips and damaging in the wood instead of having a boring smooth wood.

PolyTech · Feb 2011

burtonyang: I totally agree i need to continue the damage on down the handle.

one thing i am struggling with right now is getting a clean mask/extrusion for the leather straps down at the bottom of the handle. if anyone knows a trick to making believable strap layering that would help me so much.

PolyTech · Feb 2011

Quick update on the handle of the axe, i am really struggling to get my shapes clear and sharp. this portion of the model is at 700k polys and it still wont play nice. any CandC would be most appreciated!

You can see on the close up what i mean. Much of the middle area just wont cooperate. I would really rather not bump this up another sub-D if i can help it, but i know of no other option.

DDuckworth · Feb 2011

if you are talking about maybe the squarish looks on the edges of the cloth pieces? then that's just normal for 700k tri's, you might need to find a better computer to finish this one up on if you can't get past 700k, it's typical for most zbrush tools to end up in the millions, i use to only be able to do about 3 mil on 2 gigs of ram but now I have 4 (max my MB will support) and my comp will happily work around 11 mil and possibly more but I haven't had the need to do that yet. Overall though you really shouldn't worry about this too much, a handle is 1. covered by the hand that holds it and 2. not ever that close to the camera, plus throw a diffuse texture on top of that and you would never even notice it in the normal map. If that's not what you are talking about then I have no idea what you are and sorry for the paragraph haha

r_fletch_r · Feb 2011

I like the Axes head, I find it a little noisy but it looks quite cool.
You might find it easier to get better detail in the cloth if you poly model the strips and subdivide them. rather than using subd d levels just to get the form. I have to agree with the other guys. Unless this is done for a render and not game targeted I would spend more time working on broader forms in the wood and forget about the fine grained noise.

4th-child · Feb 2011

love it mate, the detail in the metal it spot on!

PolyTech · Feb 2011

DDuckworth: Thats exactly what i am concerned with, although i keep being told not to go past 8 mil or so polys for the whole mesh. But i cant see why that would be a problem so i think ill just subdivide again (i have a monster Computer so i should be fine).
I do plan to make this one of my pretty render pieces but i want it also to be on the next gen poly count/texture size. So im going a little far with the detail only because i can. Thank you all for your feed back More updates soon.

DDuckworth · Feb 2011

Hey PolyTech, about never going past any amount sounds quite ridiculous to me. If you need it then do it, especially if your comp can handle it at a fast speed. Some meshes might just need that many poly's to get the detail you are looking for. It doesn't matter how high you take it in zbrush for it's final polycount, just make sure you retopo it once you finish the high poly - don't just use the lowest subdivision level to bake your normals to from zbrush, unless it's perfect, which is rarely the case. Also if you are only at 700k and you were told not to go past 8mil then you've got at least 2 more subdiv levels to go before you get there

David-J · Feb 2011

It's looking great. I agree about subdividing it if you need it.
One thing I might add for the wood. Add damage that affects the silhouette. Otherwise you end up with a boring cylinder from afar.
Regarding the head. Like the said, right now the detail is all over the place. Think about how it has constructed and how it was used. For example, it was probably hammered to build it so the width of some of the metal pieces would vary.

cheers and looking forward for more images.

PolyTech · Feb 2011

Here is the finished High poly Let me know what you think.

Will Faucher · Feb 2011

Looks good! I think it is slightly too noisy however. There is no way you'll be able to get all those details in your texture without using a ridiculously huge texture for it. I think just the dents and such would be best.

Also, I think the strands of cloth need to be better defined. Sharper/harder edges. Right now it looks a little bit like melted marshmallow around the grip. Jk. But seriously, harden those edges up a bit, and smoot out the high frequency details, and it will help, I think!

I'm JUST about to start something like this myself. You stole my idea! ;P

PolyTech · Feb 2011

Prophecies: i know what your saying and i learned a lot about how much translates to normals and how much does not.(not even half of my detail could be seen in my 2048 bake) i also was disappointed with the grip, i did want to sharpen the strapping up but i couldn't find a tool that would help me make the harder edge.

I will post more updates soon after i clean up my normals and start poly painting.

Sean VanGorder · Feb 2011

Definitely coming along man. Just agreeing with what's already been said about being aware of how much detail will be picked up in the normal map. You may want to exaggerate the detail in the wood grain just to make sure it translates well.

DDuckworth · Feb 2011

Also about the bake, I would stay away from Zbrushes baking, i'm not saying it's bad, but I believe xNormal is much much better, and it helps to go ahead and bake at double your planned size then use photoshop to resize since it often has better compression than anything else. Finally when using xNormal and doubling sizes, make sure you increase the "overpaint" settings so that when you resize mip map seams won't occur once in game.

PolyTech · Mar 2011

Quickly i have some renders of the rough Diffuse. To bring this thread to a close i wanted to at least show my base diffuse.

I will be reworking the grip on the normal spec and diffuse map soon.

stubs3d · Feb 2012

OUCH! I love this model very much, but the colors you've chosen for the diffuse completely ruin the models look in my opinion. The metal would look much cooler if it were darker, except for the sharpened edges and a few damaged areas. The yellow and red, I just don't get at all. The model looks fantastic though. Awesome work!

theslingshot · Feb 2012

Like stubs3d said...The handle and the cloth look great. i'd clear everything else and go with something darker and more consistant

PolyTech · Mar 2012

recently reworked the textures.

War Hammer AXE

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