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[WIP] Buck 538 Small Game Knife

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ChrisFraser polycounter lvl 5
Been working on this little knife for a bit. Loosely followed the Tim Bergholz tutorial on knife modelling. Didn't want to do the exact same knife though so figured I would give this one a go cause I thought it looked cool. Still have lots of little details to put into the texturing but its coming along alright. Did a low poly then sub-d for the high poly then baked in painter. Crits welcome!

Heres the actual knife





And here's where I'm at










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  • teodar23
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    teodar23 sublime tool
    The model looks good, mind sharing some wires?
    But its ruined by the muddy random noise on the blade. Do a clean version first then start adding dirt and grime in increments. Also theres a scratch in the blade so deep that it looks like it was made with a sword. This is probably steel one of the most durable material in the world, not aluminium. A cut like that is highly unlikely to happen.
    The handle is missing a bevel, dont know if that was intentional but thought i should mention it.
  • littleclaude
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    littleclaude quad damage
    Very nice, how did you make the wood material?
  • ChrisFraser
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    ChrisFraser polycounter lvl 5
    teodar23 said:
    The model looks good, mind sharing some wires?


    Sure, here's the wires on the low poly. Definitely had to fight the urge to make everything 4 sided and perfect. In the vid Tim talks a lot about how its going to be triangulated anyways so not to worry about it too much (but not to use that as an excuse to do shitty modelling). Not sure if I achieved that or not.





    You're right, I probably should do a clean version then work from there. I'll give that a go.




    Very nice, how did you make the wood material?

    Just layers of materials and whatnot in Painter. I started with the default American Cherry material and went from there.
  • teodar23
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    teodar23 sublime tool
    The use for quads is in the high poly model or better said the base model that you subdivide to get the high poly. In the low poly you must remove any unnecessary vertex keeping the silouette or the general shape in place. Looks good but could be more optimised.
  • ChrisFraser
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    ChrisFraser polycounter lvl 5
    Here's where I'm at with a clean version of the knife. I wasn't satisfied with the sharpened part of the blade in the older version so have spent most of my time working on that and refining some of the edges in painter. Coming along but lots to do still.


  • ChrisFraser
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    ChrisFraser polycounter lvl 5
    Still working away on this. I've kind of obsessively been trying to bake the grooves into the knife handle over and over for the past while. I think I like the bottom grooves now but the ones at the top still need some work. Contemplating adding in the bevel indent that runs around the grip too. Still lots to do. Finding spare moments to work on it.


  • ChrisFraser
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    ChrisFraser polycounter lvl 5
    Ok, finally starting to like where this is headed with the grooves in the handle and the screws. Now to get back to texturing this thing.


  • ChrisFraser
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    ChrisFraser polycounter lvl 5
    Small update. Got the other emblem on the handle


  • scottycharly
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    scottycharly polycounter lvl 10
    It's a very nice piece. Small details like the serial number are nice. Love the wood handle in its dirty version. The blade is very nice too. I would tone down the vertical lines on the blade and made them more subtle like on your ref. 

  • ChrisFraser
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    ChrisFraser polycounter lvl 5
    It's a very nice piece. Small details like the serial number are nice. Love the wood handle in its dirty version. The blade is very nice too. I would tone down the vertical lines on the blade and made them more subtle like on your ref. 


    Thanks, I've definitely been struggling with that sharpened part and tweaking it to look like the ref. How is this, better or worse? I feel like its too busy now but not sure..




  • 9Solid
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    9Solid polycounter lvl 8
    Hey, Chris. So looking at the model where it's at now, I think the subtle scratches are much better now. One thing I would note is that I'd expect the edge of the knife to be smoother, those scratches wouldn't be there with how the blade would be sharpened. Also, I would expect the edge to be smoother and more reflective than the rest of the knife. Also, I like the wear in the dirtier version, particularly in the handle. I think you would benefit from some more color variation in the handle, maybe tweaking the wood so there isn't a solid dark line in the center. 

    Finally, I'd second what someone said earlier about optimization. With the handle and metal being more or less the same profile, the wood parts and the metal center could be the same model in your low poly, and you could bake it with color id maps to add metal to the center.
  • ChrisFraser
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    ChrisFraser polycounter lvl 5
    9Solid said:
    Hey, Chris. So looking at the model where it's at now, I think the subtle scratches are much better now. One thing I would note is that I'd expect the edge of the knife to be smoother, those scratches wouldn't be there with how the blade would be sharpened. Also, I would expect the edge to be smoother and more reflective than the rest of the knife. Also, I like the wear in the dirtier version, particularly in the handle. I think you would benefit from some more color variation in the handle, maybe tweaking the wood so there isn't a solid dark line in the center. 

    Finally, I'd second what someone said earlier about optimization. With the handle and metal being more or less the same profile, the wood parts and the metal center could be the same model in your low poly, and you could bake it with color id maps to add metal to the center.


    Hey, thanks! The suggestion about the edge made a lot of sense so I fixed that. I liked the dirty version too and always planned to do a dirty version after I dialed in the rest of it. 

    About the optimization of the model, isn't it kind of too late for that by now though? At this point I might want to push on to the next model and try to make it as optimized as possible in the modeling stage. I hadn't made any 3d models for about a year prior to this knife so just wanted to use it to remember some things and keep moving on forward.

    I went ahead and finished the clean version with a slightly different handle colouring as suggested, did the dirty version and am thinking of trying some other texture variants. I threw together a stealth version as well, which looks pretty cool.

    In reality there are a couple of other variants of the knife as well that I might try, there's a white handled one with a leaf emblem that looks quite cool. Might give that a go.






  • ChrisFraser
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    ChrisFraser polycounter lvl 5
    Looking at this other version that I wanted to make, it looks like the handle is fundamentally different from the wood version. So, I'm taking the advice of a few posters in here and trying to redo the handle and optimize the geometry. I have gotten rid of the handle I had and am building it out of the blade mesh now so that they are one mesh in the end. So far just cut the shape into the blade, inset it a tiny bit so it doesn't match up perfectly with the blade handle, which in pics is what it looks like and extruded it out a little. Still lots to connect and some bevels. Just kind of posting a sanity check before I proceed.

    Here is the version I like and am going to try to do next



    And heres the mesh so far


  • ChrisFraser
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    ChrisFraser polycounter lvl 5
    Having some trouble with the bake on this one now that I made it one mesh:(

    I'm guessing I might need to add a bit more geometry to the low poly along the seem between the blade and handle? Any ideas welcome?

    The high poly looks good



    But the bake ends up looking like this here


  • teodar23
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    teodar23 sublime tool
    You can "explode" the geometry or use naming to separate the meshes. 
    Other than those traditional methods you can try decreasing the ray distance, using a custom cage or just fix it in photoshop.
    All of those methods have pros and cons and i dont know which one is the best in your case but i suggest lowering the ray distance first, thats the cheapest - if that doesnt work, then one of the first two methods.
  • ChrisFraser
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    ChrisFraser polycounter lvl 5
    Well, I was certainly not going to paint my UV in photoshop. That sounds like sort of a noobish way to fix this...

    So, instead, I was able to fix it by detaching the handle from the blade and having them as separate meshes. I also tried to bring a bit of geo in behind the handle and blade before I detached it but the result, although better, was not quite what I wanted. I left the added geo to make a better shadow and detached it and now it fixed the issue! FINALLY!

    I do wish I could have solved it some other more proper way but had had enough of fiddling with things trying to get the perfect bake. It does kind of defeat the whole one mesh plan but oh well, this looks better, and thats what matters! Now, I can actually start to texture this version, which I'm looking forward to doing. Especially the engraved feather part. Wish me luck


  • davidgoldart
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    davidgoldart polycounter lvl 4
    Well, I was certainly not going to paint my UV in photoshop. That sounds like sort of a noobish way to fix this...

    So, instead, I was able to fix it by detaching the handle from the blade and having them as separate meshes. I also tried to bring a bit of geo in behind the handle and blade before I detached it but the result, although better, was not quite what I wanted. I left the added geo to make a better shadow and detached it and now it fixed the issue! FINALLY!

    I do wish I could have solved it some other more proper way but had had enough of fiddling with things trying to get the perfect bake. It does kind of defeat the whole one mesh plan but oh well, this looks better, and thats what matters! Now, I can actually start to texture this version, which I'm looking forward to doing. Especially the engraved feather part. Wish me luck



    good luck with the feather !

    nothing to be ashamed of in fixing UV's in photoshop, wasting a time waiting and hoping for the perfect bake is more noobish IMO...
  • ChrisFraser
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    ChrisFraser polycounter lvl 5
    Lol, well, I certainly felt like a noob not being able to figure it out and wasting so much time on it, so you may be on to something!
  • ChrisFraser
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    ChrisFraser polycounter lvl 5
    So, I tried just drawing the feather into an alpha at first and then sinking the height a bit but was not happy with the results.

    The direction I'm heading now is that I have made the feather design as a floater in max and baked it onto the high poly. Still need a bit of tweaking on it but its going ok so far. Definitely spent a dumb amount of time on it so far but couldn't think of another way to do it. Probably should have done it in zbrush or something and it would have been faster but what can ya do. "shrug"

    Disregard the textures, they're just placeholder at this point. Will add more of a burnt in look to the feather like the reference once I get the look right.


  • ChrisFraser
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    ChrisFraser polycounter lvl 5
    Havent had a lot of time to work on this for the last weeks but wanted to put some work in today. I think I'll be happy to be done with this and move on to something else. It was supposed to be just a quick get back in the swing of things project...:p

    So here's where I'm at with the feathered version of the knife. Couldn't nail the depth of the feathers quite like I wanted but I still think it looks pretty good. Let me know what you think.




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