Brightening the skull texturing and giving it some brighter spots of colour around areas where it would be scuffed and brushed against (such as the forehead) would certainly help. But if you want to go a bit further..I think looking at some reference of filigree skulls and investigating some way to make the skull look more…
Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated @kanga and @Pav3d . I will revise the textures. I agree about the skull, do you think it will also require revising the modeling aspect or would ajusting the textures suffice to bring it up to the same standard?
I haven't finished the texturing yet, but I have removed the embossed detail on the blade and added a more subtle engraving at the base of the blade while keeping the middle section clean I have also twisted the skull to be more asymmetrical, rebaked the normal map and increased the roughness of the base metal to…
The handle and guard look really nice, the modelling and texturing are great. Imo I would remove the filigree from the blade since it a) looks streched and b) you want some areas of rest so that the detail on the handle can be focused on. A side note you would have that kind of detail engraved on a blade rather than…
thanks for the going in depth @Pav3d . I used 3ds max for everything, the original props backstory was a plundered sword and the design intention was to show a juxtaposition between a ornate sword and a retrofitted rough pirates skull to denotes its new owner with a similar look to this: https://youtu.be/2XbugraZ3kc?t=608…
Ah interesting! The concept is cool it just could use better reference. The sword in the video has these intentionally vague phantoms coming out the metal. In that case I would suggest, making the skull more "piratey" roughly cast, damaged, have it slightly askew/offset, maybe even having the blade coming out of one eye…