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Hand Painted Weapons

artstream
polycounter lvl 11
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artstream polycounter lvl 11
Starting a new project, some hand painted weapons you might see in a fantasy genre based game.

Models & UVs are done, willing to change some things if I have to. Started texturing sword & spear.

flatcolors.png

wires.png

swordspear.png

Any crits/tips/tricks suggestions welcome!

Replies

  • pixelb
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    pixelb greentooth
    The geometry on these isn't optimized at all. There's no reason for the spear, sword, and sickle handles to have as many edges as they do. Also, it looks like you can't decide between having continuous geometry or not. The main part of the shield is continuous, but the bolts coming off it aren't.
  • PacoCasares
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    PacoCasares polycounter lvl 11
    I really like the texture of the sword!
    As for what pixelb is saying, take in consideration that modeling, is mainly showing the shape and form of the silhouette. Also, do a good study/research of what artstyle and feel you are going for, WOW? in that case, download the WOW client and then check the wow model viewer, there is tonnes of models there and you can check the topology on how they make their weapons by only using diffuse textures. They are masters at baking everything in just one texture.
  • PacoCasares
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    PacoCasares polycounter lvl 11
    Ah, with the bolts, and the triangulation you used, try to avoid that as it uses way too many triangles! Always think of the flow that poligons follow, and always try to use quads. A good guess, a good weapon should never be more than 1.200 triangles. There are also sizes where you can download models of characters and weapons from known games to check out their topology.
  • NickT3D
    I think the optimization look great actually. Minus the big shield and like pixelb said the handles. On the big shield I would just fix the bolts and triangulate it in a different way.

    **I would also like to mention that when modeling stuff like this I make it entirely tri's that way i can avoid and weird divisions when brought into the game engine. So modeling all quads isn't necessary (more for paco)**
  • Snader
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    Snader polycounter lvl 15
    Eh, no Paco, heavily triangulated geospheres are in fact much more efficient than quad-based spheres.
    spheres_and_polycounts.png


    I agree with pixelb. Optimization could use a bunch of work. You've got too many polies in the handles of the sword and spear and the hilt of the sword and the ring of the spear don't need as many sides. They've got more sides than the targe shield, even though that is 2~2,5 times larger. The smaller bolts on the tower shield should have less polygons than the large center bulge.

    I'd also note that the arrow shaft is rather short.
  • JKMakowka
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    JKMakowka polycounter lvl 18
    Looks cool and definilty very useful. Unless you have different plans with them, why not release them under a free license on OpenGameArt.org ?
  • artstream
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    artstream polycounter lvl 11
    Whoa, thanks for the feedback guys!

    _1700_zps8d1595bf.png

    Made some topology updates over lunch. The handles are now 8 sides instead of the original 12.

    @Snader & PixelB, thanks for those insights! I've chopped down the smaller bolts, and I've made the plating separate elements from the main shield. Do you think the arrow shaft looks better now, I made it a bit longer.

    @Paco, thanks! Goal is to get all of the weapons to that point! :-D
  • Stromberg90
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    Stromberg90 polycounter lvl 11
    Maybe zoom into the assets, hard to see the texture atm ;)
  • GrimFiction
    I agree with some these guys comments. A promising start I must say but I'd be mindful of the edges in some of the weapons, you can get away with losing some. Also I'd love to see some close up shots of each weapon. Separate each one out.

    Good start! looking forward to seeing more =)
  • PacoCasares
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    PacoCasares polycounter lvl 11
    Ah shader that graph rocks. Thanks man, my teacher at school told me to avoid triangulation, hmm. Wonder why :O

    Also, OpenGameArt.org, I should totally check that site out!
  • artstream
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    artstream polycounter lvl 11
    Thanks for all the comments everyone! A friend of mine mentioned the spear needed something else, so I made a few quick variants of it, let me know your thoughts.

    _6039_zpsa29855df.png

    @ Stromberg90, here ya go! Still working on it, had to change the uvs after I optimized.
    _1777_zpsa8af4a32.png

    @ Paco, yea, one of my teachers told me the same thing, then one of the better ones told me "That makes no sense".
  • Snader
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    Snader polycounter lvl 15
    Quads are somewhat important (though using triangles is by no means a sin) when working with smoothed/highpoly meshed because subdividing a triangle won't make it in to triangles and thus will mess up your edgeflow. This can cause artifacts in places where there's a lot of deformation. The same goes for pentagons, hexagons and so on.
    subdivide.gif

    Also, in some cases it -might- be advisable to work with quads instead of triangles on lowpoly meshes, but that's more of a workflow-optimization issue than a performance-optimization one. Because quads make it easier to add and remove loops etc. And the cubesphere (#2, 192▲) is easy to unwrap because it starts off as a cube, and has a nice texel density.

    Also, 99% of game engines work with triangulated meshes in the end.
  • artstream
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    artstream polycounter lvl 11
    Snader, that's an awesome diagram and explanation, thanks!
  • PacoCasares
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    PacoCasares polycounter lvl 11
    Yea, I kinda remember the teacher explaining that subdividing with triangles its a big mess and that I should do things in quads, this is a good year ago do.
  • artstream
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    artstream polycounter lvl 11
    Made some time to work more on this, still need to finish the bow values and overall polish for textures.

    bow.png
    sword_spear.png
    shields.png
    update3142013_all1.png
    update3142013_wire.png
  • tweekedgirl
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    tweekedgirl polycounter lvl 4
    Hey artstream, these are looking really nice so far! I especially like the texturing on the shield, the colours are vivid and really fitting with the style. The only thing I can suggest about that it that maybe it needs roughing up a little bit? On your sword you can see all the damage on the blade but at the minute the shield looks brand new. Maybe some scratches and wear around the edges of the gold will help to fix that.

    Also, one quick thing about the topology of your wooden shield - I think this would be a neater way to do it rather than having all the points converge onto that single vertex.

    pcshieldtop.jpg
  • artstream
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    artstream polycounter lvl 11
    @ tweekedgirl, hey thanks! yea, that's going to be my "polish" phase, adding more damage and history to the other weapons, the shield especially.

    About the topology, yea, I've seen it done both ways, wasn't sure if there was a strong reason for one version over the other, would really be interested in hearing your thoughts on it! :-)
  • tweekedgirl
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    tweekedgirl polycounter lvl 4
    Ha to be honest I'd only say it do it the way I've suggested because that's how I've been taught to do it. I think it's because you're creating 5 evenish quads and 2 tris compared to your method which is 10 different sized tris, so it might get ugly if it was ever subdivided. I suppose as well whenever I've had a lot of edges converging to one point, I tend to find I get odd dimples in the mesh when it comes to the shading and such. But yeh - to each their own! :)
  • switz
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    switz polycounter lvl 10
    Everything looks good, but I think your textures are lacking bigger details (I have this problem myself all the time). For the shield for example, you started setting a focal point that is the top edge, but the macro effect gets lost in the blandness of the other parts.

    Like with the sword, try adding some bigger details underneath all those cool-little scratches.
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