I'm currently in a class on 3-D modeling, we've just been taught High Poly.

We're not allowed to use our own concepts so I'm working off a reference from Dan Scott's Website that's intended for Warhammer...



here's the High Poly Model




And the Low poly used to create it....

Hi ... good effort! EDIT: but this needs to get all the detail to be high poly and worth it... in these times... all that engraving!

You got the silhouette of it... you need that bumpy detail of the blade, the face... to me,that is what makes the concept cool. There is some weird smoothing/hint of the pattern... but surely better on a normal map and sculpt.

I think you should "emphasise" the eye and go to town here, build on that concept... sculpt a chaos eye and get it glowing! Is just a circle at the mo.
Just an idea tho... would give it a "soul"

The low poly looks like it has too much geometry in the handle... you say it is just the base mesh though. Do you have to make it into a game model with bakes and textures, or just high poly model?

Keep at it, good effort so far...

yeah you need to add/continue/terminate some edge loops to remove those smoothing errors perhaps ... see at the top of the blade?

Hey there. This is a nice start!

It looks like you just took the low poly and smoothed it for the most part. That is ok to do for the overall shape, but you are lacking a lot of detail right now, which is what hi poly modeling is ALL about.

Dont be afraid of having geometry that is just placed on top of your model...Stuff like the little skulls and the details popping out from the blade could be modeled and slapped on top.

The organic stuff on there, such as the face and fleshy looking parts would probably be too difficult to do, and not worth it in a 3d modeling program...those are things you would probably make in zbrush, so I wouldn't worry about that.

Good luck! I'd like to see this improve!

Thanks so much for the feedback.

I plan to do most of the engraving and surface details with normal map painting because I'm definitely not sure how I'd be able to model in that face at the top edge of the blade in high poly.... But I could try adding the skulls near the bottom of the blade and some of the larger engravings on the handle.

It might be a little hard to see in the images but I did give the eye section a bit of depth and roundness as though there was an actual eye in there, I was afraid to push it out too far for fear of making it too pronounced. However if it's hard to see I should probably push it further.


And yeah the low poly seen here is just the base for the high poly's turbo smooth.

I agree the handle has too many edges but the angles look rather sharp in the concept and I was afraid to lose those angles to the turbo smooth so I got a little edge happy haha it definitely could stand to lose some edges.

We're gonna learn how to bake this as a normal map next class and then be required to texture it (the whole deal, diffuse, spec, AO bake, and Normal map) and the end goal is to put it into the Unreal Game Engine.

I've taken some of the crits and suggestions and applied them to the model. There's probably still more to work on but we'll see what my teacher says tomorrow. I'll try to keep posting progress as we start baking and texturing...


Again here's the high poly mesh




And the low poly that I used to create it (to reiterate this is not the low poly I'll be baking onto, it's the mesh that's being smoothed to create the above high poly model)

Sorry for not posting more progress in between but here's the final product

looks really nice but work more on the normal map of the face on the tip, its hard to see its a face there