First off, Hello Polycount, and secondly, I made this thread to show off the progress of my making a Zelda game for CryEngine 3 in the form of game-ready models. Anyone else can share their zelda-based models if they so choose. To kickstart this off, here's my vision of the Hylian Shield...Modeled in 3ds max, textured in photoshop...

Wireframe please!!!

The front of the shield looks great but the back seems to be a bit bland. Maybe a more ornate grip would help As well as the scratched and scuffed edges to help sell it more. If you are looking for something more maybe even a hand painted photo of Zelda to push Link on when he's feeling the fatigue kicking in.

One wireframe coming up!

As for the scuffs and scratches, nothing a little photoshop magic can't do. Same with the ornate grip. Also I'll try to fix the blandness in the back.

Those five detail things in the corners (the ones that are somewhat reminiscent of the Oblivion "O" logo) bother me a bit. It looks like they're some sort of evolution from the usual simple circle stud things that you sometimes see on the shield. I'm not sure why you've got the two upper most ones flipped opposite of all the rest. I think if you're going to do that you should also flip the bottom most one. That being said I'd think it'd look better if none of them were flipped at all.

...though, that being said, I don't actually think you need them at all. I think the thing at the very top point works, and the detail inlay inbetween all of them is ok. But I feel like my eyes are looking for some relief somewhere, and those corners I think would serve that purpose if left blank. I certainly don't think you need anything of that nature on the back side.

I also think it's weird that your detail bits are a brighter color metal than the rest of it. Right now with the dark metal with those bright details on top of it makes the details look more pasted on. I think if you brighten up the darker metal (which makes up a majority of the metal on the shield) to match your detail shade, it will help bring it together much more. (If you do brighten up the metal, you could probably stand to brighten the wood on the back more as well.)

I took your suggestions into account, After some refining, I got a decent result. I scuffed up the corners after removing the "Oblivion" symbols, and adjusted the texture a bit...

Also, before my tablet pen broke, I was working on a vision of Majora's wrath, and this is what I had before it broke...

Yes, I know it looks meaty.

the shield is a little too high poly - edges that don't define a silhouette should be removed

not a fan of the scratches on the back of the shield... nor the front to be honest - perhaps revisiting your spec map (if you made one) would help sell it a bit more

also the leather? arm brace on the back has way too much noise going on, tone it down a bit and make it feel like it belongs with the rest of the pieces on the shield : )

I agree with Justin, there are alot of extra polygons which aren't really doing anything for the asset.

I know your using a 1k map, but your texture doesn't look like it. Especially with the uvs on some of it mirrored.

Make sure the source that you get your base textures from is higher res, or else you will look like you have lower texture res even though your using a 1k.

something maybe a bit more like this perhaps.. and so on and so forth

I am a huge Zelda nerd and I'm loving the assets so far, especially Majora's Mask. I've subscribed to this in hopes that you haven't given up on this project!

You have obviously mirrored your UVs, I'm not a big fan. The damage to the shield would not be the same on both sides. :P

Other than that, nice job making it look more realistic.

I've un-mirrored the UV's and reworked the texture. If there's any issues with it, please point them out.

Plus I reduced the polycount from 1,440 tris to 590. Thanks to Oniram for the advice.

Good job with the optimization. I think you can push your textures more. Add in some damage to where the shield would take most of the hits. Currently, your specular is pretty uniform, you'll want to break it up so that it really shines on areas that have been hit, and for areas that aren't going to be interacted with too much to not reflect as much light.

I agree, great optimization! I would push the highlights on edges of the metal to make it pop abit more. Also I'd scale the mask on the Y-axis a tad; it should be wider than taller.