Hello Everyone I wanted to go ahead and create one thread because I am going to be making quite a bit of assets and I just wanted to keep em in one place for now. Please give me your C&C harsh or not I don't care I want to get everything correct lol.

To start it off I am working on a Kabar Knife. I love the style of the Kabar Fighting knives so I decided to go ahead and make one. Here is the High Poly. I am still going to take it into mudbox and stamp the name in the blade and do the rubber grip. But for now I kind of like it the way it is. I might do floating GEO for the name in max though I havn't decided yet.

Nice and clean so far, good job.

Looks good. You could probably have done that round indent on the blade as a floater too. But if you wanna sculpt on it, then it has to be part of the same mesh. Still though, it would have been better to add that indent in zBrush. You can quite easily project that shape using Projection Master, and you'll have better polygon flow if you go that way. I'm not familiar with Mudbox, so I can't say how that works there. But I'm sure it's possible.

About the text, I would do that in Photoshop later on. Just have a regular text layer, and run a Normal Map filter on that. That's the best way to go with something like that in my opinion.

@frell - Thanks dude.
@Bigjohn - Yea I was debating on what to do. I was going to just go ahead and try some text in max. If it doesn't work I am going to just do it in photoshop.

looking good dude. I'm not sure how max handles text, but maya's direct text is poo.
Anytime I do it to inset I use create poly in maya. its easier to optimize for me that way, which I've found important because even short words = an ass ton of polys to manage once add control edges and start beveling.

As for text in photoshop, yeah for speed and ease its unbeatable, but its not as cool as insetting it on the hp

I think the inset is fine, it'll make stripping a copy of the high for the low easier, if that is indeed your work flow XD, though I do think the edge might be a too tight for good baking.

@Grimm_Wrecking - Thanks dude. I went ahead and said eff it lol I am going to do the text in photoshop.
Anyways here is a low poly shot. I think I am done. Not unless anyone wants to do any paintovers for the sake of correct topology lol. It is sitting at 348 polys right now. C&C welcome please.

Looks good so far, however I would personally leave the indent on the blade for the normal map.

I am still new to normal mapping but wouldn't it be better to have the indent on the blade floating and just bake it it? That way you wouldn't have the triangles in the corners and it would save on ploy's.

*UPDATE* I just read BigJohns post and he already mentioned it.

I wanted to go ahead and model it in. I've watched a lot of sathe's hard surface modeling and I usually just try to model in the shapes. If there are a lot of indentions then I would float them but just one I wanted to actually put it on the HP model.

I dont' really know what my problem is with my normals but I have a feeling its my low poly causing them. If anyone knows please inform me. I am having hell right now lol.

try messing around with the smoothing groups. use one smooth group for the whole knife.

I did that exactly and its doing that. That is why it is confusing me lol.

There are two options here. Either you add a bevel at those areas which have 90° angles so the shader has more geometry to aproximate the shading or you add smoothgroups and dont use just one smoothgroup

But keep in mind that you have to split the uv shells in order to not get black edges at the smoothgroup borders.

Read this for more.

http://wiki.polycount.com/Normal%20M....26_Hard_Edges

I will give it a read and get on it. I will post my results. Thank you.

I fixed most of it but just have a few to take care of.

just take a lower rez screenshot in jpeg format, BAM! portfolio ready.

Originally Posted by achillesian

just take a lower rez screenshot in jpeg format, BAM! portfolio ready.

Haha, exactly :3

lol. Yes i will put up a portfolio piece with base colors and no textures.

Here is an update. I think I might have some of the normals a little to deep. Please C&C.

The black circle on the base of it doesn't read as a hole as much as it reads as a black circle IMO. I'd consider either just omitting the circle entirely, or modeling it in.

Yea you do have a point. I was also looking over it and I need to add more specular inbetween the indentions on the rubber grip. While going back and looking at my refs they are smooth and not textured so it comes off as more shiny than the actual grip.

The texture size seams a bit high for the amount of detail you currently have and the amount of screen space the knife would ever use in a game. Would go for a 512 or 256.

It's not going into a game so it's probably better to show off as much detail as possible.

I went ahead and went to a 512 sheet because I do agree it should be smaller. I tried to dirty up the rubber a bit with dirt stains etc. Added more detail on the blade with some chips in it and alot of scratches because this is a fighting knife lol so it has seen its share of knife fights.

Your metal texture needs a lot more... texture. Right now it looks like it's just solid gray with some overly chalky scratches that are a bit too uniform. It looks kinda noisy too.