I figured it was high time that I actually posted some actual art on here again, so here goes!

I have spent a few hrs over the past few days working on a barbed wire baseball bat...I have never made a weapon before, so this was pretty awesome to get cracking on.

WIP beauty render



WIP beauty render wires


Barbed wire close up


Barbed wire wires close up


Handle tape close up


Handle tape wires close up


Everything is being made with subd in Blender 2.58a and there isn't any sculpting yet.

For those who are interested in how I did the barbed wire, it was done by making a small section and then adding an array modifier with the Fit Type set to curve, so that the # of parts would match the length of curve. I then added a curve modifier that deformed the barbed wire along the curve.

To make the curve, I just modelled a helix, which was then scaled and arrayed vertically, which was then converted to a curve





Comments and critique are welcome

You knocked it outta the park with this piece ^^

Looks nice... I'd wrap some tape around the top part under the barbed wire though. I would imagine without an abrassive surface the barbed wire would slide right off.

Can I ask how you intend to bake this?

sweet stuff. that wire looks awesome!

That looks really cool Andy, I especially like the little staples holding the wire in place, nice little detail if a little hard to see at first.I'm also interested in how you plan to bake this.

Fantastic job Andy. I really love this.

-B

i love the way you barbedwired the bat , im guessing that the bat will be a bit bloody when its time for the textures. so here is an sugestion.

pieces of flesh that got stuck during the attacking of victims?

Pretty cool stuff!

The barbed wire is ace. I'd suggest enlarging the staples though and putting them at more varied angles.

Thanks for the kind words everyone!

Currently, I'm really not sure how i'm going to tackle the LP yet or what is acceptable for a first person weapon like this :P
It has been suggested to me that 5-7k is somewhere around what I should be looking at...any insight would be great

For the LP barbed wire, I did a few quick tests...It seems I have 3 options.

A) Use a cylinder, to which I can bake the barbed wire onto and have 1 quad for each barb (and maybe have multiple cylinders for multiple levels of wire)


B) Have triangle strips that follow the curve and use a tiling texture


C) Model the wires with geometry (3 or 4 sides) and use planes for the barbs, or model the barbs, depending on tricount limitations




Now, the pros and cons I for see with these are as follows (Please feel free to comment on these or correct me)...

A)

1. Doesn't provide a good silhouette, as the wire would be obviously uniformly cylindrical from most angles
2. Reasonable tricount (my test was around 450 tris for 1 main cylinder and multiple quads)
3. Poor texture footprint and the worst of all 3 options (and increasingly so depending on the amount of main cylinder levels)

B)

1. Poor/expensive to alpha sort
2. Reasonably expensive. My test was 1218 tris., with each section of barbed wire being a scaled plane, with 2 vertical loops to accommodate the curve (would probably need a greater number or sides to look good, though this would be budget dependent)
3. Very good texture footprint (each barbed wire section would be tiled and fit to a curve, as above)

C)

1. Very expensive/largest tricount (My test was 5278 tris., with each section of barbed wire being a scaled cube, with 2 vertical loops to accommodate the curve and planes for each barb (more sides would probably be too restrictive)
2. Reasonable texture footprint (each barbed wire section would be tiled and fit to a curve, as above)
3. Best silhouette, but at the cost of geometry

Example textures for idea A

Normal


AO


Mask

i want to see the maps applied to the lowpoly! STAT

Sorry for the late reply Pedro, the textures that we rendered were not ready for actual use...they were just a demonstration to explain what I meant a little better :P

I have rendered out a good set, which are below the render from within Marmoset.


Marmoset with method A


Normal


AO


Mask


The shots don't look awful, but don't have as much depth as I would like. The silhouette is obviously cylindrical too, but not as bad as I had initially thought it would be (from tests with the previous set of textures)

As always, comments and critique are welcome
Thanks for looking!

WOW, thanks for sharing Andy!!!

Thanks Alberto! My pleasure

You're insane! Looks nice though.

ah that barbed wire looks brilliant, love the LP result as well.

Handle tape looks a bit iffy with the bulge though, should probably be more flat on like so:
http://www.vintagesportsshoppe.com/photos/hanna1.jpg

Thanks for the comments guys!

@bbob, I tried not to go down the standard flat tape route, so I got some padded grip tape ref. and used that because it has a more interesting silhouette and as this is a portfolio piece, the handle seen more than if it was in game

Amazing work sir.

Just a quick suggestion, You can try and put some dents and heavy scratches on the bat.

Thanks Nitewalkr!
I'm probably going to do a sculpt pass on everything, so I would expect some roughness to be added

wow, after seeing the high poly of the barb and bat, i really didnt think it would look good as a finished game asset.. but you did an awesome job getting that info baked out! looking forward to the diffuse : D!

@Razorb,
Thanks for the kind words, but im not even close to finishing the HP yet...The LP was just a quick test
I still have a bunch of stuff to add yet

looking really nasty.... in a good way!

I think the low poly works fine. It's busy enough that I don't think you'd really pick out the 'flatness' in game. And most of the time it would be swinging or maybe out of view...

You're already going to have quite a bit of alpha sorting with one plane and all the barbs, so I see no reason to increase that just to add a little depth that will probably be hardly noticed.

How about a couple carefully placed dents in the bat. Would give it a little depth under the wire and make it look just a little more badass to boot.

Thanks guys

I will make sure to do a sculpting pass and post some updates soon

Are you going to be using the sculpting tools from blender also? I'm yet to see anything baked out from a blender sculpt yet!