Site Migration

I will be migrating to a new site shortly. Nothing against wordpress, it is a fine way to post things, but a new site will give me some freedom to do fancy things. The migration should be done in 2 weeks or less. Until then I will continue posting here and will be updating a few things I’ve done over the last few months that I’ve neglected to put up.

Master Sword

This is my take on one of gamings most iconic weapons.

Blockout

I started out by finding a picture online that showed a good profile of the weapon as well as saving quite a few different versions both 3d and 2d just to get an idea of how others were approaching it. The hilt design in particular had several different incarnations.

The main elements that I found to be important were the sweeping wing and the gem in the center.This image is slightly further in the process than the blockout version, detailing most of the major relief.

This handle gave me the most issues surprisingly enough. I ended up re working it 4 times in the end just for proportion and finally to add an element.

The blade was fairly straightforward with a bit of fancy edge cutting at the bulge near the top later on down the line which I will show.

 

This initial process set up the silhouette for the final product. I did add one change to the silhouette in the end but it was more because I had extra poly’s to work with than I thought I would end up with.

Holding edges and major internal silhouette.

The next phase of work focused mostly on the hilt. I went through a few versions of the crystal in the center before deciding to make it all in one piece. At this phase the hilt still remains mostly blocky as I planned to uprez once with a smooth operation. This requires a little bit of planning as smoothing will round out and edges that aren’t beveled, and beveling has a tendency to cause bad geometry. Half the “fun” of beveling though is recutting into really neat edgework though.

Take the holding edges on the blade portion.

Here I used the beveled holding edges to connect into the major edges that held the form for the blade and had some of the major edges turn into holding edges. Its all about the distance between them as the program will interpolate during a smooth operation similar to the control vertices on a cubic curve.

One annoying thing about the bevel tool is that when used on a corner it will create a little triangle that can cause all sorts of issues if you’re planning to mirror the geometry.

A trick that I stumbled across was to switch to the cubic render mode in maya by pressing the number 3 and then selecting the stretched out triangle and deleting it.

Theres probably a million other ways of accomplishing this but this way helped my workflow so I figured I would share.

 

Fixing issues after mirroring.

After the mirror operation I ran into a few issues mostly with the proportions depth wise.

The gem holder being concave was the most noticeable to me. To fix this I selected the offending vertices and scaled outward until it looked good.

Another issue was the hilt being too fat and the handle being oblong instead of circular. Occasionally I have had issues solving these problems via scaling up or down the object in question. For the hilt it was no problem this time and it was a quick fix. The handle on the other hand was oddly constructed from the get go and I ended up just leaving it for now.

I ended up deciding that I could round out the hilt at this point without causing too many issues with the geometry so I did.

Finalizing the model.

I ended up redesigning the handle a bit to take advantage of the remaining polycount. To do this I used a poly primitive Helix, cut out the middle area and connected it then added and recut the ends. This gave the handle a bit of a simple grip. (Added a second helix in reverse direction and scaled down slightly to complete the look).

I added a few more cuts to the blade to give the edge a more edged feel and there it is the completed sword. At this point I would go through and clean up any excess geometry if this were for a game or start creating shaders and textures. Another thought is to add some more cuts to make every poly as square as possible and take it into ZBrush or Mudbox and to sculpt the details like the triforce emblem into the blade or the runes on the hilt. This is also the point at which I would start laying out the UVs which would be somewhat simplified by needing to only lay out 1/4 of the model due to making it from a mirrored 1/4. The hilt would require us to lay out fully due to the helix design of it but alas the price we pay for neat things.

ZBrush!

Finally convinced myself that the $600 price tag on ZBrush was well worth it for the ease of use it brings me. After a call to my bank to assure them that I was in fact the one spending the money and not some identity thief and a few moments entering my info I am now the proud owner of a copy. That said here is some of the work I have managed to get done in between doctor visits and catching up with the family. I have already created a normal map based off this high rez sculpt (thank you decimation master!) and am starting work on the next piece to receive some high rez love.

Tower Roof

Few more fixes

Just need to re-screencap footage from the unreal level and from the game now and my demo reel should be set for final turn in. Added a page for my demo reel links at the top or click here.

Renderwrong!

After several painstaking days rediscovering how to render I am nearly finished with my demo reel. I may end up going back to this asset later because I don’t feel finished with it yet, but for now deadlines are deadlines and I can’t model and finish other things at the same time. Now for your eyes here is the asset. Sorry about the delays in the updates, things got a bit hectic. Will be posting the full reel within the next week. ** EDIT** Correction, uploaded a version of demo reel here:  

Demo reel asset getting there

Here is the latest screenshot of the cathedral for my demo reel. Finally have time to devote to it consistently and am impressed with how much I have been getting done daily but still a long way to go, good luck me!

New Updates on the horizon.

I have been neglecting my site as of late due to some time constraints followed by a week of re-motivating myself.
I have been busy though starting up the next piece of my asset the main body! Here are some screenshots of it in it’s infancy!

Here is the link to the game site: http://www.rushweekgame.com

Been a while since last update working on assets for the game. Here is the progress on the maya mesh since then. I will try to get some renders of the ZBrush sculpts done so far later today if I can get into one of my schools labs to use it.

Mostly finished blockout

The blockout of the model is mostly done. Got a few things into Zbrush today to try them out. After examining my reference photos, the tops of the columns on the cathedral appear to be Roman Corinthian style.

Roman Corinthian Column top

A roman corinthian column top has a few distinguishing characteristics, being: Leaves, spirals, and a flower.
I’m taking some creative freedom on this by using a Cantuta flower for my columns. The Cantuta is the national flower of Peru.

A Cantuta, national flower of Peru

I decided to sculpt the column top as its own mesh and prepared a blockout for this today.

Sculpt ready column top (I hope)

Here are a few more images of various detail pieces which I will be sculpting over the next few weeks as I get a chance.

Quadding out pieces one at a time for sculpting

Wireframe goodness

The wireframe at present

Here is the entire model in its current state and in wireframe.

The wireframe at present

I will post more updates tomorrow. Any critique or suggestions are welcome.

Cinematic 3d Asset

This month for my cinematic asset class I will be sculpting a tower and the main entrance to the Lima cathedral. This will be a new challenge I am looking forward to as I will be using Zbrush for hard surface modeling and I have not done this before. I will be keeping a log on how I do every few days with screen caps.