Having an issue with the hilt being too pixelated around the edges. I've tried a few things and can't seem to fix it. Any guidance would be appreciated.
It's probably one of two things, or both combined at the same time. It can be that your texture doesn't have enough resolution and so it's pixelated, but you can also have enough resolution but you are too zoomed in to your object to the point that you start seeing the pixels. Always keep in mind from what distance you're going to view your object.
When you make the render, the resolution will probably hold up, unless you take the camera super close. While we are navigating in the viewport we have a tendency to get super close to our model, but that is not the distance the camera or render shot will end up being. And then we're like well I want it to look good no mater how close, but that's impossible when you're dealing with pixels. If's you are planning super close up shots, maybe you'll need 8K res textures or more.
Also the UV island of that part maybe it's too small and it's not receiving enough texel density in the 0 to 1 space. Maybe you need to make that island bigger. But then it will mess up all your UV placements.
I'd like to add that this is sometimes cause by angling of the UV map. Basically the edges of the UV map goes in an angle instead of straight up/down or left/right. This causes the edges to create an anti-aliasing effect on the faces of the mesh. Increasing size of island and resolution of image makes this smaller.
Sometimes that won't be enough and you will need to go back and redo the UV map and make the edges more straight. Especially with Normal maps.