I've been dabbling in 3D with blender for a long time but never really made a deliberate effort to try to improve. With 2.8 officially out, and having more time available to devote to practicing I decided to enroll in this class.
I plan to make some sort of scimitar that I may be also able to use in a game I'm working on. I put together a few reference images and the result will likely be inspired by some elements from each.
@ghujelk I like your swords, they look awesome! Keep going this is going to look epic 😄
Homework Week 2 Submission
Well this exercise was super fun, getting a better handle on textured brushes and painting techniques will definitely be something I explore over the next few weeks!
Here's the full set of blade and handle combinations for the worn and damaged blade and guards.
@ghujelk Your scimitar collection looks awesome! It's really neat to see the variety you've been able to achieve, including damaged and undamaged. It looks to me like you're immersing yourself in this project and it's paying dividends with the results.
I only have one tiny note: The flame-like crossguard design - which is very cool btw - doesn't read like a specific material to me. As in I can't tell from the texture if it's colored metal, painted metal, or something else. To make sense of it, perhaps the red one could be copper, orange one bronze and the yellow one gold?
Again, a really tiny note to nitpick about. Overall this is excellent work across the board. An A+ from me! 👏
@theluthier Thank you for the feedback! I was struggling conceptually with that flame guard piece while painting, and approaching it from a what material is this rather than a what color is this would've definitely helped, especially when hunting for references. I'll see what I can do to better define the texture and materials for the next homework!
@ghujelk Late to the party. The swords are looking pretty sweet! Looking forward to the shaders!
Homework Week 3 Submission
So far I've only managed to get the worn/damaged pieces with materials and I have a lot to learn about lighting and compositing.
The "clean" pieces are giving me trouble, the less obvious imperfections means that to get visible results when I try pushing the strength values of any noise or bump, they stand out a lot. If I try to get closer to show smaller surface imperfections the lower resolution of my textures becomes a bit too clear for my liking. These are definitely things I'll keep in mind going forward though!
@ghujelk Your swords look awesome, Jake. You really took this project by the horns. No criticism, just an A+ from me for week 3. For some reason I just want to see all these swords falling in a endless slow-motion loop. Like this:
But instead of flower pedals, it's all your sword variations 🤩
The "clean" pieces are giving me trouble
That's a common problem in CG. With the notable exception of cars, product rendering and architectural visualization, new/clean stuff in CG is just harder. I think partly because it's less interesting to look at compared to dirty and damaged. Even slightly dirty and slightly damaged is better than perfectly clean imo.
