Category: Personal

This project has taught me so much, espsecially focusing on realistic texturing and the use of Substance Painter and Maya. I also learnt new skills such as creating particle simulations. Creating this realistic and creative model has developed my design skills, including model design, texture design, theme and colour design. Creatively, it has enabled me to bloom in all of these fields of VFX.

I ran into may obstacles, including topology and UV troubleshooting, so my problem solving within 33D modelling and texturing has been challenged, and I was able to solve these efficiently.

I am very happy with the outcome of this project, it was exactly what I had in mind when I started this project, and the results were perfectly in line with what I had challenged myself to create.

This week I made final details and changes to my sword includiing minor colour changes, and specular and reflection tweaks.

I then decided I had time to add more animation elements. This was my first time trying particle simulation on Maya.

I selected the blade and added a fire effect to the surface of the mesh.

After tweaking the settings a lot, such as the density and spread of fire, and the radius and roundness of the particles, I changed the colour of my fire to the appropriate colouring of my pallette for my sword.

I then realised to render it out I needed to use Maya software instead of arnold which I was using for my sword. To get around this I decided to render the sword and fire out seperately and merge them in Nuke after.

I had made a simple animation of a camera turning 360 degrees around the sword to ensure all lighting and shadowing would be seen. I copy and pasted this camera to the fire scene so that they would merge perfectly at the same position and timing as each other when rendered.

I then rendered out my sword and merged these in Nuke.

I re-did these in HD and then wanted to show off more of the textures in my final video, so I made another camera animation zooming into parts of my sword all over, and repeated the rendering process of the fire with the copied camera, and the sword and then merged these.

I put all of these videos together in Da Vinci Resolve and rendered out my final project including development of my model.

This week I made huge progress on texturing my sword. I went through multiple design changes this week, but at the end settled on what I thought fit the design most.

After texturing my blade, I next turned to texturing the top piece of my sword. For the first half of this week, my plan was to try out an ‘arcane’ type of design plan, and colour pallete. Here was my design inspiration for this:

The colours exude purples, oranges and blues. I used substance painter to create the textures. My normal method was to add a copper under material, and after baking the meshes I would add a mask of steel rough edge scratches to add some wear to the material. I would then add details by hand if needed. First, I textured the second ring around the orb.

I then textured the inner diamond, adding a celtic cross with the stamp tool for an extra essence of magic and medevil aesthetic to the sword.

I then did the same method for the inner ring, using the same colours.

Next, I started on the dragon wings. I had some issues with the mesh and UVs for these, The topology needed fixing as there were n-gons, as well ans the UVs needed to be more accurate to the flow of the mesh. After going back and forth with these issues, my texturing was finally working and I could open them in substance painter and texture them. I chose a purple hue for these,

I then worked on the little spikes under the wings, giving them a more lilac tone this time.

The spcae between my blade and top piece seemed like too much of a clean contrast, almost unnatural, so I created a simple indent ring and textured this.

I then worked on the horns. I made these the same colour and wear amount as the wings for consistency. I also textured the moon more of a light blue colour, with some wear around the edges.

I then made a simple surface shader for my orb. I increased the glow to max capcity and made it a turqouise colour as a temporary texture.

I checked my overall sword in rendering to see how the design ws going:

It was then time to move onto the handle. I needed to again go back and fix UVs on this too. I gave it a more rough steel material and added stamps of blood and cracks in various places, as my sword looked too clean.

I then decided to make a proper texture for my orb. I created a glowing orb in subsatnce painter using the glow tool and glass texture.

This didn’t look right in maya, and didn’t give the effect I wanted. What actually worked better was using the ai standard surface preset of glass, and adjusting the specular and transmission effects to create a glowing blue texture.

I then checked my overall sword again in render:

About halfway into this week, I had a change of heart on design for my sword. I loved this design, but something about it wasn’t as eye opening as I originally wanted. I decided to take direct references from a game which inspired this sword design to begin with: World of warcraft.

One of my favourite classes to be on WoW is a death knight, with a speciality of ‘blood’ damage. This is a certain aesthetic which is very satifying to the eye especially to me in fantasy games, here are some inspiration photos:

The colour pallete and theme is full of reds and blues, a really interesting colour mix due to the contrast of warm and cold colours. I really wanted to explore this design as well as the arcane theme, and make my desicion from there.

Before changing the textures, you may have realised I had an issue with my texturing on my dragon wing mesh in previous renders. There were a select few faces around the models that were darker or lighter, the opposite to the rest.

I went through a day of solving issues with this topoligy, and found it was due to overlapping faces and holes in my mesh. I then had to re-do Uvs and then I was able to continue.

I re textured some of my materials with a darker red colour. I also sized in the top piece such as the rings, as I felt there was too much empty space. I made minor changes such as making things more or less worn, adding more details and blood to certain areas, but here is the development of re-texturing my model:

I tried this out on my original HDRI to see if the lighting was better, as some of the details you can’t see in these. I also made the blade match colours with the metal on the handle, and made the horns slighly lighter to see the details better.

When I was happy with this progress, I started animating the orb. I got it to turn 360 degrees and bob slightly up and down, to indicate it is floating.

Photo references:

https://www.wowhead.com/guide/legion/artifacts/aluneth-arcane-mage

https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MXGRH0yFrpalddqj2BP

https://aminoapps.com/c/wow/page/item/arcane-magic/06vC_ZIKJ3Lm51R8GXooZe2WxEwgmJ6

https://mobcup.net/wallpaper/arcane-sc7qk8po

https://wambamzamzam.weebly.com/tod-academy-of-arcane-studies.html

https://skycoach.gg/blog/wow/articles/blood-death-knight-guide

https://www.tentonhammer.com/guides/world-of-warcraft-blood-death-knight-class-guide

https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/blood-death-knight-pve-tank-guide

https://www.wowhead.com/guide/classes/death-knight/blood/overview-pve-tank

This week I sorted out UVs on my sword, and started texturing.

To sort out my UVs, I used a variety of ways to make sure they were working well and ready for texturing. I went through each part of my sword individually and did this. In some cases, I used a planar UV tile, some I used a camera based on some faces. I cut some parts of the UVs so that I could lay them out differently, as they did not follow the UVs correctly. I also used the unfold and straighten UVs tool a lot to work these out correctly.

The most difficult part of the sword to UV was the dragon wings. The topology on these were the most complex to I had to play around with the different tools until I had UVs I could work with.

I then was able to start texturing on Substance Painter. I started with the blade. After trying multiple metal bases, I found a material I liked for the blade.

I then added scratches by hand using a paint layer.

After creating multiple scratches, and details, I exported these textures to maya, and sorted them out on the hypershade editor, putting all the correct nodes into the right inputs.

I then added a hdri to view this texture with the right lighting I wanted. To match the texture in adobe substance painter, I had to export the triangulated mesh model.

I checked these textures on the render window.

One thing that stood out to me is that I felt like the indents were too harsh. I selected faces and brought them up to a closer level, so that these were more subtle.

I was happy with my blade, and ready to texture the rest of my model next week.

This week I finished the handle, details and overall base model of my sword.

I first had to finish adding simple shapes to complete the handle. I created a diamond shape coming from the ring I had created reviously, with multiple faces so it would be three dimensional when extruded.

I created a simple handle stick from a cylinder, adding edge loops and sizing in some edges to create a handle shape. I then created horn like shapes potruding from the handle stick. I did this by making the basic shape with a planar polygon in 2D side view like usual, and then extruded this, and flipped it round to create the symmetry on the other side of the handle.

I then rotated these to follow more of the angle the other spiked elements on the sword followed.

Next I wanted to add an arrow effect on the top of the handle. I did this by using the edge loops inserted previously, and extruded these side faces upwards at an angle for the slanted effect similar to an arroow.

I then added small details to the handle stick using edge loops and inward extrusion. This is the wireframe after all these changes were added or made:

Next, I made a simple moon shape in 2D view, to placce at the top of the handle for extra creative fantasy style.

I was finally ready to extrude the whole blade, and follow my edge lines and faces I had set up for the added details using the extrusion tool. I would extrude some faces inwards and some out for depth in the blade. I also extruded outwards the main shapes of my dragon wings.

I fixed the ring on my sword as it was quite jaggedy. I did this by simply creating a new pipe with more subdivision faces and sixing it down.

I checked how my model looked so far on arnold render:

I then worked on the details on my dragon wings. In the topology, again, I had already mapped out the details on the 3D shape I had created, so used the same technique I did on the blade with extruding the paths of certain faces to create the details.

The base model for my sword is completed, meaning I can move onto texturing and animation elements next week.

This week I worked more towards finsihing the handle of my sword. This part was planned to be very detailed so I took time to make sure the progress is exactly how I envisioned it.

I made a ring which I then pressed 3 to give it a smoother apperance and to create a perfect round circle.

I then created two small poles to attach this to the other part of the handle created.

I then started to create the small dragon wings that would appear below the main wings I will be creating.

I did this by making a plane, and creating the dragon wing shape. I then created another plane at the other end of the ring so it would appear attached to the handle, and combined these. I then duplicated these and resized these, changed topology slighly for variation, and changed these to a smoother apperance again.

I then duplicated these and rotated them, then reversed the faces, so it would appear the same on the other side of the handle.

My next task was to create the orb. This was simple as it would just be a sphere polygon. I transformed this to be the correct size and right in the centre of the handle.

Next, I did my method of checking how these shapes looked extruded, and seeing if there was anything I needed to change. The extrusion worked which means I could move onto my next phase. I did however discover the wings looked better with shaper edges, so I selected 1 for them and decided to keep this.

I then decided to work on the dragon wings. With this part I did run into some topology issues. The shape was really complicated so creating faces with 4 sides, whilst also including all of the details for future indents and extrusion using edge loops, made the topology quite busy and messy. This may be an issue with UVs I am prepared to come back to.

I then duplicated this, rotated it and reversed the face again to create a symetrical handle. There is a final part to finish this model which will be the upper handle, and then I will be able to work on the details and texturing.

This week I worked on my base model for my sword.

I used the same technique as before, with using the side view and adjusting the verteces on my plane geometry. I again made sure to make shapes for later extrusion on the blade so that it has depth and details.

I completed the blade of the sword.

I then extruded this and some of the details to see the progress.

I then made sure the UV maps were workable. On first attempt, I noticed I had some non manifold geometry and some more than 4 sided shapes. I used cleanup to solve this, and fixed the shaping after this was done. I was then able to lay out my UV maps for the future when I come to texturing.

I then started on the handle for my sword. I found inspiration for this, as well as using my concept sketches I had made.

I free handed the one side of the first circle that would be surrounding the orb. I then used the mirror tool to make sure there was symmetry and consistency.

Next week I will work on the rest of the handle as this may be the most detailed part of the model.

Throughout these weeks I have started researching tutorials on modelling fantasy swords to find the best way to go about this project in terms of technique and skill.

I found the video below extremely useful, and from this will be using the technique of modelling from a 2D perspective and extruding the model out afterwards to ensure symmetry and accuracy.

I then started to work on modeling the blade of my sword. I went ahead with this reference image that I used for my concept sketch of what rough shape I would like the blade to be.

I started by switching to the side-facing view in Maya, and created a plane. I then turned on X ray view so I could see the grid as reference lines for the geometry.

I made sure the verteces were the same either side and that the faces were four sided (thinking of the UVs for the future). I then began extending the blade, and adding details, such as extra faces and edges that I knew would be extruded in to create indented details on the sword.

I then checked how this looked so far, by extruding the object out and extruding inwards the details I had made.

This was exactly the look I was hoping for, confirming this technique of modeling would be appropriate for my sword design.

Side note: During these two weeks I had to take time off to be with family due to loss of a family member so wasn’t able to complete as much progress as usual. This will be accounted and made up for in the following weeks.

This week I wanted to create some concept art for my sword. This will help me visualise the creative aspects of my model, as this project for me is primarily about creativity and applylying this to a VFX model and animation.

First, I started with designing the orb. I wanted this to be illuninous and bright to stand out from within the sword.

I then started looking at more images to inspire my sword design. I put three elements from three different swords I had seen for inspiration, and added them together, tweaking some design aspects to create my first design possibility.

I added annotations for the animation techniques I will be using.

I then made another design using the same method.

This design has two blade design possibilities, one thicker and one more slender.

These are all at concept level and aren’t certain to be my final designs, Some challenges I might face with these designs are:

• Difficulty level; these designs are very complex and might need to be simplified. There are a lot of sharp edges and detailed components which may be easier to draw than to model. I am striving for a sucessful model and if this amount of detail is posssible then that is a bonus.
• Origonality; seeing as these are taken from inspiration I may need to tweak them even more to eleborate that this project is about my own design and creative input, and what I can make from this.
• Texturing; these models, especially the first, seem to have complex topology and geometry, equalling is typically dense and hard UV mapping and texturing, another thing to consider about how complex the detail is on these.