[WIPz] Selene's Warglaive

[selene310187]

My first weapon ... not quite, if you count the first attempt of making a weapon after a tutorial some years ago when I began to learn Blender (the result was a big and bulky thing ) and after that I made armor conversions. Now I tried to make weapons again. I want to recreate the Warglaive of Azzinoth (World of Warcraft) from scratch.

my reference pictures:

Render in Blender and Nifskope:

The weapon is UV mapped, the next step is making the texture. I want to make the texture from scratch, too. The texture should have a more metal look, because the original textures are in opinion very cartoonish. Do you have some tips for texturing ?

[WhoGuru]

Oh this looks very cool Selene! A very unique looking weapon. You've done a great job modeling it so far! As for Textures, we do have quite a few texturing geniuses around here. You shouldn't have any trouble finding help on that count!

[donnato]

Wowee Selene, I want it! Maybe apply a vanilla glass weapon tex? Or an ebony...?

[WhoGuru]

Wowee Selene, I want it! Maybe apply a vanilla glass weapon tex? Or an ebony...?

Ebony's not a bad idea for the blades. Like a glossy, obsidian black maybe? Though if you want to stay with metal, something the like a Fine Steel texture perhaps, with a bit of silver shine on it would look good.

[selene310187]

Wowee Selene, I want it! Maybe apply a vanilla glass weapon tex? Or an ebony...?

The texture will contain the main features of the original texture but the colored monotonous parts will be replaced by colorored metal parts.

[donnato]

The texture will contain the main features of the original texture but the colored monotonous parts will be replaced by colorored metal parts.

Ah yes I see your point. Now I want it even more, however this is beyond my limited skill set having only just begun modding maybe 2 months ago and not having alot of time to spend. I`m sure one of our resident geniuses will be glad to help with this.

[Vince]

Selene,

I'm glad to see more Blender modelers here. Unfortunately, in order to render many frames per second, the Oblivion render engine does not alway do well with smooth, uniformly colored surfaces. Before you work on the real texture, you might want to try applying a uniform gray. Leave the alpha in the normal map reasonably opaque (alpha ~ 127) so the surface will be shiny. Set the glossiness (in the Material in NifScope) to a high value (say around 80). Once you have done that, look at the blade under different lighting conditions in game. This will let you easily see any render artifacts. Once you see that you can try to fix them. Once you've fixed what you can, you will have a good idea of how to handle the real textures so the blade looks as good as possible. There's a reason why you see very few smooth, uniform surfaces on vanilla Oblivion objects. Good luck and please do post some images of your final work.

[selene310187]

the weapon ingame

(with temporary texture at the moment)

[Vince]

Selene, that's good. You can plainly see the artifacts. With it's complex shape, it may not be possible to remove all of them. However, there are ways to reduce them. You need to skin the mesh with as uniform polys as practical. Even though they will be triangulated on export, using quads helps. Of course, make sure to remove duplicate vertices in Blender. Also, you need to scrub your mesh in NifScope. The first image below shows an example of bad and good skinning of a simple dagger blade. The second shows a flow chart of how to scrub your mesh. These techniques should provide a noticeable improvement. Once you've reduced the artifacts as much as possible, you will have to do the rest with creative texturing.

The changes between the "Bad" and "Good" dagger blade don't make much difference in the Oblivion rendered image for the straight blades shown. They do make a difference when the blade is bent along a curve (see below). Although I have been able to remove the artifacts from this blade, your's is much more challenging. I hope my suggestions will be helpful. I've never seen a blade like your's in Oblivion--so far.

[peachykeen]

What happens if you run (the Blender equivalent) of a Smooth modifier over it?

Those two ingame pictures are showing issues with the normals, it looks like, and that would help somewhat (it normalizes the normals, for a smoother-looking surface without any real work).

[selene310187]

so it looks now

additionally (in Nifskope), I followed these instructions:

http://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u28/VinceB_photo/Chart2.png

[Vince]

Selene, I'm glad to see your progrees. It looks much better! Now comes the hard part of creating and applying the textures that will make it look the way you see it in your mind's eye. Good luck.

[selene310187]

Removed the vertex color. I think the weapon is ready for making the final texture now

[Vince]

Selene, I agree. I'll really be interested to see how it looks with its final texture. I guess you won't have a sheath for it.

[selene310187]

So it looks with basic colors added (details come later )

[donnato]

can`t wait.

[InsanitySorrow]

Its looking very nice

[Zaldir]

It looks awesome! Illidan is the most awesome dude in the Warcraft History!! (The books are great!)

Something wrong in your description though It's NOT from World of Warcaft, it's from Warcraft 3!

Just a geeky correction

"Imprisoned for ten thousand years. Banished from my own homeland. And now you dare enter MY Realm? You are not prepared..."

[selene310187]

The texture is about 80 % finished

That's my UV map

Slowly but surely I have got the knack of UV mapping: seams, scaling, moving... it's not so hard if you have a lot of practice

[donnato]

Ok... just

[grond]

I must

[Vince]

I like what you're doing, especially the "glass" blade edges.

[Si-Shen]

Oh my, thats coming along nicely, I really like the look of it!

[selene310187]

coming soon...

the last points on the To-Do list:

- creating the off-hand weapon (done)

- the character will wear both off-hand and main-hand weapons on his back (done)

- placing the opponent with the Warglaive in a dungeon

- icons for the weapons

[grond]

Big and beautiful.