Modelling and Texturing

For this next post of the swordtember project I will be showcasing how I have used my references and mood boards from the research, to produce a model of the sword I have designed. I will be documenting my workflow routine using videos and I shall keep you posted on problem solving after every video. When problem solving I will discuss what went wrong and I will explain how I fixed the problem and made the further improvements necessary to achieve a nice piece of work. The first section will be about how I made the model for the sword and can be found below in section one.

Section one - Modelling

This section of the blog is going to be about how I create my own models using my references from the research. I will leave some videos below of my process and I will also talk about problem solving.

Sword Frame

This video below shows and discusses the process of how I made my Swords frame in Blender:

Problem Solving

When modelling this part of my sword everything turn out great, I am happy with it looks now it is finalized but there were some problems along the way. These problems were to do with the topology of the sword's frame, as shown in the video above I use the loop cut tool to make more geometry so that I could carve out a shape into the sword using the knife tool. Making the shapes I needed was easy but I had to fix a problem with the amount of extra and unneeded vertices I had, deleting these meant that the faces of my model would disappear. To solve the problem I went round the model tiding up all of the edges, faces and vertices so that I had no engons on my model, this overall resulted in a better quality for the model as it was very neat and easy to unwrap.

Sword Blades

This video below shows and discusses the process of how I made my Swords blades in Blender:

Problem Solving

When creating the blades for my sword everything turn out great and I am happy with how they have been modelled. I ran into no real problems when creating the blades but I did have to pay close attention to how I was deleting some of the extra geometry like I was saying in the video. When deleting unneeded geometry it is important that you think ahead before getting rid of things as you can sometimes ruin your model. I have done this before and it is very annoying so when I was deleting geometry this time I remembered to be careful and everything work out well.

Sword Details

This video below shows and discusses the process of how I made my Swords details in Blender:

Problem Solving

When creating the details for my sword I was very pleased with how I modelled them and they turned out looking great. In terms of problems I found that the modelling was perfect but there was a very minor issue with the unwrapping for the side details. I briefly covered this in the video but when I had unwrapped the cubes I realised that because the array modifier made more of the cubes It made the unwrap very larger. However as much as this may be annoying it doesn't really make the texturing to hard a I did my textures as low poly.

Sword Handle and Guard

This video below shows and discusses the process of how I made my Swords handle and guard in Blender:

Problem Solving

When creating the swords handle and its guard I was happy with how everything went, I wasn't challenged when making them so I had no problems with the modelling. One thing I will discuss is how I came to change the design for the handle and the guard. I originally had the guard allot bigger and the bottom detail of the handle was a sphere, I changed because I was given some peer feedback from members of the class that suggested that the guard looked to big and the sphere didn't go well with the rest of the sword. It is from this feedback that I decided to change the guards size and make the sphere into more of a pointed shape.

Section two - Texturing

This next section of the blog is going to be about how I took my models and textured them using software such as substance painter but also using some tools in blender. I will leave some videos below of my process and I will also talk about problem solving.

How I Textured my Models

Below I will leave a video showing of how I textured my models in Substance Painter.

Problem Solving

As mentioned above in the video I used substance painter to make some textures for my sword. I made the textures with easy and found that on my model they worked well but they didn't look realistic, this is because I made my sword in Low-Poly instead of High-Poly. This was a problem at first but after doing some tweaking with the model I found that they worked well in a low poly style. At the time of writing this I have made my mind up about how I want to work going forward , I think that I will be modelling and texturing in a low poly style as it looks nice and is easy to achieve. With this said I feel that although problems pursued my sword looks great and I am really happy with how this mini project has turn out so far.

This is everything covered for the production of my sword, I will be making one final post to wrap up this project. In the last post I will showcase the sword with some nice renders and I will talk about how I feel I did for this project.