Hi,
i´ve been working on this axe for a while and now I want to put an engraving on the blade. I have a picture of it, but I don´t know what material settings I have to use that it looks like an engraving. Does anyone of you know how to do it?
C&C are very welcome!
If the blade is a seperate mesh from the rest of the axe UVMap it and then add the engraving to a nor map. Or you could actually map it out of the blade with actual vertecies and just use blender materials for the render. Of course if you UVmap it you can also go in and add in the wear and tear on the blade, dry blood, nicks and scratches, rust, etc.
Its not bad.
did you do the bezier curve extrusion exercise in the blender manual
of the extrusion of the dragon…
then you could boolean op with it and subtract it from the objects surface
then texmap the engraving
Nice project. have you tried my tut on easy UVmapping?
http://free.hostdepartment.com/B/Blender3D/UVmap/
Instead of the COL button, use the NOR instead. Now your texture becmes a Bump MAP.
liked your tutorial
im starting a website and will post some tutorials soon maybe youll be interested …its still being designed
will have forums on blender ,gimp,modeling for game engines if so pm me spin
Tanks for the replies. They were very usefull. On the top part there´s some rust. I still have to improve the nor texture for this.
@Khnum: I did it as you said. Looks good now. 
@kaucukovnik: I don´t know where the mounting parts have to be, but on my reference pics they are on the left and rigt side. Whatever, it´s a virtual axe and so it won´t break. 
@edwin: Sounds like a lot of work to create a bezier shape of the engraving. But it´s a good idea maybe I will use this technique when UV mapping does not work.
@Spin: I did you tutorial some time ago. It helped me a lot when I tried to understand UV mapping.
Here is an updated picture:
C&C are still welcome!
Does anyone know a backgroud image I could use for this picture?
The pattern looks great. There does look like there is some stretching of the texture or something going on with the opposite side of the axe head on the edge inside the two points. Also, the wood doesn’t look real, looks plastic like. Not exactly sure how to fix it, still learning how to do all that myself but perhaps play with the reflective and spectra settings a bit. As for a background, you should model up some other cut logs or a smithy hut or something to go with it, not just a simply BG image, would make it so much nicer. Keep up the good work.
oki And what about little bit(t) massive wooden handle?
But that log is nice
when i use bezier curves,you can convert them to polylines and back;polylines allow me to pick and move the vertices where i want them without the annoying bezier handles,the i convert the polyline back to a bezier curves
I spent the last few days to model a background scene for the axe. Maybe no one would split wood with an axe like this one, but it was the first “blendable” idea I had.
Here´s the updated picture:
C&C are very welcome!
(@kaucukovnik: I think I will make the handle a bit thicker. It´s really thin if you compare it to the size of the blade. )