Katana

Hello everyone,

I tried to make this as much realistic as possible.
But I think the materials and the lightning are my weak point, something look off and i can’t put my finger on what.

And as I’m running out of ideas, I thought that you could give me advises.
Thank you in advance.

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First off I’m fairly certain that the sword is upside down. Like this.


Personally I’d make the stand bigger as well.

I can’t comment on the materials without knowing more about how you created them.

I’m not an expert on lighting by any means, but something I notice is that at the base of the stand you can’t see any contact shadows, so it looks like it floating. Try adding a rim light above and behind your model to try and solidify that interaction with the floor.

Keep it up!

Here is a similar project I worked on a few years ago.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/rnm0O

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Metal is hard to light. I would suggest using hdri lighting if you aren’t already. The right one will show the good and the bad.

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I’m pretty sure the steel material is way too rough. With real katanas both sides of the hamon are finely polished.
I’m no metal expert (but I might have one to ask), so I don’t know myself in which way hardened and unhardened steel should differ, but both should show little roughness.

Scratches might be okay, depending on the look you aim for, although likely no self-respecting samurai would carry one looking like that :smile: If you buy a decent one, it will be polished to perfection (aka the most boring node material one can create).

Also the hamon line usually has larger variations in height.

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Back at it,

Blendit_Josiah, wow your render is awesome !
I followed your advice and turned the katana upside down (didn’t scaled up the support though ^^’ )
I already had a rim light, but I gave it more importance and reduced other light sources.

OLG, I wasn’t using it because it gave me pretty bad results on another project, but I gave it another try and you were right, it’s way better. I chose an HDRI image with warm red and yellow colors, so it didn’t feel out of touch. (here, it’s the one named "Popcorn Lobby if you are curious, 2nd column, 9th row)

omgold, for the node material, I think I kinda fell in the trap “the more complicated, the better it will look” (which isn’t true), and what you say regarding the scratches is totally true so I tuned them down (couldn’t resolve to erase them totally ^^’ ) and i edited the hamon texture so I had more variations.

I’m a little bit uncertain about the blade now, doesn’t it look a bit too “glassy” ? I can’t get it to look more “metallic”.

With regards. :slight_smile:

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I think the problem now is the background. When you make something completely reflective, no surprise, what you will see is the reflection of the background. So you need to put something there that you want to get reflected. Your current background (the one behind the camera) is mostly plain brown, right? Try something lighter and less monotone. A plane with an emission shader connected so some suitable texture might be good (like a simple room with one or more windows). Or alternatively setup more soft lights there.

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Okey, did what you said and changed the background and modified the node three for the metal part of the blade.

I also slightly changed the shape of the handle (Tsuka for the perfectionists ^^ ), adjusted the painting in the background, and modified the material of the floor.
All of this is just details, but details matter and as the overall is getting better, they became more visible.

I’m also wondering if I just remove the little chain at the end of the handle. (I mean, did you even noticed it ? Is it really something of good taste ? :thinking:)

Do you have something else that disturb you in the render ? It’s pretty hard to see what’s wrong in my own renders for me…

First off… Thank you!
Second… Wow! It looks a lot better! I like the highlight coming in on the left side.

You’re right I didn’t notice the chain till now, but that doesn’t mean you should remove it.

I think the only piece that doesn’t look right yet is the handle. Specifically under the wrap. Right now it’s just kind of flat white. I’m not an expert on what goes there, but from my own research I know that they usually put some ornaments underneath, used for easier hand placement. I recommend researching it to get some ideas!

I’ve seen quite a few Katanas with plain color rayskin Same. But for the looks, there is a detail layering issue, yes. It seems there is a texture to it, but too fine for the viewing distance in this render. Might be worth tweaking.

Well I was working on the wood material of the support, and I am not sure about the new floor (I’ll try to tweak the glossy shader.)

But now that you mention it, the material beneath the handle isn’t plain white : it’s some kind of Polystyrene texture. But it’s to “far” to be noticed as omgold said.

And it leads me to another problem : The image is 3000 * 1000, the percentage scale for render resolution is 100%, the number of the sample is 900, etc, everything is done to have to more detailed render possible…
Then, why the zoom is so pixelizated (this word doesn’t exist, does it ? ^^’ ) I mean, 3000*1000 and 900 samples, those are pretty big values, no ? (I’ve got CUDA so it doesn’t worry me to go higher if needed)

So before I do anything to the handle, I’ve got to solve this render problem… Or else it will stay a bunch of white pixels regardless of what I do. :sweat_smile:.