Hi all,
I’m a concept artist using Blender (used Max back in 2015) to supplement my concepts. However, with this latest project, I wanted to push my skills with 3D and get into
texturing and using normal maps. I’m honestly looking for harsh critiques and advice to push my skills even further with whatever future projects I tackle. What you see is a prop design from my vampire video game IP that I’m working on. To give you some context it’s an artifact used to imprison Diaspora, the Goddess of Blood.
My personal issues with the model: I wanted to try and add a texture to the black material suggesting an aged feel, like how steel can get scuffed and stained over years. I had it there at first (which you will see in one of the images). However, in order to add the silver paint looking designs on the same black material, I had to use a Mix Shader of both the black material and silver paint (and then used Texture Painting to mask out the silver paint designs) but that caused me to lose most of the Roughness map I used on the black material to suggest that used look . I didn’t know how to get around it at the time, so I accepted my losses. Secondly, I wanted that red material to have thick glass appearance with runes carved into it with a normal map (my image I used was not hi-res enough so now there’s a lot of noise on the carved runes of that red glass). Those glass runes were also supposed to have the look of frosted glass, but I don’t think mine came out that convincing. I think it’s close, but there’s something about it that doesn’t feel like glass to me yet I don’t know what it is. Overall, I’m still quite happy with the original design, just not the finished model. There’s also beveling issues too due to bad geometry, that I don’t understand how to fix aside from remodeling. I’m sure the list could go on and on, but you get the point.
I welcome any and all critiques from lighting, texturing, bad geometry, etc. and possibly how to fix such problems in the future with open arms. Sorry for the long post and thanks for your time!
I’ve attached the following:
-Blender file (layer 1 has the original meshes separated before I mirrored them, and layer two has the finished mirrored meshes joined together)
-The original 2D designs I did
-3D images I rendered in Cycles (I do know Octane is supposed to be better for Blender, but I don’t know much about the details of why aside from render times).
-My Artstation page that has all the original images associated with the design
Original Designs
3D Renders using Cycles
How the Roughness Texture looked before I screwed the pooch by applying the silver paint
