This is a work in progress and am less than 50% done. But wanted to see what you thought. I am using a reference photo but am not copying it exactly, I like to do my own version using references. I am not a professional blender artist and I am not just starting. But closer to a beginner.
I recessed the front so the edges are angled, the top triangle area goes from flat to the top of the angle. Added round buttons for looks. Right now the hand hold on the back is ugly, still needs shaping and fixing.
Looking for some ideas. I plan to unwrap and put a UV mapping on it and for the textures, I am going to make the textures myself.
BY THE WAY, I noticed one of the round buttons was tilted wrong in the video, I’ve fixed that.
Looks good! Especially for a newbie! Although, there is one thing that my eyes do not agree with:
Look on the outside rim of the shield. You see that dark brown textureless border? Something is not right there. I don’t know. Maybe you like it, but that’s what I found what was wrong.
A smooth shaded mesh with some strategically placed hard edges can work very well if you stick with low poly modeling.
If you intend to bake down from a high poly though, try to push the detail high enough to warrant doing a bake in the first place. Otherwise you’d be as well to simply add the detail directly into the low poly mesh. Most surfaces, including metallic ones, don’t usually have razor sharp edges. There’s almost always a slight roundness to them. Either because of wear and tear or deliberate filing. Or even from a casting process. You can reflect that in the high poly and transfer it into the low via baking. So take advantage of the great tools Blender has to offer. Like sub-surf or sculpting.
When I say high poly I mean something along these lines:
Twenty minutes work or so. Mostly because I let sub-surf do a fair amount of the heavy lifting. So the meshes underneath really aren’t very complex at all. After that a bit of sculpting. It’s not a work of art, and the polycount is higher than I’d usually go. But it illustrates what I mean about getting in some detail worth baking down.
You might get some useful tips from this gentleman’s cycles based videos. Good luck with your project.
Thanks Macser, I can’t find subsurf anywhere. It’s so easy in 2.49b but in the newest version it seems they got rid of it, doesn’t show up in search or any online searches. I did want to use it though.
I am still a beginner, but isn’t baking when you can import it anywhere and not lose texture? I want to be able to sell the model without the buyer having to redo the textures on it.
Sub-surf can be found in the modifier panel in the properties window. Check the image below. When using the sub-surf modifier you should use quads. Although sub-surf can deal with triangles and ngons, it’s not always intuitive for the user. Quads are less likely to cause you problems.
Baking refers to the process of transferring detail from a high detail mesh to a lower detail mesh, with the use of specialised textures. Where the use of excessive amounts of geometry isn’t required or wanted. Examples of baked textures would be normal, ambient occlusion and cavity.
If you want the blend file to retain the textures you “pack” them. But if you’re selling something it’s usual to make the textures a part of the package anyway. As separate files rather than being embedded. The pack option is available from the uv editor window, within the image menu.
Planar unwraps are ok for mapping a face that’s perpendicular to the view. But anything facing away will have the textures stretched across the surface. Is that how you did the wooden front of the shield? Marking seams manually and using the standard unwrap function should yield better results.
