Assignment 2 week 3-6

During assignment 2, we got the task to create an object from the local museum in 3D. The museum was shock full of impressive objects of old, and it was really tough to pick one to create, but ended up choosing to create a silver dagger from the 1570’s, whose previous owner was a fleet admiral. This is what the real piece looks like:

When I started with the dagger, I was unsure if I wanted to make it stylized or realistic, both of these would require me solve different problems. If stylized, the texture and form of the dagger could be more disproportionate and colourful, which would make it easier with texturing in my opinion, since I am not all too experienced with texturing 3D objects. And if I made the realistic one, I would instead have an easier time modeling the shape and form of the dagger, since I have a proper reference. The problem with this would be the texture, since I wanted to use photo-textures, And making a low resolution model with not all too high res photos, would create some trouble when texturing.

This is what the first version model looked like and what it looked like for the rest of the project:

I ended up with making a realistic version of the dagger. The modeling in itself shouldn’t be all too hard I thought, since I now had proper references I could look at. At first, I started modeling the dagger in different sections: the handle/pommel, guard and lastly the blade itself. This was made so that it could actually be taken apart in seperate pieces. when the first draft of the dagger was complete, I was told by my teacher that it was unnecessary if the daggers’ purpose was to be put into a game, and that it was unnecessary complexity. And when I thought through what she said, it made a lot of sense.

Making the dagger in 3D itself was not all too challenging, and was dealt with fairly quickly. The real problem I had with the making the dagger was the texturing and Uwv mapping. Both of these things I’d never done before except on the  much simpler crates we created before and was a difficult concept to grasp. I must say that Uwv mapping was pure hell the first time around I did it on the dagger, and I failed miserably and made a very noneffective uwv overall, with a lot of empty space surrounding it. Making the texturing was a challenge in itself, since I want to keep the originals indents and textures, while using the pictures I had, and since I couldn’t take pictures from every angle and distance. I was a bit restricted in this matter.

The picture above was my first Uwv map with applied texture, and as you can see, there is a lot of white space in between the objects. Another thing I did wrong was that I preserved the lighting that was on the reference pictures, leaving unwanted shadows and highlights on the handle and blade.

We also had to make Specular and Normal maps for our models, so that we could control how much the objects reflected light and make the indents and details pop out more. When I did this, I made my normal map too intense, so that every small detail popped out. This made the dagger look really really rough and corroded. The specular map did not make any sense, since the parts that should’ve been the most shiny, did barely get any attention.

This was the first dagger that I handed in which did not pass for the reasons i wrote above.

After the hand ins were done, I got the assingment to improve on the Uwv, diffuse, specular and normal. I took into consideration the things my teacher had told me. Making the Uwv more compact. This was not much of a problem, and since I got some help from the teacher I got some new knowledge on how to make uwv’s more effectively.

Making the new texture, specular and normal was a tad bit more difficult. I first had to remake the texture so that the natural lighting from the picture got removed without actually removing the details of the photo. All I could do was to use a low opacity brush in photoshop to slightly remove the shadows and reflections. Some of these I was unable to remove because I needed to preserve them for the details. I also applied a new texture on the blade, so that it looks more scratched from a whetstone rather than the bumps the first version had.

This time around with the specular map, I had to do a bit of gambling. I am not completely sure how much the real dagger reflected light. But when I thought about it. It was a blade completely capable of cutting someone, so it must’ve been sharpened, yet it’s primary use was as an ornamental blade. So I imagine the whole thing being polished and very shiny, especially on the handle details. So I made the specular very very  bright, and mostly it looks like a white blob. But as long as the object reflects the light correctly, I don’t think it matters, right?

The normal map required quite a lot of tweaking. This time around, Instead of using the software Crazybump, I instead used Insanebump, which is free!

Insane bump was harder to use in my opinion, but I managed to get something out of it.

For the normal, I had to make several normals, cut and paste different parts in order to get the depth I wanted on my dagger. I think it turned out pretty nicely this time around.

This is the result of the new dagger, with it’s new normals, speculars and diffuse:

And that’s all I have to say about the workflow of my dagger making! It’s been quite the journey making it, full of problems and iterations.

That’s me for this time! Cheers!