For this project I really wanted to challenge myself and try to complete something awesome and complicated because I wanted to try out different methods that I would possibly like working with. At the beginning I had an idea that I could make some sort of landscape that would set some kind of tone or a feel for the audience, but in the end I ended up going for a single model from my favourite game Lineage 2.
I remember when I made my first sword back in the first year and how hard that was for me and to be honest quite challenging, so what I decided to do for my personal project is to model a sword, not just any sword I wanted to try and model a really complicated sword that was probably going to drive me insane. With the time constraints that I had I feel like this choice was the right one to make .
These are some of the images that I have looked at throughout to get inspiration and decided what kind of weapon I really wanted to do. I also wanted to add my own kind of touch to the model if possible, so I picked out the one I liked the best.
The one I highlighted above is the ones that caught me interest the most and I have the history with the weapon itself in the game as well. I wanted to go for the basic shape like that and most of the feel of the weapon as well. I still wanted to be able to add small changes of my own and just add a touch of my own style I think.
I also thought about going towards the style of the pirates inspired by the pirates of Caribbean and the game Sea of Thieves, I liked the style and the feel of those weapons as well so I made a model thinking I might just go for one of the pirates models, but then I thought I couldn’t really add my own feel or if I could I would just go away from the simple pirate look and I didn’t want to do that.
So I decided to just stick to the lineage 2 sword and style, since its the ones I wanted to create from the start. I knew I was going to watch quite a few tutorials if I wanted to achieve something cool and personal, so I did just that. These are just some of the videos I used to inspire and help me achieve my finished model.
I wanted to be able to create a proper sword with a cool handle, and I wanted to make the handle of my sword like spiny like a staircase, but for a handle of a sword and then hopefully add a smooth soft texture on it. That what I was planning to do for my model anyways, at this time I was only exploring and trying to do other work.
While I was working on this sword I took a look at a bunch of artists from Riot games, my favourite company and see what kind of techniques do they have when it comes to working towards a certain model or a piece of work.
Riot Games League of Legends K/DA ArtBlast
This is the art station of one of riots members and I really love the work ethnic and how everything is being done. Even if its some of the character models and different from what I am working on. I really enjoyed researching the type of designs and art being produced by this amazing artist.
It took a while for me to figure out how I will have to use some of the shapes to design certain parts of the sword as well as I went along of learning different and more complex shapes.
Most of the references that I used are from that one single image that I used to find my favourite sword. I used different parts of the swords and started modelling. Sometimes it was kind of hard following certain tutorial parts when you are trying to adapt to your own sword.
This is the the model that I came up with in the end and I was fairly happy with the result because it was a combination of different sources and references. I was really happy with the final result, but the worst was yet to come because I had to texture it and figuring that out is the scariest part for me.
UV mapping was pretty scary, but since I tried to stick to simpler shapes as usual it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but I did have to rewatch multiple videos because personally to this day I find it really complicated to reassuring is a must for me.
It was a long process when it came to this, but in the end I think I got it done properly, it was a little complicated because I had a lot of small wee gems and bent parts in my model, so I knew that I had to be careful so that I don’t mess anything up. I did end up doing it for quite some time and I would make different copies and save them in case anything happens. I didn’t like the way I had really small gems around to be honest. Got a little messy when I was trying to place them to different places.
For this project I also tried doing id mapping for the first time ever when it comes to doing them properly. I had to go back and do more research because it can get pretty confusing as well, but I felt like I needed to do that because that makes it much easier to texture when it comes to Substance painter.
These were some of the videos I looked like for doing id mapping and actually setting it up. It was quite a weird process and I had to reset the model multiple times because I would keep messing up the settings and the process of it. I did ask some help from my class mates on id mapping and some of them helped me out as well.
At the same time I knew I needed some feedback on how the model is looking, so I asked some feedback from my peers as well. They told me it looks really good and that it will even better when the textures were going to be on it. I agreed with that because I couldn’t wait to add texture to the handle because I knew I wanted to make it stand out and look really good.
Here is some screenshots of the id maps I did for my sword model because If I was going to texture it properly I needed to make sure that the id map is being used here. I really struggled with this part if I am being honest because it was a different kind of method of doing things, but I didn’t want to stick to comfort either so I am glad I did this. I also really wanted to do this because it allows me to precisely put any material anywhere I wanted.
Even though the handle looks complicated I feel like it was one of the most fun part of modelling because all I needed to do was extrude and then deform it as well. I did it in 4 to 4 when I was modelling it. When it came to the gems of the sword I didn’t really have any diffusion at the very start , but thanks to the magnet tool I was able to figure it out.
Texturing the gems was a little confusing at first because I didn’t know what I really wanted to do with them and how I wanted them to look. I did remember then we were thought to just go out and play with some of the settings in substance painter. So, what I did was mess around with the roughness and opacity to make sure I get the gem kind of look and it worked out perfectly. I am really happy with the result.
These are some of the finals screenshots of my model that I created.
I am very satisfied with the end result and how I managed to texture properly at for the first time. I did mess up a little when it came to texturing stuff like the little gems or saving the model without covering the whole model with the textured. And one time I managed to delete some of the UVs and save it. That was pretty scary because UVs are my worst nightmare. That’s one of the reasons it took me to texture again. It was challenging and scary as usual, but a nice experience nonetheless.
Mantas Macidulskas 