Ryu's Armory - My Warband Models and maybe some more

[Conqueror_Worm]

Your models are bad and you should feel bad!

You know I love you and your work Ryu. 

[Pandabomber]

Your code is bad and you should feel bad, Worm.

[Conqueror_Worm]

Your code is bad and you should feel bad, Worm.

Tell me something I don't know.

[Chris]

Tell me something I don't know.

Celery has negative calories. It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with.

Those are amazing models ryu I love the repeater crossbow.

[Tennenoth]

Since you're the resident 3D guy, I've been experimenting and trying my hand at created a weapon of some description. I have followed tutorials and created a very basic bastard sword design with some quite bad texturing.

Are there any tips that you could give with regards to texturing? I am not the most artisitic person in the world and therefore I have just been going through google images taking different materials, such as metal and leather and just throwing them onto a wireframe UV map.

In particular, I am at a complete loss as to how to do an effective bump map in GIMP.

I am unaware of what tools you use, but if you can help me, that would be fantastic.

I ask this because as we can all plainly see, you've either got lots of experience or you're gifted in the mysterious arts of... arts..!

EDIT: Grammar change.

[Ryu]

@ MrGuarnere, Kriegstofu, SnRolls, Pandabomber, VLKA_Pony, Kwal, Birdtalon, Senni, Conqueror_Worm, Jeremiah The 12th, Tennenoth ; thank you to all of you guys. I'm glad that you guys like them .

@ Kriegstofu: Yup maybe i can do at future as you say  .

@ MrGuarnere: Sent you a pm .

@ Pandabomber: Thanks alot . Yes i agree, i must really work on that, i always end up making eastern stuff somehow lol. But i think you cant say that for "Chinese" RepXbow i think, i really tried hard to westernize it .

@ Kwal: Yeah my English is not that good, i didnt know it has a "n" there untill you say . I'll fix it at post, but i guess it's too late to change the mesh's name now .

@ Senni: Thanks . As i told before, i cant say if they'll be used or not. We have to wait and see. Also i want to mention it again; not all of them are going to be used in NI .

@ Conqueror_Worm: I knew it! But still, i love you guys ;D.

@ Jeremiah The 12th: So thats why i dont like celery hmm... . Thanks mate .

@ Tennenoth: This is going to take very long, and belive me i'm just mentioning the basics.



What i'm going to explain now is for everyone who want to learn a bit more about "creating model" progress which i learned in a hard way by trial-error, doing searches and doing lots of reading on internet. I may have some wrong infos, or parts i got wrong maybe in it; but this way is how it works for me. You're free to fix any mistakes i made here, or maybe add some useful information about the progress .

First thing about modelling i should mention is that; while modelling takes 1\3 time's of the whole modelling progress, UV unwrapping and texturing takes 2\3 of the time (well at least for me). Thats one of the reasons why i hate texturing; when you complete the model you feel like its ready but actually you havent reached the half way yet :/.

I'm using Blender for modelling, UV unwraping, sculpting, baking and sometimes for creating textures (and of course for rendering when i need to ). This program is a total monster, it can do anything you need .

For texturing first thing to learn is creating a nice UV layout so your model's textures wont have streching. After that you take this layout into Photoshop or GIMP(which i'm using) and by using layers and cutting-pasting you prepare your basic texture map. Now if you have some decent 2d skills you can do that by painting yourself. But if you have no 2d skill like me, you can only use image textures from the texture sites (mayang, cgtextures etc.). Now if you use them as they are; your model will lack something you can notice but cant name it; it will look just too dull.

At this point you must bake Ambient Occlusion map in 3d program you use and multiply it on your basic texture map as layer. That way how can i say; your model will gain more "depth" and will look a lot better, but still this is also not enough. After that you must add little details into your textures, maybe some patterns, marks, scars etc.

When you think your diffuse map (colour texture) is ready then you can start creating normal map (bump map). For doing this i use GIMP's normal map plug-in, its a great tool to use. What you get after using it wont be enough probably. Now you have to cut your normal map into parts according to your model's parts(handle, blade etc.). Now take one part; duplicate it and "overlay"(layering method) them as layers on each other till you are satisfied with the details you see. At that point you might want to check how strong your normal map in Blender(or any other program that you can use your textures on your model and see the result in it). Just dont overdo overaying layers on each others alot . There are some tricks, some important points you need to be careful about but you have to search for "creating good normal map" topic and read alot to learn again.

For specular map(defines the shinines of your model) i simply desaturate my finished diffuse map(color map) in GIMP and play with it's brightness&contrast to define which part is going to shine more or less(ofcourse again cutting different parts and doing it one by one). If its darker it shines less, if its close to white it shines alot; play with it till you feel its alright . Again maybe checking your model in Blender might help to see the effect.

This is the basic way to create textures i think, i'm doing some parts differently right now (like; i assign textures and play with material settings in Blender to create basic diffuse map and bake this out later instead of exporting UV layout and doing it in GIMP). This is just me being lazy and trying to "earn" some more time .

Hmm, lets not pass this part also, if you have highpoly (maybe sculpted) mesh, you must learn the "baking normal map from highpoly to lowpoly" progress in 3d program you use. It simply gives the detail on your highpoly mesh to your lowpoly mesh by using normal map. If you also have this kind of normal map, you can fuse it with the normal map you created from the texture you made. Again "overlay"ing in GIMP(or PS) is the way to do that. Some of my models here are also have highpoly meshes; Mjolnir, Greatsword, Black Blade, Lightning but not all of them of these have the both normal maps(from texture and from the highpoly)  :. Modelling highpoly ofcourse adds up more time on the whole progress but your models look more smooth and detailed that way. Though these models i mentioned which have higpoly meshes are maybe not the best examples, i was kinda at the learning progress of baking in Blender while doing those .

I'm not a person who can create wonders in 3d, the information i gave is maybe too detailed and can create an impression that my models should look alot better , but i guess those are the bests i can do for now, i need to improve and learn new tricks to make better ones . Or maybe this is where talent kicks in which i maybe lack, but i say this again i always try to do my best . So if you have decent talent for 3d things, you can probably do better than me .

Feel free to ask if you have some questions, i'll try to explain if i know how to . Thanks for reading.

[Tennenoth]

That's an excellent brief tutorial there Ryu, and you knock yourself far too hard for what you have created. To contrast, I shall post images of what I have created, and it will likely tell you the reason I asked you for help.

You have created some fantastic looking models, there is no doubt about that and your work is some of the most detailed I have seen, even throughout the taleworlds forums.

Sword

[Image: W1kBRK.jpg]

Sword in Scabbard

[Image: xSjUMN.jpg]

They're not bad, but they're not amazing like yours so clearly are. I have looked at your models and their textures, yours are so much cleaner than mine are. (And they have bump maps which I'm still struggling to create effectively)

Maybe I am going wrong by using Wings 3D, it's just so much simpler to use than Blender I found, and it might not do all these fancy things, but it's a nice program to learn with I have found.

I will keep at it, and maybe I will end up with something as great as yours, worthy to present to the developers and go "oi, I made this shiny thing, add it."
Having your work shown off in a mod is always a great achievement and congratulations for getting there, and still having the modesty and want to improve, to say "I lack talent, I can do better".

Thanks again for that tutorial, I have been reading around, but that explains the basic process much clearer than anywhere else has!

[Ryu]

Thanks alot for your kind words Tennenoth , but i know i really lack the talent somehow-somewhere. I just think that; maybe working more might fill that gap, thats why i think i should improve myself more heheh.

Now about your models, they are great i must say! I think you really have talent at modelling, those meshes are better than most of mines and i'm not being kind, i mean it.

With textures that can really be a great weapon. All i can say is you must invest lots of times when its about texturing. I know it because i hate texturing ( ) but still had to learn it somehow (and still dont know that much about it lol). If you have even a bit of 2d skills you can make alot better textures than me i guess.

The thing is i forgot to mention lowpoly modelling, its also hard to keep your meshes' poly counts at low while wanting to have lots of details. Most of my models have around 1k triangles and none have more than 2k. Its better to watch out for that too.

About Wings3d, i know its being used alot by Warband modellers, and actually i dont know how good its since i've never used it. But after getting into 2.5 series Blender got very nice UI improvements and now have very usable interface which can race with other "costy" ones like 3dmax, maya, cinema4d etc.. If you are really interested in 3d(not only modelling, animation etc i mean) its a great open source tool which keeps improving everyday. But you must stay with the one which suits your needs i guess. Learning Blender(or any other 3d program) can be a real pain. But not that hard if you already learned the basic with any other 3d program (hmm.. cant decide hahaha) .

I'm glad that helped you somehow, feel free to ask anything about it if you ever need to. And good luck .

[Tennenoth]

Thanks for the compliments but that's not talent, that's hours of work. (That took me four/five days to create.) I'm a programmer mainly so I thought I would try my hand at something more artistic.

It's funny you should mention Blenders UI, I took one look at it and thought it was horrendous! That's the reason I went to Wings 3D, it was much simpler to work out what was going on! Besides that, I don't really need to do animations, but considering there are a lot of Open Source programs these days, as you mentioned, that are close to or better than their commercial counterparts, that are used in industry these days, I may turn my head and look again at a later date.

With regards to the poly count, I managed to keep those two quite low, the sword itself has 790 and the scabbard is on 900 (total of 1690 if you use the weapon.). Annoyingly because it's a sword/scabbard combination, they get moved together and therefore increase.

I shall see if I can make a more eloquent weapon later and I am sure I will run into some problems that I'll have collar you for.

In the meantime, keep up the good work, I always enjoy looking at other peoples items and stealing their ideas!

[Annoying_Archer]

I like the katana!