This weeks assignment was to create a game asset, the theme for this assignment was “Viking weapon”, meaning the style and aesthetic should have Viking written all over it. Being based on Viking culture, design and traditions. Other than that the assignment was really open on what kind of weapon and what kind of style, stylized, simplistic or realistic.
-Mon 09:00-16:00: silhouettes, concept
-Tue 09:00-16:00: modelling
-Wed 09:00-16:00: texturing
-Thu 09:00-17:00: texturing, rendering
-Fri 10:00-17:00: report
I started to look up what kind of weapons the Vikings used, and went from there. I wanted to make an axe, sword or a king of spear. I also thought about a pole hammer, but its not really an Viking weapon so I scratched that idea quick. I thought an axe would be to boring since most people in my class made an axe, so I decided I wanted to make a sword. I thought about a normal Viking sword, a great two handed sword and a middle sized sword. I wanted to make the sword semi realistic, so I made blade how it would look if it was smithed, with the tang/the pole going all the way into the handle.
I wanted some runes and decoration on the sword to make it more Viking. So I wrote “flameberg” with runes on the scabbard, flameberg is a name on one of my favourite swords, it’s a two handed sword with a wavy blade. On the hand guard I wrote all the different worlds in the Viking mythology: Asgard – Ljossalfheim – Midgard – Jötunheim – Myspellheim – Vanaheim – Niflheim – Svartelfheim – Helheim.
I used quad draw to make the general shape of the sword and added edge loops when I needed, I also extruded the faces on front of the sword to go in to make the fuller. Then I mirrored it and connected the sides with a simple bridge, also adding an edge in-between to make a hard edge on the sides. I did the same on the hand guard, I also used quad draw to make the pommel and shaping it into a dome and connecting it to the grip, which I made from a cylinder, extruding out the grip more to make bumbs on the grip so it would be easier to hold.
The scabbard I made by duplicating the blade and scaling it a little and cleaning up the edges and removing the fuller. I made the metal parts by extruding them out. The handles on the scabbard I made with a cylinder and bending it, I duplicated it after I had unwrapped it.
The leather straps on the scabbard I made by quad drawing it on the scabbard and moving it around so it would fit. When I got all the parts I started unwrapping them. I used mostly planar mapping, and fixing them after wards, since it was going to be just the same on both sides.
Since I wanted it semi realistic, I painted mostly everything in Photoshop, adding some metal and leather textures to add more detail. I used a rough round brush in Photoshop to draw the diffuse, adding dirt and light on the specular and reflections. I generated the normal map in crazy bump from my diffuse.
I think it went pretty good, but what I would have done different, fixing more on the textures. And maybe loading the model into zbrush to make a better normal map and practice more on zbrush.
sketchfab link: https://sketchfab.com/models/d7dcbd935c134f45a8e719e1212c1279
Caroline 3D design and animations 