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[DagonOfSolitude 38]

Thank you daoudalqasir. The decorations are mediocre though and could be significantly better. I will retexture and remodel some parts of the gladius (if you're referring to the gladius and not the hand and a half sword). I'm not satisfied with the results, the imperial "akatosh" symbol wasn't meant to be black but it didn't look good being engraved since the ambient occlusion did not take it into account and therefore it had no shading. The floral designs on each side of the symbol aren't that great either since the AO map doesn't recognize them and it doesn't apply shading/shadows to them. I could paint the shadows in manually...

Something like this would have been fantastic - http://images.supremereplicas.com/is/image/maskworld/sr-121803-1?$mainshot-2$

But that stuff is usually achieved via sculpting. I don't have access to Zbrush or Mudbox to do that. Blender has it's own sculpting tools but I am not that familiar with them and I know they are not as powerful or user friendly as the Zbrush and Mudbox tools are considering they are software specifically designed for sculpting. I can try modeling in floral details. It's just much more inefficient to do so.  

[daoudalqasir 8]

Idk man, I think sometimes simple is better, especially with roman style stuff.  My only reccomendation would be that the grip could use a little more texture work to look more leathery. 

Edited 12 July by daoudalqasir

[DagonOfSolitude 38]

Very true sometimes simpler is better. 

are you talking about the grip on the hand and a half sword? that's leather. But the grip on the gladius isn't.

I modeled a new weapon based on a Roman Spatha last night. And also I am reusing parts to create different variants and weapons for the Empire - 



Rest of the renders of the Spatha and other variants
http://imgur.com/gallery/yug2Y

Several more crossguards, pommels and blade variants and different types of metal on the blade and hilt and also wooden hilts are going to be included. 




SPATHA V2 COMPLETE  SWORDS OF THE EMPIRE - 



Rest of the renders of the Spatha V2 - http://imgur.com/gallery/fwJEX

The T and S underneath the crossguard stands for Tiber Septim the first Emperor of the Imperial Empire

The Empire is Law - The Law is Sacred

Edited 12 July by DagonOfSolitude
Spatha V2 Complete

[Lux 38]

Outstanding Gladius! My compliments man!

[jackdarkness12 1]

Working on maps for RPG maker game

[daoudalqasir 8]

@DagonOfSolitude I was refering to the Gladius, whatever material it is supposed to be it seemed a little too smooth compared to the amount of detail on the rest of it. But your swords are amazing man, I absolutely love the roman style stuff, and would love to see that era weapons applied to other cultures of tamriel, like a Seax for Nords or a Khopesh for Khajits. There was a modder for oblivion who I thought did a great job at making historically based weapons for each of the games races. http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/users/72638/?tb=mods&pUp=1 

I'm totally new to this but am aplanning on devoting this summer to learning a bit of 3d moddeling and if you have any advice or any reccomended tutorials i'd really appreciate it. feel free to DM me. 

[DagonOfSolitude 38]

I remember Oblivion's realswords mod. It was one of my favourites at the time. 

I'll consider modeling other weapons for the other races and factions down the line. Although for the Nords I think later Nordic era swords would be brilliant. Considering there is a mix of newer and older fashioned weapons and equipment all over Skyrim. 

For example the Legion uses Roman era and inspired equipment yet there are knights out there with full plated armour and great swords. Which I actually enjoy as it's a basket full of different and awesome stuff rather than just one type.

Hans Palm - Millenia's tutorials are usually pretty good. He has one uploaded on youtube on how to model an m37 shotgun. It may help you understand high and low poly modeling. Although learning a software's interface is usually the most difficult step at first but once you get the hang of it and understand how to model properly, you'll be churning out stuff in no time.

There are plenty of tutorials out there, all you need to do is look on youtube. Some apply to modeling in general so it doesn't matter what software you're using and some tutorials are software specific. 


@jackdarkness12 looks good bud.


Modeled the scabbard for the Spatha V2, rest of the renders here - http://imgur.com/gallery/YAp1Q

Edited 14 July by DagonOfSolitude

[SamuraiHealer 30]

These are amazing, but that scabbard looks similar in width to the blade, and not as if the blade is inside it.

[DagonOfSolitude 38]

It is quite a snug fit. I could make it thicker if it's not realistic. But it sure does fit otherwise there would be clipping issues 

Going to import it into Skyrim this evening. Will post screenshots here if it looks good if not. I'll post in the Help & Advice section.

EDIT: Imported into Skyrim, the textures look pretty bad as usual. At first they were way too bright, so I just darkened them in Photoshop but that's not the only issue. the cubemap seems to be washing out the engravings, It doesn't look like shiny metal either. I'll continue to play with the textures and settings and hopefully get a good result in the end so I can then go ahead and add the other versions with different metals and grip materials.

The version you see in the ingame screenshot is supposed to be Gold with a "damascus" steel blade with a ivory/bone grip. The scabbard is made of gold and leather on the outside. 

Rest of the ingame screenshots - http://imgur.com/gallery/DaBo3





EDIT 02: Made a topic in the Help & Advice category with the texture sheets and nifskope screenshots provided. Since I am struggling with getting the textures to look good within Skyrim.

Edited Monday at 5:54 PM by DagonOfSolitude

[SamuraiHealer 30]

I've been looking at it, and I think I'm a little off since my sword's a katana, with a wooden saya (sheath).  It's a lot different than leather sheaths I've (just now) been looking at.  

[Argor nash35 1327]

Some katanas have wooden sheaths though, so they don' have to all be leather.

Dagon of Solitude, love the sword, but I think the textures could use some upgrades. The blade itself is rather bland and all one flat color. Adding more AO, highlights (especially to the edges to make it look a bit sharper), and shadows ( especially on the hilt to accentuate the engravings and edges) will make it stand out more. The hilt itself seems both a bit too shiny and not detailed enough. As it is, it looks too much like plastic and not wood or metal or whatever it is you were going for (ceramic?) I would add some sort of detail overly of the material you are making it out of. 

Again, love the sword, just my twenty cents  

Edited Tuesday at 7:04 AM by Argor nash35

[DagonOfSolitude 38]

 @Argor nash35 the textures are definitely bad, they are supposed to look like they do in Substance and Marmoset Toolbag shown in the renders. Yet I can't seem to get to get them to appear properly in Skyrim, these are the texture sheets - http://imgur.com/gallery/JhBak

I'm also not happy with the blade either ideally I'd like all metal parts to be shiny and reflective like InsanitySorrow's Thegn - http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/51544/? 

The golden parts on the hilt are supposed to be metal. The grip is supposed to be ivory/bone. It appears brown in game because I darkened the texture sheets in Photoshop because the sword appeared way too bright and whitewashed upon import.

The scabbard is leather and metal. 



 

Edited Tuesday at 3:30 PM by DagonOfSolitude

[Yaranik 14]

Still, a great work in progress! I like what you're going for with this.

[Argor nash35 1327]

Yeah, just got to play around with the spec and gloss variables in nifskope in relation to your m spec map and the one in the alpha of the normals to get it right, but you'll get it, looks great still

[DagonOfSolitude 38]

Ahah! Figured out what the issue was.

The specular maps in the alpha 1 channel in the normal map .dds files weren't saving because I hadn't set it to save the alpha channel in PS upon saving as a .dds. That's why the normals were glitched out in Skyrim.

Looking a lot better now but not perfect. I'm studying other weapon texture sheets. And notice that the diffuse maps on some weapons are quite dark while mine is quite bright. I reckon if I darken the gold parts and the blade in the diffuse map it may look better. 

The sword and scabbard's specular maps have different brightness values which I should have made consistent. I can quickly fix that though no problem.

The blade is shining nicely, I think I can get it looking neater though. I got rid of the "damascus steel" pattern since it didn't look good or realistic to how damascus blades are supposed to look. I'll see if I can mess with the pattern and come up with better results if not I'll keep a plain old normal steel blade. 

I'm going for a polished look though rather than the usual dark grey dull blades that most swords in Skyrim have. So far it's not exactly got a polished look but it's close, it's easier to see how shiny it is in game though. The screenshots don't show it very well.

As for the gold, It's still looking a little "plastic" but I reckon I know how to fix it by tweaking the diffuse and specular maps a bit and maybe another cubemap may make a difference too. 

The ivory/bone grip is still shiny but that's because I didn't mask it out in the specular map. I will mask it out and see how it looks in game, some Roman swords had polished ivory grips and that's what I am trying to replicate for this sword. As it's supposed to be for Imperial Captains. The steel variants will be for regular Legionnaires. 

So once this sword starts looking decent I think I can then go ahead and make more variants and finish up the Spatha V1. I also plan to make some shields for the Empire based on Roman scutums but smaller, probably will be heavily based on the shields from Ryse.

Sorry about the bad screenshots. The guards were threatening to throw me into the Riften dungeon for leaving a sword lying around in public. So I was forced to take screenshots in a more secluded area and the Thieves Guild Cistern was the closest place.

More screenshots - http://imgur.com/gallery/hW59d

Edited 22 hours ago by DagonOfSolitude