BC1-1908 Homework, Thibault Caradec

[spikeyxxx]

@otowa Don’t worry, I am sure you can get this done!

[Thibault Caradec]

Day 3 – Tsuba Day

So… I’ve been looking at this kata quite a lot, now that I’m close to completing the modelling. 

2 things in my mind : This handle fabric looks too… not sure about the correct term here… Stiff? Straight? I need to give some randomness to it. If someone can suggest a good way to make it appear more natural, let me know

Reminder

vs

Anyway… The second thing is that the central piece of the katana is the Tsuba. And it’s a good display for decoration. 

Tsubas come in all sorts of shapes, material, colors, themes…etc…

To give my model some substance, I decided I should go to something somewhat elaborate, but that looked reachable to me. 

That was my choice:

The method was simple, but tedious. Like for the kamo, I went for vertex modeling. And damn that was loooong. It took me all my train time (so 1H30) of adding vertices, duplicating feathers, mirroring wing, and doing the head. 

So I ended up with the following flat result, that I then extruded.

I added a disk below it, and used a mix of Bevel and Subdivision Surface modifiers to get the sharpness of the contour, and the roudness of the global shape.

I guess it’s ok and I could leave it like this. But I have at least to clean the head a little (damn it looks derp compared to the original!) and if you look at the reference, all of the golden parts have some … bumpiness to it, where my model is completly flat on top. The thing is I modeled without thing about that so if I want to update it I’ll have to find a trick. 

Edit : Of there will be some positionning issues as well…

[spikeyxxx]

@otowa I guess that both your issues could be solved in the shading phase, Bump is your friend, although I’m not sure how Eevee is handling Bump. There must be some tricks to get that working. But I don’t think that should be concerning you during the modelling stage.

And your Tsuba ( is that correct?) looks great! You did that in 1.5 hours? Amazing!

[Thibault Caradec]

@spikeyxxx Thank you. I’m trying to play a little with the “randomize” tool and it gets a little less generic in terms of shape. It looks less like repeats… Hmm… Not sure about the way to go…

[Thibault Caradec]

Trying to randomize the handle fabric to get a more natural look… What do you guys think? 

Original

“Randomized”

[spikeyxxx]

@otowa Yes, that looks a lot better! Way to go, Thibault!

[Thibault Caradec]

@spikeyxxx I guess I won’t confirm the randomizing right now, and put it aside until the end, in case it messes too much the model for the shading step. I’ll put it right at the end if needed. 

[Thibault Caradec]

Ok.

Added some kamon near the guard, made the crane look less derpy, and fixed some blade topology. 

I consider myself pretty much done with the katana. Since I still have time, I may had a sheath, and maybe a menuki, which is a decoration put just behind the fabric of the handle.

Maybe…

[smurfmier1985]

@otowa this katana looks bad ass, love those details! I would definitely go with the randomized look btw, looks more realistic. Keep it up man, you’re doing great 🙂

[Thibault Caradec]

@smurfmier1985 As I mentionned, I’m just being a little bit careful, because in order to use the randomize function, I need to apply the array modifier. And I wait the time I’ll be sure I can do it without any doubt.

[smurfmier1985]

@otowa smart 🙂 before you do, make a duplication of it and store it away in another collection. Or save that version with another name as a backup blend file. That way you can always come back to it if need be.

[silentheart00]

@otowa Nice!  Looking sharp.

[Thibault Caradec]

Day 4

Not much to say today, just added a sheath and a stand. I may prepare a small simple scene if I can.

[Thibault Caradec]

Homework Week 1 Submission

Additional shots

[Kent Trammell]

@otowa This thread is proving to be a wealth of insight. Thanks for taking the time to share so much about the process and the project in general. I’ve googled and youtubed more about katana’s in the past week than I ever before!

I’m glad to see that you randomized the shapes in the grip wrapping. I watched a timelapse video of the wrapping process and clearly there’s significant effort to making the pattern *perfect* (at least as perfect as by-hand can be). So there is a perfection involved in this particular model but experience has also taught me that perfect is often more boring than interesting in CG. So the choice to randomize is a good one.

In fact I may suggest randomizing a little more. It’s a “soft” recommendation though. Right now I can’t really see the randomization unless I’m close to the handle. If I could read a little more of the grip silhouette randomness in a full view of the katana, that’d be ideal. If you don’t agree with the note, I understand. I see a plenty of reason to leave it as is now. To make it more random would make it feel a little more used and less pristine, which may not be what you want.

The detail in that tsuba! Looks great and surely a tedious task. Nice job!

Overall you probably won’t be surprised by the A+ I’m giving you. You clearly have put a lot of effort in the project so far, the model is high quality, and sharing the insight is invaluable.

Keep up the good work! 👏

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