Wing Blade Final Project Process
Final Renders in Unreal Engine
This sword needed to be built from dragon parts for a hero’s sword in a fantasy game. The entire sword didn’t need to be dragon parts but it needed to have obvious dragon part elements. Here are the images I used for references when drawing:
These are my first 15 ideation sketches and iterations on my favorite blades:
These are my further iterations of two of the favorites from the previous step and the final angles for the next step in Maya:
For sculpting references I had to make 2 boards, one for modeling and one for texturing.
My references for modeling were to keep in mind mostly Breath of the Wild weapon weathering, Spyro’s wings, and a little bit of Monster Hunter grittiness.
My references for texture were to keep the wings thin and add some veins in there that were subtle. I decided to go for a bone texture frame and a gauze texture wrap.
I did my base model in Maya, then brought it into ZBrush for weathering and details.
Retopoing set me back a little. I ended up redoing it 3 times before getting it to look right and bake properly after being separated into UVs.
One 1024x1024 texture set
2907 Tris
2907 Tris
Here are my baked maps in the following order: ambient occlusion, curvature, color, normal, world space normal, position, thickness.
Here are my texture maps in the following order: base color, occlusion/roughness/metallic, normal. I used Substance Painter for my texturing.
All software used:
Photoshop: concepting and moodboard
PureRef: sculpting references
Maya: base mesh, retopology, and UV unwrapping
ZBrush: high poly detail sculpting
Substance Painter: texture baking and texturing
Unreal Engine 4: lighting and rendering
