Need Someone to Texture my Sword

[JoshQuake]

I made a sword and I attempted to texture it but it looks horrible. can someone please make it look good? I can't make high quality textures for the life of me and really need the help.

 

I'm wanting a black shiny handle with some kind of white pattern around it. The blade a normal metal color.

 

Thank you so much if you do create a texture for me.

[TodaY]

I made a sword and I attempted to texture it but it looks horrible. can someone please make it look good? I can't make high quality textures for the life of me and really need the help.

 

I'm wanting a black shiny handle with some kind of white pattern around it. The blade a normal metal color.

 

Thank you so much if you do create a texture for me.

 

where is your sword? ;P

[JoshQuake]

I made a sword and I attempted to texture it but it looks horrible. can someone please make it look good? I can't make high quality textures for the life of me and really need the help.

 

I'm wanting a black shiny handle with some kind of white pattern around it. The blade a normal metal color.

 

Thank you so much if you do create a texture for me.

 

where is your sword? ;P

Apparently not in the post lol. updating now. :D

[LHammonds]

Creating textures from scratch is not necessary...you can utilize existing photos, textures, etc. You just need to learn how to use Layers effectively.

 

Here are some examples (even if they are for a different image tool than you use, it can give you ideas):

 

How to add texture to a photo using Photoshop

Using Texture Layers to Enhance Your Photographs

Photoshop Basics: Introduction to Using Textures

Textures with Layer Modes

(view if you know nothing about layers)

[JoshQuake]

This is my failed attempt... I told you I'm bad. lol

[LHammonds]

The handle doesn't look bad. I am not sure what effect you were trying to accomplish with the blade though. Elvish writing of sorts?

 

If you clean the texture of the sword, you can do some fancy tricks with the normal map to make it look like it has engravings.

 

Example: The name "Hammonds" on this sword is not in the texture, it is in the normal map which affects how light reflects on the surface.

 

http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee11/Conan_Lon/Oblivion/WIP/Ultraviolet-GreatKatana1.jpg

 

I basically created a normal map from a different (modified) image which had the name there.

[JoshQuake]

I made a normal map but it's dull (pic in previous post). How can I correctly get the shiny metal effect like yours? The normal map seems to not do anything besides let the swords texture brighten near light sources at night.

 

P.S. I am changing the texture of the blade and handle. That was just an attempt.

[LHammonds]

With normal maps, you always want to export as DXT5 because of the alpha channel. You MUST include an alpha channel and place your specularity map inside it which controls what parts should be dull (like leather) and which should be super shiny (like metal).

 

GIMP: Quality Normal Maps

 

To make a reflective metallic blade like the one in my pic, you need to follow this tutorial which basically sets the material to reflective glass. However, I'd recommend that you edit your sword and separate the blade from the hilt. When I re-built your sword, it was in 3 separate objects (handle, cross guard and blade). I joined all the objects to keep things simple for you but to apply the reflective material to just the blade, you need to make it a separate object from the hilt. In blender, go into Edit Mode and press "L" while hovering your mouse over a vertice on the blade, that should highlight all verts on the blade. Then press "P" to move those verts into a separate object. I'd suggest renaming your objects to match what they are (such as Sword.00 --> Blade and Sword --> Hilt). You can then separate the material names and call the Blade material 'EnvMap2" and change the "Map To" selection from Mix to Lighten which will export the blade with the correct settings as noted in the above Reflective Metal tutorial.

 

LHammonds

[JoshQuake]

With normal maps, you always want to export as DXT5 because of the alpha channel. You MUST include an alpha channel and place your specularity map inside it which controls what parts should be dull (like leather) and which should be super shiny (like metal).

 

GIMP: Quality Normal Maps

 

To make a reflective metallic blade like the one in my pic, you need to follow this tutorial which basically sets the material to reflective glass. However, I'd recommend that you edit your sword and separate the blade from the hilt. When I re-built your sword, it was in 3 separate objects (handle, cross guard and blade). I joined all the objects to keep things simple for you but to apply the reflective material to just the blade, you need to make it a separate object from the hilt. In blender, go into Edit Mode and press "L" while hovering your mouse over a vertice on the blade, that should highlight all verts on the blade. Then press "P" to move those verts into a separate object. I'd suggest renaming your objects to match what they are (such as Sword.00 --> Blade and Sword --> Hilt). You can then separate the material names and call the Blade material 'EnvMap2" and change the "Map To" selection from Mix to Lighten which will export the blade with the correct settings as noted in the above Reflective Metal tutorial.

 

LHammonds

DDS Converter doesn't work. I select the PNG but it doesn't show in the image file list and the convert button is greyed out.

 

EDIT: I just did it the Photoshop way. This is how it turned out. There is a middle part that is supposed to be darker. I think I just have to darken it some more. It's looking a hell of a lot better now. The problem is that I was saving the .dss as DXT1.

[LHammonds]

Yes! Much nicer...and if you enable the EnvMap2 material on the blade, it will look fantastic since the base color seems about right for a good EnvMap2 effect (and don't forget to change the other setting to APPLY_HIGHLIGHT

 

The Normal Map needs to be DXT5 because of the alpha channel.

The Color Map (texture) can be DXT3 because you do not need an alpha channel for the texture. If you had parts that were transparent, then you would control the amount of transparency in the Color Map's alpha channel and would need to use DXT5 compression to preserve the alpha channel...but that is not the case here...so your Color Map should use DXT3 and will be 1/2 or less the size of the Normal Map.

 

If DDS Convert 2 will run on your system (WinXP only) and it cannot convert an image, it is likely the image is not a power of 2 for dimension size.

 

Good Examples:

512x512

1024x1024

128x2048

1024x4096

 

Bad Examples:

498x502

300x888

640x480

 

LHammonds