Hello, my name is Matth and I am here to share my knowledge, and experience,

within TES modding and game art in general. I have answered modding, and 3d,
question numerous people over the last months. They are mostly the same
questions over and over, and some are questions to outdated tutorial from 2012.
I also want to show people my workflow, in case people wonder how I do what I
do, and how you can do the same! I will run through different topics. From
general 3d modelling tips, to problems I see today, to export and import with
Nifskope and how to work with concept art. Are you ready? I sure am! Lets go!

About me
As said, I call myself Matth, or Matth80 or Matth85. This is because of
World of Warcraft, where my main character, from 2006 to 2013, was called
Matth. It grew on me. My real name is Jan-Rune, and I live in Norway In a city
called Stavanger. I am 20 years old, just came home from serving a year in the
army and am taking some exams to fix up some High School laziness. If thing
goes as planned, I am going to study Economy and Management by next school
start which I am looking forward to!
Other than that, my Hobby consists of 3d. After coming home from the army I do
not got many friends left, and a very introvert person. Not shy but I get drained
of energy by being around other people. I also used to be a big gamer. Ive
played MMOs and the likes for the most of my life: Runescape WoW Age of
Conan RIFT SWTOR. I also used to own a PS1, PS2, PS3 Gameboy Color,
Gameboy Advance, DS, Nintendo64, Gamecube, WII, Xbox and Xbox360. Oh, and
PC, of course. I actually used to have 4 copies of TESIV Oblivion! However, in the
later year 3d modelling took over my urge to game. After the initate shock of
playing Diabo III Reaper of Souls, I stopped all together. Now I dont actually play
any games. For me, TES and Fallout are tools to play with not actual games for
me to enjoy. While I say that, I do got 259 hours into 1 save in Skyrim, probably
twice that in Oblivion.
Now, when did I start to model/mod? Well, I first tried Blender in 2006. It was
because I just played Oblivion, and heard you could add custom models to it! I
didnt like Blender at the time. I hear blender have become a lot better in the
later years though, but alas. In 2009-2010 I started with 3ds max 2008 cracked
version. I fell in love. I wasnt very good at it, though. I joined the community over
at TESAlliance back then, where I spent time learning. Actually, I and
InsanitySorrow were at the same skill level back then. He was busy modelling a
PC model, while I made a sword. I still remember him telling me Weapons? Cool..
I should try that!. But I digress. It was a lot on and off. I left TESAlliance in a
years time, due to some disagreement over there. I quit modelling, and didnt
resurface before sometime around 2011. This time I joined TheNexusForums, and
did some half-arsed models. *Example1* and *Example2* are examples. I did
mostly requests. One thing I did around this time, which was rather special, was
to spend time learning particle effects and static animations. You couldnt
actually export particle systems with the plugins back then, so I had to get a

newer 3ds max, use a Civilization exporter (It uses the gamebryo engine as well)
and fiddle a lot in Nifskope. I learned a lot of this from the extremely skilled
SaidenStorm *Saidens Youtube Channel*. I then disappeared again, losing
interest once again. I hit, what is called, the Valley of Suck. The point where you
can make models, but they never looked good. I did show up again when Skyrim
hit, but never did any specific models. I went under again. I resurfaced once
again, a few months back. This time around more dedicated, as I just left WoW
and Diablo III. I had 1 goal, and that was to merge Zbrush into my workflow,
which I originally hadnt managed to do. To my surprise, it was like a click, and I
was comfortable working in Zbrush! Thi leads me to now: I make good models, I
do good sculpt and it is all self-taught. I got good experience with game art, the
game industry and nifskope.

General modelling
I am a little surprised when I see how some people make game art around the
Skyrim forums. They dont do it efficient, nor do they spend enough time on the
right things. I see some people almost wriggling their arms off trying to get a
seam away, whereas that time would be better spent working on the silhouette of
the model, or optimizing the final model. I also see a trend of people not
finishing what they do -- they make a base mesh and they texture it. No high
poly bake. No sculpting. The quality of these models is low, and doesnt fit into
any game made after 2003. There is also the subject of time. I see people who
request models, but have no idea how long it will take. Then I see people who
make model, and give outrageous time limits. It takes months to make a tileset?
A sword takes an hour? What?! Either way, I will try to point out points I find
annoying, or wrong. Some are objective, some are subjective.

1) Low quality models. Okay. I see this far too often. A model is blocky, it
got too few polygons and it lacks a normal map bake. This is
understandable if you make a game for the Android, or you are very new to
this. However, this is not how you do things. For a model to fit todays
standard it needs a few things: A high poly sculpt, a good low poly model,
a good normal map bake and a solid texture. Dropping any of these lower
the quality hard. Sculpting might be a skill not everybody got but that
does not mean you can avoid doing a high poly model inside your 3d
package!
*Examples1*
*Examples2*
2) Reference. This is something everybody will tell you to get right, but you
will always slack off. If you are making something anything. You need to
use references. And I dont mean a reference, I mean plural references! No
matter what you are making. If you make a sword, and you havent done
too many swords, you grab as many sword references you can find, and

you get referenced regarding whatever material it contains. You make a

dragon`? You grab as many reptile references you can find, and get as
many dragon references you can find. I know it sounds silly, but if you
google dragon anatomy, there is actually plenty of it. Its fictional, but
documented just as good as anything real. Weird, I know!
3) Time spent on a model. While not very straight forward, there are things
to know here! The differences between a small, and a big, model does not
correspond to time needed. A tower does necessarily take longer than a
small dagger. Also, a tileset does not take a month to make. If we speak
quality, we speak about 1-2 models a day. Thats a sword, or a house, or an
interior tileset. However, if we speak of an important, often called Hero
object in the industry, quality model, it is usually given a week to
complete. This is also calculated in concentrated work by a professional
artist. So time will often be somewhat more than this. However, if a model
takes over a month to make, the artist is either doing something he is not
very good at, or he hasnt learned to be efficient yet. This is also important
for requestors to know. When somebody asks me Hey! Can you make me
*name 5 different armor sets and 5 tilesets*? I would love you if you did! I
would look him in the eyes, and say Dude. Love does not buy me
anything, and this would take me a couple of months to do. remember,
time spent on one thing, removes time spent learning something. If I do a
repetive task for you, I use time I could spend learning something different.

4) Comfort zone. An important concept to be aware of. It ties in directly in

how fast you learn. Your comfort zone is where you are, obviously,
comfortable. For me, that is swords and weapons. It is semi-hard surface.
Learning is, by definition, expanding you comfort zone. You dont learn by
doing what you know, you learn by going Okay... How on earth am I going
to do this then? Next time the same scenario arises, you will instantly go
aha! I have done this before! No problems!. When it comes to 3d, it is all
about doing something new. If you only do castle exterior, it is time you
take some time to do some organic modelling, or perhaps make a mech or
a gun. If all you do is rock models, it is time to try and sculpt some metal,
some flesh and perhaps some cloth. It all ties together in the end, when
you dont need to rely on somebody else to make a model for you, since
you got every base covered, and your comfort zone is stretched out as far
as possible.

Fresh modeler - no previous experience

This chapter is for all the new modellers out there. The ones that asks How do I
make a new armor? or How do I edit this mesh in *3d package? I will discuss
some broad aspects, and direct you to some tutorials. In the end, this is the
hardest time, and the one that decides whether this is your new hobby, or if it is

nothing but a waste of time. Therefore I want to make sure you do this right, and
get your feet in the water!
First off, you need your tools. There are plenty of different 3d packages to use,
and a lot of different skills to cover. You will need to learn to: Poly model, sculpt,
retopologize, bake normals/AO, texture and eventually export/render. The tools at
your disposal are many, and they dont differ a lot. For 3d packages, I
recommend 3d Studio Max, Blender or Maya. I am aware there are a hundred
other free ones, but there are more documentation regarding export/import with
these. I am also aware there is a big hush-hush when it comes to piracy, but let
me clarify why pirating a 3d package is not a bad thing: Piracy is a problem
because potential customers take a product without paying for it. If there were no
way to pirate a game you really want, you would buy it. However this is not the
case when it comes to these packages. You are not a potential customer when it
comes to a 3d package that cost 3900 Euro(3d studio max 2015 as of
08.06.2014). It is actually a potential gain that you decide to download it for free.
Why, you may ask? Well, for started, you are not the targeted audience to buy it
to start with. However, if you eventually end up becoming a 3d artist, or
animator, and you get asked So, Joe, now that you work here. What 3d package
do you want to use? If you pirated a 3ds max while you were 16 years old, and
have been using it for the last 6 years, you will, of course, say 3ds max. Now
Autodesk got another sale. At the end of the day, I see no harm in pirating a
software as long as there is no money gained in it. That way you gain skills, and
they might gain a future sale.

Other than that we got Zbrush, or its free version Sculptris. Very good softwares.
Zbrush isnt quite as expensive either, and when you buy it you get a lifetime
upgrade deal. So if you do got the money, buy it! Every new upgrade have given
a tool that is invaluable. Its the industry standard, and will most likely take over
for any kind of non-hard-surface poly modelling in the future.
For texturing you got Photoshop, which is a no-brainer, and GIMP. Photoshop is
recommended. When a software got a verb made after it(Photoshopped), it is
without saying it is the best of the best!
In the end there are a few misc softwares I recommend. 3d Coat to retopogize,
Marmorset Toolbag 2 to render, Xnormal to bake out maps and finally Nifskope to
get things into Skyrim.
You got all these? Good. Now, my setup is: 3ds max 2012(With Nif plugin and
Xouli Viewport shader), Zbrush 4R6, Photoshop CS6(With Qsave and Nvidia DDS
plugin), Xnormal, 3d Coat and Marmorset Toolbag 2. The dds plugin and nif plugin
are needed to save out the format used in TES, and Fallout, games -- .dds texture
files and .nif mesh files. Lets get started with some basic here! I might add
videos in the future, but this is all well documented, so I dont see the reason to
be honest! I will outline things very roughly, but try to give you the general
workflow and concepts of things.

3ds max basics

Once you open up 3ds max, you will want to get the .nif plugin. This depends on
your own version of 3d studio max! Simply google 3d studio max *your version*
nif plugin and see what you find. They stopped officially working on the plugin
after 2010, so the 2011 and 2012 one is fan-made, whereas I think 2013 and on
is more official again. Dont quote me on that though!
http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/402050-wipz-3ds-max-nif-pluginfor-201211-with-3264-bit/ was for the 2012 version. To install it, simply open it
and go through the wizard. Start up your 3ds max, and lets have some fun!

This is how your screen will look when you first open it up. This is called a scene
and there are 4 squares, which are all mirrors to the same view, often at different
angels. At start you will most likely want to keep these 4 up, so you can work in
perspective, front and side view at the same time. As you get better, 1 window is
often more preferred, as you work 90% in perspective mode. To the right is the
Object Type menu, where you will find all the primitives you will use for the
majority of your modelling. Here is a picture to explain it a little better.

Your first moments in 3ds max!

For the majority of your modelling you will use: Plane, Box, Cylinder and Sphere.
That said there is no reason to use anything over anything else. It is all a matter
of getting the shape you want. When you first get to this point, I want you to just
play around with shapes. No need to try and make anything complex, or use any
modifier. Simply right click on the Modifier list window, and click Editable Poly.
This is what you are going to be in all the time. Get used to how polygons, verts
and triangles/Ngon/Quad work. Actually, let me explain that a little better! A
Polygon is the surface between points, which makes up a model. A quad is the
optimal polygon, being a square. A triangle is less optimal, but most game engine
work only in triangles and an Ngon is a big No-No.

The reason for this is smoothing, and subdividing. I will get to that in a second,
but as a rule of thumb: For a base-mesh All quads. For a optimized nonanimated object Triangles are fine. For an animated character Quads as
much as possible, due to deformation. Ngons Never, ever, ever.
Now, lets actually do something with the primitives we got! First click the object
you want to edit, so grab a box from the primitive menu. Click the button to the
right, the one looking like a blue raindbow thing! This is the modify menu, and is
where you will do all your modelling magic. First thing you notice are the
selection tools you got. They are:

1) Vertex: You can click individual points at the edges of each polygon.
2) Edge: You can select the edges between vertex.
3) Border: Selects all edges which are borders. Imagine a mesh that got a
hole in it the border would get all the edges around the hole.
4) Polygon: Selects the polygons, which are the faces that make up the
model.
5) Element: Selects the whole object/mesh. If a model got different part, you
can select each part individually, instead of trying to grab each polygon.

Now you can move around and all, but that isnt very exciting, now is it? How are
you going to make anything complex, if you are limited to a cube? First off, notice
that the modify menu changed depending on what selection you are using. Well,
there are a few tools you should get used to using: Chamfer, Inset, Extrude and
Weld. Weld collapses 2 vertexes into each other. 2 becomes 1. Mainly used inside
of vertex selection mode. Chamfer is the act of splitting an edge, or a vertex.
An edge will round off, or a vertex split up. Used both in Vertex- and edge
selection mode. Extrude is the act of getting more polygons by pushing out a
new row of polygons from a selected area. Used inside of polygon selection
mode. Inset will, obviously enough, inset your polygon selection.

This is enough to make any low poly model! Another question might hit you: But
Matth! How do I make something look like something else? I cant eyeball it!
Well said, my friend! You need to set up a reference. This is especially important
if you are new, and not used to working in 3d. I will show you how I set up my
reference, and how I work with it! By using the tools already outlined above.
First off you will need a plane. Go into the front view and drag out a plane with 1
width and 1 height segments. You dont need any extra polygons on it! I also
center it, by setting the XYZ of it to 0, which is done all the way at the bottom of
the screen. Then I push it off to the back, to the edge of the grid. This is too
avoiding the primitives clipping through it while I drag them out. (G is a
shortcut to turn on and off the grid. J is the shortcut to toggle on and
off the outline of the model, which can get in the way.)

Then click M to get the Material Editor up. Click on one of the orbs and drag
it to the plane. Click on the gray button near the Diffuse and click Bitmap.
Navigate to your image. Finally click the Show Standard Map in Viewport. It
is the checkerboard with the lightbulb to it, under the spheres.

Now you can see the image! It might look distorted, though, which can be fixed
by going to the
plane, click on the Modifier List, hit U and find UVW
map. Scrolls down and click on Bitmap fit. Find your image again, and scroll
up and copy the number under Width. Now click back to your Plane in the
modifier list, and change the width to match the one you just copied. Finally,
Right click the plane Object properties Untick Show frozen in Gray and
click Freeze
There you go!

My first sword!
Now its time to actually make something! I chose the sword all the way to the
left. First thing first: We need to analyze the shapes, and make a mental image of
what we are making. I you cant figure out the shapes, you really cant figure out
how to make it! So, lets analyze this one. Its all symmetrical, so we can use the
symmetry modifier to save ourselves half the work. First off, the blade. Only
1/4th of it needs to be modelled. Its very straight forward, so I would go with a
plane. The hilt it split into 2. One a box shape, also symmetrical, and the other
cylinder. The handle isnt perfectly round, so I am choosing a box with a strong
chamfer on it. Lastly the Pommel can be done via a box.

This is a base mesh I am making, so my goal is not to get all the details, but
rather get the overall feel of it. Here is how it looked after I was done. Nothing but
the tools already mentioned were used. Tip: Click ALT + X to see-through
your mesh, so you can follow the reference!
- Holding
shift and dragging while being in edge select mode, and the edge is not
connected to anything, will allow you to drag out an extrusion.

This is the result of 10 minutes-ish. As you can see to the left, not a lot were
actually modelled. I used the plan I outlined, and it turned out nicely. Now, if you
read the General modelling part, this is what I am talking about. People would
take this, and texture it. NO! Skyrim is not a PS1 game, and this model doesnt
belong anywhere but that sort of a game. This is but the first step. Now we need
to make a high poly model out of it, so we can sculpt, or otherwise bake down the
details! This is called Subdivision modelling, or hard surface modelling. In
3ds max we use the modifier Turbosmooth. Turbosmooth will take each polygon
and divide it. 1 quad polygon becomes 4. 4 become 12, etc, etc. So, if you have
been paying any attention thus far, you should ask: But Matth! Wont this thing
look like a marshmallow then? How can you keep your sword sharp if the edges
are divided? With the help of control lines, of course! You add a line close to the
edge you want sharp, and you keep it sharp!

Control lines can be added by clicking rows of edges and hitting the connect
button. There is a plateau of tutorials of this on youtube, just search for 3ds
max Hard Surface modelling basic! Anyways, here is the sword after I added
control lines and gave everything a turbosmooth. Note the polycount! Be aware
of it. To see it, click 7. If it gets too high, things will run slow and eventually
crash. If you got too many objects, and the high poly is too high, start isolating
individual objects and turn off the turbosmooth on the other. I try never to go
above 200k polygons inside of max luckily I rarely get that far on single-piece
models. Though a set of architecture can easily get to 200k+, which can cause
problems. Use groups for that! Google it if you are unsure I rarely use them
anyways.

From here on there are 2 different ways to go. 1) You model in the details you
want inside of 3ds max. This is slow, but for certain asset it is the best way.
Mechs, or guns, are examples of this. For this piece, however, I know I can do a
lot more, a lot faster, inside of Zbrush. So I will cover that then!

UVW:
Now that the model is done. I assume you have detailed it, and baked down maps
and everything is optimized. This is not covered in this part, since it is a step at a
later stage. However, UVW unwrapping is a part of this! UVW is the act of
unwrapping a XYZ 3d model into a UVW 2d space. It can both be painful, and
relatively fast. It can take a few minutes, or a few houres. There are a few key
things to know when unwrapping: Seams and Stretching
Seams are impossible to get rid of, but with newer shaders they are well hidden.
This is simply because when you unwrap something; there will always be a seam.
What is important to know, however, is that seams are not a big problem. If you
UVW smart, and texture smart, they wont show up, and when they do, nobody
really notice.
Streching are when the UVW is pulled out too much, making any texture
distorted. Avoid at all cost!
First off, open the Unwrap UVW modifier from the modifier menu. You should
know how to work that menu by now. Click your mesh, and click U. You are
greeted with this new window that is probably going to confuse you. First thing I
do is to click off the Ignore Backfacing. It is the blue cube you see as soon as
you open the menu. I also click on Polygon Select, which is similar to how polygon
modelling works. Then click on the Open UV Editor, which brings up another
window. This is your UVW space. The box you are looking at is where you need to
place all your UVW shells, which you can then texture on later. For now you want
to plan once again. You will want to see where your seams are going to be. A
rule of thumb is to break a seam where there is a 90 degree angle.
The blade is very easy to work with. You can split it via its sharp edge. The hilt is
a little different. The main part of the hilt can be split fairly easy though. The
bottom, near the handle, can be broken off, because of the 90 degree angle. The
top + the side towards the cylinders can also be split off nicely. The cylinder and
the handle are the same: Find 1 edge then split it all the way from there. Finally
there is the pommel, Take the bottom off, and split it via 1 edge as any other
round/cylindrical object, though this is not done yet, so the pommel is still a box.
Here is my plan:

Now that we got it planned, lets do this! Click on the sword, and scroll down(Still
in the UVW menu) until you get to seams. Click on one of them, and just click
on the edges you want the seam to be on! Once you got every piece done, go
into the UVW window(Open UV Editor ). Select everything in there. Go back
into your UVW menu, and scroll down until you get to Projection. Click on the
Plane, while having all the UVW selected, and then click it off again. This is to
reset any of the seams Max automatically added. You should now see a blue
seam, instead of all the green ones. The blue is the one you added.

Next select everything again, and then click on Quick Peel. Its the button
above the seams. The one to the far left. Click it a couple of times.

Finally relax it, which is found in your UVW editor, under tools. At the first
dropdown menu click on Relax by Face Angles, and just hit Start Relax
and wait a few seconds. Hit Apply, and close it down.
Now comes the fun part! Its time to play some Tetris in here! As I said earlier, the
square to the bottom left is the UVW space you need to pack your UVWs in. While
trying to fit everything in there, you must also consider resolution! Try to keep all
pieces equal, and if that is not possible, keep the part that requires most detail
biggest.
Tip: To the top right corner of the editor is a dropdown menu. If you
click on it, and set it to Checkpattern( checker ) you can get a
checkpattern on your model. The goal is to keep them 100% square and
straight.

3 things might hit you now: 1) whats up with the open space? 2) You keep the
shells together? And 3) Why are there only 1 blade and only 1 cylinder? 1) The
open space is for the eventual scabbard 2) yes, by keeping them together it
makes it a lot easier to texture. 3) The sword is relatively big, so you will never
see both sides at the same time. Hence I see no reason to make them unique. I
could UV both cylinders, but I decided not to. It would depend whether I wanted
the sword to have a lot of unique details, scratches and dirt.
From here on you can export the UVW wireframe, by going to the UV editor
Tools Render UV Template. However, then you got a PS1 model again. No, this
model would be used to get a high poly bake on top of it. At which we would
export out 3 maps: Normals, AO and cavity. This is what we want to texture on!

Zbrush
First time in Zbrush

Zbrush is difficult to get used to. I dont think me speaking much about it will
help, as the UI is something you get used to, and actually sculpting is nothing but
practice. Hence I will send you over to this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=1HFmbgRBaxw Introduction to Zbrush by CUBEBRUSH.

Setting up our 3ds max file

Now that we got a high poly base model, as we did in the 3ds max part, we can
start thinking about getting it into Zbrush. The first thing I want to do is to
equalize the model. I want the model to have clean, good, even, quads for

topology. This is especially important on the blade, where I might not want to
dynamesh is I will get back to that. Here is my sword, before and after.

Next I want to make sure everything lines up perfectly, and is centered to 0,0,0.
That way I can work with symmetry inside of Zbrush. To do this I make sure I got
every piece merged together, click on the button beside modify (remember the
rainbow blueish thing? At the top right?) Click on it, and click Affect Pivot
Only and then Center to objct. Now simply do as before, and center it using
the XYZ to the bottom of the screen.

With that done, we break up the mesh! I split mine into: Blade, Hilt, Handle and
Pommel. Center the pivot once again. If you had turbosmooth turned off, turn it
back on now, and pump it up to 2 iterations. Thats it; we are done in 3ds max,
and can start exporting the meshes! Click on the Autodesk 3dsmax symbol to
the top left. It is the button to the furthest left. Make sure you are on only 1
object, such as the blade. Click on Export and then on Export selected.
Choose the .obj file type. Find a nice place to save it. If nothing else, throw it on
the desktop. I try to work very organized, so this sword was added to: Beyond
Skyrim/Cyrodiil/Weapons/Iron/Longsword/Base Mesh, and named each piece
CyrodiilIronLongsword_Pommel_Base.obj. You will get a box with a lot of options
here. Simply ignore them, and go to preset and click on Zbrush. Do this with
all pieces, and Ill see you in Zbrush in a minute!

First of the bat you might see that my UI is different from the normal one. Yes, I
made this UI as a custom UI. Dont worry, the only different is where things are
placed. The only custom thing I use are 3 custom matcaps(materials) and 2
custom brushes. Nothing that is very important to know for this tutorial. I will go
more in depth in those in the intermediate tutorial. I highlighted the Import
button for you. Click it and import your mesh. Now, after you have imported 1
part, make sure you click off your current sub tool, and click something else. For
instance, on the image above I would click the cylinder after I imported. Then
import 1 more, and then repeat that for all the pieces. In the end you will have to
click under the subtool pallet and append all the pieces. If you watch the youtube
video, you should know how! Its just a matter of clicking on the subtool box, and
then scrolling down to append. In the end you should have your whole mesh
inside of Zbrush!

Now comes the part where we need to figure things out. For instance, the
Pommel is something I want to Dynamesh and work with. The blade I might not, if
I have enough subdivision for it. So let me go through how you dynamesh
something, and how you work with it! The theory of it is easily found on youtube.
First, you click your subtool. I click on my Pommel. I click on the Geometry
tab, which is underneath subtool. There I can see the Dynamesh tab. How
high resolution you want is based off of how much of the base mesh you want to
keep. Since the Pommel is in need of a lot of changes, I decided to give it a low
one 48, whereas if I wanted to dynamesh the blade, I would probably go up to
256 or 512. I also take the blur to 0. Again, youtube Zbrush Dynamesh to find
out what all these things do!

From here on it is all about sculpting. There is not a lot I can tell you. Dont move
up a subdivision level before you are done in the one you are. Shapes > details.
Brushes I use are: ClayBuildup, Move, Trimdynamic, Hard Polish, Faloff
sharp (custom brush, google it.) and Orbs Crack (Custom brush, google it).
Then I just make sure I retain the sharp edges, and get the shapes I want. Move
around a lot, and dont finish 1 piece at a time work at it as a whole. There are
a lot of tools to use, but its all about personal preferences in the end. You can
make more subtools with polygroups, remove some. Take a look at this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE9KqyJU5c&list=PLg1Fs9DPW4DiHTpy3IUi2OFdWM-4wykWY He goes through a lot of good
information!
Here is how my sword turned out. There is some design elements chosen here,
but I wont go in-depth with it. The key is: It is an iron sword, roughed up and
pretty cheap to make.

I believe I managed to capture the concept pretty good. Though from here, if the
concept artist allows it, I would edit a few things against the concept. I would
have some ornament on the hilt, and I would give the handle some wraps. This
took me about an hour where the only real moving was done at the pommel.
Now, how did your weapon turn out?

Retopologize

So, you got this sexy sword, but its polycount is over 3 million. How is that even
useable?! Well, first off, we need to retopologize it. Now, there are plenty of ways
to do this: one being to use the already made base-mesh and just add to it. The
other is the ZRemesher in Zbrush, which will lower the polycount. My faovurite,
though, is 3dCoat. It takes longer, but the mesh gets cleaner and its easy to
work with. However, 3dcoat isnt a fan of anything above 200k polygons, just like
max. To avoid problems here, I am going to decimate all my models using the
Decimation master Plugin which is already packed into Zbrush 4R6, and is
under the Zplugin options. Click on it, and then set the % of Decimation to
something like 10%. That will do just fine. Click Pre Proccess All and wait,
when Zbrush is done thinking (This can take some minutes) click Decimate
all. Now you got a lot of messy geometry, but do not worry you only use these
so you can build around them!

Now comes the most important step ever. You guessed it! Plan. What is best
made in 3ds max? And what is easiest to make using new topology in 3d coat?
From the get-go, the handle is the only thing I would do in 3ds max, since I
havent changed its shape at all, whereas every other piece got some kind of
change. If I would be really efficient I would also do the blade and hilt in 3ds max,
since they are not changed that much. However, I find it easier to just throw it
into 3d coat and work from there. So this is what I am going to do.
First off, I take all pieces and export them. I place them under my folder
structure, in a new folder called Decimated. Then I go back to my decimated
sword, and I CTRL + Z once on all the subtools, so they go back to their beautiful
originality. I make sure I save. We are going to need this mesh in a minute. For
now load up 3d Coat. If you want a crash course in 3d coat, which is also covered
in the Zbrush weapon tutorial I linked earlier, just youtube some 3d coat
retopology tutorials. It really isnt very hard to get used to! Open it up, click on
file import import reference mesh and find your high poly model. Next
click on the Retopo button, and your good to go!

If you followed any of the tutorials, you know what to do! If not, well: Press S and
add symmetry in the X, if it is a symmetrical object. Start by making 4 points with
Points/faces and right click the center. Move them in place with the Brush
tool, then just use quads to make more polygons. Remember: Quads are best,
Tris are fine, Ngons are a Nogo. Keep it clean, and as optimized as you can. Dont
worry too much though, as you can always clean it up afterwards. Also do not be
too careful with the polycount. You can easily hit up to 6k polygons for a weapon
and you can always shave off some after the bake is done!

Here is my blade in 3d coat. It took me about 20 minutes. Now I know my bake

will be almost flawless, since the surface matches a 100%!

Here is my finished retopo. It clocked in at 1.2k polygons, which is fine! There are
some areas that I want to clean up, but that is something I will do after I am done
with the texturing! Now, if you went through the 3ds max part, you will see how I
UVW. It is the exact same process here! If you havent seen it, just go back and
check it out! Its at the end! Next part will be the baking of our different maps.
We will start by baking a normal test map, then we bake a solid normal + AO
map, which we will use as a base for our texturing in the last part! See you there!

Baking
Now we are getting closer to finished! Here is my setup: I added a scabbard to
the weapon. I UVWed just as I did in the 3ds max part. Nothing special about the
scabbard either, it was made the exact same way as before. We are now at the
point we need to bake out the texture! For this I use Xnormal. It is an excellent
tool! First thing first: I want a clean bake with little cleanup. So I am going to
explode the mesh. I will move pieces so the bake wont project details from the
other pieces like so:

As you see, I moved the blade to the left, the hilt and pommel to the right. From
here I am going to export it, then open it in Zbrush, and I will move the sculpt to
fit the low poly model. Finally I export the high poly model, which is all merged.
So, I got a Low Poly.obj and a High Poly.obj. Time to fire up Xnormal! There are 2
buttons to worry about. High Definiton and Low Definition. Go there,

right click the window and find your meshes. Finally go to Baking Options. For a
test bake I run with 1024x1024, 1 anti-alias, choose only normal map. Rest is on
default. Oh, and save it somewhere nice! Wait for the render to go.

Now you got a normal map baked! Lets check it out. I use Xouli Viewports shader
inside of 3ds max. So I simply go into the Material Editor, click on the
Standard button and choose Xoliul Shader.

Another screen for you to be confused about! Its pretty simple. For now, just
click on the Normal button and find your normal map. Does the model look like
your high poly one? Fantastic! Does it look messy? Tweak your low poly mesh to it
the high poly mesh, and try again. If it looks good, go back to Xnormal and render

out an AO map with your normal map, set antialiasing to 4x and bump up the size
to either 2048x2048 or 4096x4096. Here is my final result!

Pretty clean! The last thing I do is to go to tools and Normals to cavity and
bake out a cavity map. Suddenly that 5 million mesh is transferred to a 1.6k
polygon mesh and is ready to be textures! Open up Photoshop, and lets
assemble our maps and get to texturing!

Texturing(Photoshop)
First thing first, Photoshop is amazing! It can be used for so much. It really isnt
easy for me to teach you much, since it all depend how you want to work!
However, I am going to outline my Photoshop workflow, and my general texture
workflow so this can easily be used for GIMP or any other image-edittingsoftware! For now, open up the 3 bakes maps from the earlier step: The Normal
map, the AO map and the Cavity map. Just get them into 1 image by
copy/pasting them together. You now have 3 images into 1 file! Nice! Set the AO
to the top, the Cavity underneath and the normal at last. Now add some groups.
Mine are: AO, Normal, Specularity, and Diffuse. I like to work with all maps in 1
file, and save them out from there. Tick off the normal map, you do not need to
see it for now, se the blending mode to overlay for your AO and cavity map.
Lastly add a new layer to the diffuse. I added mine as a slight darker gray. Like
so:

As you can see, I did it 1 step further I added more groups and layers. Basically,
I used the Lasso tool to select the pieces, and added a basic color to new
layers. These are my base color/Color control layers. When we start adding
overlays on top, I can change the color on the fly using these layers.
When it comes to texturing, there are a few styles: Realistic, Stylized and
Handpainted. Skyrim used a realistic one. This means you dont hand-paint too
much, and your specularity map is very important. Let me explain the texture
maps real quick!

Difuse map Difuse map the color map. It contains the color you want your
model to have, like above.
Specularity map This map controls the shine of a texture. A full white
specularity map gives a strong shine in-game, which looks like plastic whereas a
dark one shows nothing, and looks like paper. Metal can be done different ways
here, depending on the style you want.
Gloss map while Skyrim does not use them, and uses a general gloss control
inside the shader, this is an important map to know. While Spec map controls the
shine, the gloss decides how broad the shine is. This way you can have a strong,
small, shine on reflective metal, and a matte shine on some wood.
Normal map actually not a texture map, but a mathematical map containing
the depth information of your model. Google it! Its important to know!
Environement map A reflection map that works together with a cube map.
Black means no reflection, where white means it reflects fully.
Cube map a texture map unwrapped as a cube, which will simulate the
reflected surface of the above. This is why you might have /facepalmed when you
saw this: http://i.imgur.com/T3leCeT.jpg The window reflects a cube map not the
actual background, and since it is so shiny, it looks weird.
Glow map A black map where glowy areas are painted. This is to emulate a
glow effect. Some shaders support colors, some not. Either way, a very important
map for fantasy- and sci-fi themed models!

Let us get back to the action! We got our base-colors done. Now, let us get some
details going! I am going to check my texture library, or find some online
(www.CGTextures.com) to overlay, and use as a base. I need a good metal
texture, preferably one of iron; I need a wood one, one with fabric and some
leather. Got all you need? Nice! Lets copy it and get it to fit out texture! Lets
start with the wood one. First thing I do is to paste it, and move it above my wood
base color. I will click in my Diffuse group, then into my Wood group and click
on my Color Control Layer, which contains the base color you saw earlier. I then
use the Magic Wand tool, which uses the shortcut W, onto the area not
colored by my wood. Then I go up to my wood photo/texture, and I hit Delete.
Now my texture fits nicely into my selection. I gray scale the photo, by clicking
CTRL + U and I drag the Saturation slider all the way to the left. Finally I set the
Blending Mode to Overlay, like one the AO map. Now I play with the Opacity
level and I tweak the color on my base color/Color control layer. Not too hard! I do
this with all the different textures, and it ends up like so:

Notice there are not colors that scream at you. I hold all overlays at low opacity,
and check it with my in-game shader. Also notice how boring everything looks!
The next part is what I like to call Value variation. Basically you run through
with a dark, and a light brush, and you paint in some variation, to simulate how
worn it is, or dirt, or tear, or whatever. I also like to darken areas that might be
darker, and lighten up the edges. I also like to add more images, especially on
the metal, to make it more realistic. At the end I like to add a scratch pass,
where I run a square brush, with scatter on, around edges, and then I take the
opacity down a lot. This is how my difuse map ended up. Note how the metal is
not just gray, which you might first thing. Metal always got a color cleaner
metal tend to have a very faint blueish color, while worn iron got hints of rust,
which is brown.

We are not done! Its time for the specularity map! For this one I suggest taking
your Difuse group and copying it. Then go through each layer with any color, and
grayscale it. Some shaders can take a colored specularity but I make it a habit
to do without! From here on you tweak the values. I will show you mine! Note that
I got a very repetive pattern over my metal I wanted a hammered look to it. It
looks awful on the texture sheet, but looks very good with a viewport shader.

Finally I take the overlays I have, and use the Nvidia Normal Map filter. I then
overlay them on top of the normal map I baked, and play with some values. I
make sure I got 1 layer per material, so I got more control of the depth. Then, at
long last, we got ourselves a finished model! This can be used in games! This fits
a today-standard-game! The final step is to import into whatever game, following
whatever procedure that engine uses. For me, I will make it into a playable
weapon into TESV: Skyrim.