ABOUT

"Greatsword and Greatshield of the Abysswalker Knight Artorias"

I decided to recreate Knight Artorias' Greatsword from Dark Souls since he is one of my favourite Characters and I always liked the aesthetic of the sword. I also decided to make his Greatshield as well, as it does not get as much recognition despite having a very unique and intriguing design.

Blender

The first steps were to create simple Blockout meshes to get a feel for the overall shape of the sword and shield. To reach a High Poly mesh for sculpting I simply used a Subdiv modifier on a copy of the mesh, aswell as Edge weighting to keep the shape. Sculpting the details was a very fun part of the process and was comprised of a lot of trial and error, since this was the first time I actively used sculpting for a model. In the end I mainly used masks in combination with the inflate tool, aswell as the crease tool to refine the edges. The final low poly mesh was once again based on a subdivided version of the Blockout and through lots of retopology and tears I tried reduce the face amount as far as possible. The last step in Blender was to create UV Maps for the objects, which was a somewhat new experince to me, since I never really liked UV Mapping, though this time after some attempts I got the hang of it and actually had some fun doing it.

Substance Painter

The first step in Substance Painter was to bake the High Poly details into a normal map for the Low Poly mesh. Afterwards I got to the texture painting which was very fun. I experimented a lot with different materials and ways to customize them until I settled for a combination that seemed to work best. When the painting was done I exported three textures for Color and Normal, as well as a packed texture containing Roughness, Metallic and a custom Mask to be able to easily change colors in Unreal Engine.

Unreal Engine

The last step was to create an Unreal Scene to showcase the final models. This was the first time I ran into more serious problems, since unreal is somewhat sensitive and many things have to be done a specific way so they work correctly. mainly the Color textures gave some headaches, since they just would not want to match what I was seeing in Substance. Once again after a lot of trial and error and some research I managed to get on top of things and the Materials at least mostly matched the result seen in Substance Painter. I created one large Scene of the warrior's grave to whomst the sword and shield belonged to and an empty scene to offer a clearer image of the models.

Personal Experience

I had a lot of fun with this project, especially during the initial stages within Blender as well as Substance Painter. I refined a lot of skills I already had, as well as learning new things, like Sculpting and UV Mapping. Substance Painter was entirely new to me and eventhough I barely scraped the surface I really enjoyed working with the programm and am excited to dive deeper into it to utilize the power it provides. The only somewhat low point was the work withing Unreal Engine. Despite having used it before to some extend, I felt it was quite unintuitive and finicky. I recognize the power this engine provides but just couldn't quite get to grips with it. The main problem was that textures have to be set up a very specific way to work correctly, as well as the correct format since pngs for some reason sometimes don't quite work. I also found the nodes very unsatisfying to work with and the viewport controlls were  at times infuriating. All in all though it was a very fun and exciting project and I am looking forward to creating 3d Models this way in the future.

Made using

• Blender
• Substance Painter 3D
• Unreal Engine 5

HS Ansbach - VIS

This game was created at the Visualistaion and Interaction in Digital Media (VIS) program of HS Ansbach

Supervised by:  Maximilian Pichler (3D Surfaces SS 24)