Hires detailing Shield – Dhaal
I have pretty much started to remodel everything from scratch in hires without worrying about poly counts anymore. The idea is to create low poly models later and bake the detail into normal maps.
This is a standard Sikh Dhaal which has most of the major details added. It also has varying levels of damage that could be animated. For example, if the shield in the game is hit too many times by opponents then it can visually show gradual damage until it is unusable and another must be found by the player.
Interactive 3D
are the scratches on the dhaal created by normal maps?
No they are scultped directly onto a high resolution mesh, using B&W alpha maps that I created in Photoshop. For the scratches I used a spray brush to throw them around randomly, the arrow dents where also done with an alpha map from photoshop, the rest of the imperfections were done with move and flatten brushes.