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Ok, I just use Maxwell to render out test and beauty shots of my models, I'm just a hobbyist, but I do sell some models on Renderosity etc.

I've been working on a "drow cutlass", a sword for dark elves , as I didn't have any I liked in my collection of props as I have a scene in mind.
Now I'm a noob with Maxwell, I just use mats from the gallery. I've been trying to use my own textures in this work, which I've put into maxwell pre-existing mats and tweaked them, as I don't have too much of a clue with Maxwell mats (I use Vue almost exclusively).

So, any opnions on this would be very welcome I feel the leather hand grip is looking far too noisy, I used displacement on it, with a special map which I gave varying heights to push the handle up/down according to the wire wrapped on the grip, sort of like a tennis racket handle.
I need to add more bump to the blade (not just the runes), and add detail work to the spider.
And the sheath needs lots of work as the leather is just a default mat for now.

Thanks for any help!

hey Silver...

1. don't use daylight/sun --- just find a suitable hdr and that'll help in many ways. You need reflections here and you have none. Also: rendering the blade in some kind of scene (wood table or similar) would be nice.

2. worry about the displacement grain on the handle after the hdr. see what it looks like first..... the map itself looks pretty good.

3. Add the same map to the bump channel for the sheath.

4. I actually think the blade looks pretty good -- with a nice hdr, it'll render fine.


re-render and lets have a look.

Ivox3,
cheers mate, that helped!
I'd avoided using HDR as before when I'd used them (some time ago) it was..meh, very "speckly" etc and slow as hell.
Installed v 1.8 of rhino plugin a shad been using 1.7 in prior images with this

how could I add a "oil slick" iridescence, or more lustrous look to the blade? a coating? not very familiar with them.



the sheath I'll try and make a custom dark, slick leather embossed texture for, and more bump work for the brass fittings.

A little better.....

Your sheath thickness seems off.... Needs some thickness on the sharp side.

Coatings... yeah, .. I don't think many people understand them. I don't.. lol.. Just drop one on, mess with the thickness, I think it goes up to a million ? Mess with it...

Is the sun still checked ? If so, I think turn it off .. The sharp shadows aren't helping. If the hdr alone is a bit bland, use a plane emitter in conjunction with it ---- and always, -ml checked.

Doh, true enough about the sheath, should have pulled the points out to round it more, ah well, not a big issue in the end really :p

Ok when I did this hadn't read yer message yet, so will try putting sun off next time, here I added a coating and bump to the blade

Good ....

The handle is looking good.

The texture on the blade/table = too big, just need to tile it a few more times in the one direction.

Finished it thanks for the help!
I kept the Sun on in the end, because it looked much better despite many other tests with various setups/lights/HDRIs, lol.

The coating really helped give it a lustre and improved it a lot I think over basic metal

hey .. your happy/I'm happy. Overall improvement.