3D) Bow

[Adeli]

I find I must concede to your point. Very well. Let\'s assume this crystal has flexibility then shall we? Whether it be by means natural or magical.

I cannot argue about the bows, but I have seen crossbows fashioned from metal that is not very flexible, and it has more power than most bows, able to punch a hole through platemail at distance.

Also, I thought All bows were symmetrical? Or else they\'d not work.

[Seytra]

Originally posted by Adeli
Let\'s assume this crystal has flexibility then shall we? Whether it be by means natural or magical.

Yes. I\'d prefer the non-magical way, because otherwise almost nobody would ever possess such a bow.

Originally posted by Adeli
I cannot argue about the bows, but I have seen crossbows fashioned from metal that is not very flexible, and it has more power than most bows, able to punch a hole through platemail at distance.

There are bows that aren\'t very flexible as well, the important thing isn\'t the ease of bending, but the properties of the material itself. You can make a spring that can be bent only by extreme forces, but it still is flexible (flexibility means that it will bend, not break, like an iron bar vs. a bar of granite). Something with flexibility may or may not have tensile strength (i.e., it may try to regain it\'s original form, or it may just stay the way you bent it). Something without flexibility, however, cannot have any tensile strength, because it\'ll just break.
Just look at the springs that are being used for cars. You\'ll not be able to bend them any significant distance by your hands, but if you use a motor or lever forces (as in crossbows) to bend it, it\'s tensile strength can be converted into extremely high power for the projectile. This is the way both crossbows and normal bows operate. Crossbows, however, are more easy to use because you don\'t need to hold the string in position yourself, this is done by some metal pin. Therefore, you can make it\'s tensile strength way greater, because you don\'t need to hold it. Also, there are bows (english longbows and modern bows with special mechanics) that can also pierce platemail. In fact, the arrows can even penetrate the metal reinforcement bars of buildings (I know of one arrow that still is stuck in such an H-bar)!

Originally posted by Adeli
Also, I thought All bows were symmetrical? Or else they\'d not work.

Yes, I was referring to the string. If the tensile strength came from it, it needs to contract absolutely symmetrical to allow for precise firing. The bows need to be symmetrical, as well, but this is more easily achieved than with the string. Sorry for not being precise.

[Adeli]

Thankyou for the correction Seytra, I was looking at it pretty narrowmindedly. You are once more, correct.

As for the symmetry thing, no apology necessary it was my misunderstanding, not your mistake.

I too prefer flexibility by means non-magical.

[McPseudo]

First thanks for your answers.

I think you are right when you say the Bow is unflexible. The UV map I made for this Bow was a chaos because of the spikes. I deleted this model and make a new one. Now without any spikes and with flexible arms. I named it Enkudai Bow, but the name is not fixed yet.

This time there are less polys than last time. Now there are 388 Polygons and 488 vertices. I think that is less enough, isn\'t it?

Well, here are some pictures:




And here is the result of UV mapping:





If anybody could make a texture for it, that would be very nice. I\'m a noob in texturing.

[ArcaneFalcon]

I love the new bow design!  Somehow, however, I have a hard time believing it is 388 tris.  When it counted your polys it was probably counting faces, and not triangles.  Every square face has 2 triangles, etc.  Looking at your uv unwrap it looks like every face is 2 triangles, making your bow  776 tris.  I think that\'s also hinted at by the fact that there are 488 verts.  Usually there are more tris than verts.  It\'s certainly much better, but still too much I think.  I know you can eliminate a good 40-50 by making the tan/orange handle have fewer sides (6-8 max).  Also, I see circles and ovals that look like caps to different pieces.  Because those are on the inside of the bow they can be deleted because you can\'t see them.  That will also greatly help reduce polys. Your uv unwrap looks like a good starting point, but it needs to be cleaned up.  Things that go next to each other should be stitched together, like pieces can be stacked, etc.  In the end there should be only 6-8 different pieces.  Also, what are those ^ pieces?  I can\'t figure out where they would go on the model.  Any poly that you can\'t see on the outside can be and should be deleted.  It really does look a lot better, though, keep up the great work!

[Magerranger]

just do what i do to texture... bung alot of colours onto a .bmp and then scale, stretch and flip the mesh till it looks right

[ArcaneFalcon]

just do what i do to texture... bung alot of colours onto a .bmp and then scale, stretch and flip the mesh till it looks right

Uuuhh...I\'m not quite sure what it means to \"bung a lot of colours onto a .bmp\" but I\'m pretty sure that\'s not how you\'re supposed to do it.  Once the UV gets prettied up I\'ll make a skin, and then McPseudo can see how skinning should be done.

[McPseudo]

Thx Arcane Falcon.

Wings3D says it has 572 Polys. A bit too much right? I try to improve it and delete any Polygons wich are useless. The ^ are important, because these are the polys wich are on both of the two torus bodys.

I tryed to make a texture by myself! Ok, it don\'t looks good, but this is my first texture. I made a better UV Map for my model wich is better then the last one.


This is the model with my terrible texture. xD


The UV Maps are these ones:


That\'s the textured Bow.


This is the original UV.


Please continue posting. =)

[ArcaneFalcon]

Hey, that\'s not bad at all!  Yes, there are still some polys I see that can be deleted.  For instance, the ends on the gray handle part will never be seen, and neither will the oval ends that are in between the greenish sections.  You should have a total of 4, circular, greenish ends.  The ovals and the white circles can go.  Also, I really think you should reduce the number of sides on the white handle part.

Now that you have a bunch of materials as the texture, see if you can add some details to the skin now.  For instance, if I were making a tank, the camo green would be the base material, and things like rivets, vents, handles, and scratches would all be things I would make as details to the skin.  It is really coming along, I\'m very impressed that this is your first try at modeling.  Looks excellent!

[McPseudo]

Hello back.

I improve the texture and I think I am finished with my first project now. The only thing missing are some animations of stretching or breaking the bow. Can anybody tell me a good program to animate models? This would be nice.

Well, here is the finished model with some symbols on it\'s arms. Now the model has only 362 Polygons. It was hard to reduce the polys and I think I can\'t hold it lower than 362.


I am a bit proud of it,
because all starts with
a simple grey cube. xD

[Pegasus]

This one looks really nice (especially with the symbols). There is really a lot of improvement from the first post of this topic till today.

Maybe one more thing for the texture: on the ovals, where the string is connected to them, maybe you want to draw a black line around the oval end (so that it looks like the string is tied around the oval not just coming out from somewhere).

[McPseudo]

Thank you for this hint. I made what you say and draw a black line at the end of the oval where string and oval are connected. I draw another line on the other side so it looks better imo. =)

Here is a Pic:

[Zeraph]

Hey that looks great, quite an improvement!

[zinder]

Im pretty inexpierenced with modeling and maybe im completely off ,but in your UV map there are alot of circles which i cant find as seeable faces in the model. For example the circles with the handle texture.

[ArcaneFalcon]

Looks great, except the black line on the oval doesn\'t need to be on both sides, just the side with the string.  Regardless, this has certainly turned out great.  A big improvement from the beginning!  

Oh, and zinder:

ArcaneFalcon: Yes, there are still some polys I see that can be deleted. For instance, the ends on the gray handle part will never be seen, and neither will the oval ends that are in between the greenish sections. You should have a total of 4, circular, greenish ends. The ovals and the white circles can go.

Though I think he deleted those.  He dropped 100 or so polys, and this is probably one of the things he did.  Noice work!  (yeah, \"nice\" wasn\'t strong enough, so I added an \"o\")

:emerald: