Model 24 - Stick Grenade
The Model 24 "Stielhandgranate" was the standard hand grenade of the German army during World War 1 and World War 2. I decided to make this because I was doing a small project at the time where in which I created an array of World War 1 3D assets, this being one of them. Also, I really liked the setting of Sniper Elite V2 and as a policy of my own to make myself do work, for each game I play I must model an asset from that game.
Base mesh was made in Maya, sculpt detail was made using ZBrush (experimental technique) and textures were also made in ZBrush using the Spotlight feature. 4096 resolution for both texture and normal/bump map files. I wanted to make this grenade look very worn, so I decided to add scratches to the handle and bumps/dents to the actual grenade part via the normal/bump map. Overall I think it made a very nice worn look, however the way I smoothed the model in ZBrush to achieve a higher polycount has negatively affected the way the textures have come out, causing minor incidents of stretching and as such I realised that I can only really use this technique on models that have been made from just one mesh, models that are designed to be made from one material/object and then melded into a new object with an intended feature.
When I first started to texture, a model 24 hand grenade was one of the first models that I textured and I thought it would be interesting to come back and try again using new techniques and such. However, I did use the old mesh, I simply re-did the textures and although the final product turned out great, the topology of the base model was very rookie-ridden and affected the quality of UV mapping I could do in Maya. The only way to have fixed this would be to re-do the entire model but as this was a simple test I decided not to doddle around with old stuff and to first finish the rest of my mini-projects before starting new projects.