Composite Bow from Curves

Description:

My artistic interpretation of a composite longbow, BYOA (Bring Your Own Arrows). My first major effort at curve-based modeling techniques. Comes with GPU-compatible Cycles materials derived from a library provided by meta-androcto right here on BlendSwap.

Note that this is a dense model (as curve-generated geometry is wont to be). The base polycount for the mesh components (bow limbs and grip) comes to a little over 10,000 quads, with some Ngons used for convenience on non-deforming parts. The curve components (bowstring) add around 6700 more at the default U resolution of 12. Render previews made at 1 subsurf level for the mesh objects, U resolution 16 for the curve objects, 4 light bounces and 500 samples/px.

Features and Extras:

<ul>

<li>A firing rig, built from a combination of armatures, hooks, and Action Driver contraints, all operated by a single control bone.</li>

<li>A guide bone to help position and align arrows.</li>

<li>A root parent Empty for moving/rotating/scaling the entire setup.</li>

<li>Appending the Object Group bow_package allows a headache-free import into any other .blend file.</li>

</ul>

There's quick-and-dirty UVs for the bow limbs that I ended up not using, since the materials looked pretty good already with just generated texture space. You'll also find my work objects dumped in a clutter on layer 20. The firing action might not be 100% physically accurate, but I deem it "close enough!". Feel free to spend a weekend tweaking it if you don't agree. ;)

PS. Appropriate visibility and selection filters have been set on the component objects for ease of use. Go into the Outliner and toggle them back if you want to see and select everything.