My very first sword

[goland]

So I downloaded and installed blender, went through some tutorials and um, voila?

363 faces...is that the same as polys?  I\'m new to this stuff.

Even if it\'s plain I\'m happy with it.  I can\'t draw really at all so this is a personal achievement for me.  I still need to figure out how to map textures to objects....the handle thingy\'s texture didn\'t match up quite right.

Feel free to give me suggestions me what I could do to improve it.

[Karyuu]

That\'s a real beauty for a first model! I\'m very impressed :D The face count is what matters, for PlaneShift at least (most simple items should fall around 200).

Faces aren\'t exactly the same - they\'re triangles, while polygons... aren\'t? Polygons are composed of more than one face. I believe. I could actually have no clue what I\'m talking about :P

Are you going to feed the public some more?

[goland]

A polygon is a shape that has 3 or more sides.  But I\'ve read that sometimes when people say polygons they mean triangles...so I wasn\'t sure how the whole poly thing worked with planeshift.

Thanks for the kind words.

I\'d like to do more.  Like I said, I can\'t draw very well.  I\'ve seen enough swords though  (my father collects American Revolutionary war era swords) to do a model without drawing it out first.

The American Rev War swords are very plain though.  I suppose I\'ll have to get better at looking at pictures and working from that.


Edit: I worked with the sword and reduced the polycount without sacrificing too much quality...got it down to 155 faces.

[Zaxim]

I would suggest for your first model just making it high poly.  The handle and guard could use more smoothing.

The grip texture is pretty good.

Something funky is going on at the tip, you might have some welding problems.  Don\'t ask me how to fix it, because once I end up with skewed faces I never can make it better.

EDIT: I see that you are doinga rather good job of reducing faces, in the hand guard yo uneed to move the vertices a bit so they\'re more symmetrical and line up.

[goland]

I noticed the weird thing with the tip of the blade too...a few extra faces up there that I cleaned up for the last pic above.

After that I looked at what you mentioned and found the hilt was a little skewed...straightened that up.

I\'ll have to look at some more of my dad\'s swords sometime to get some ideas.

Thanks for the comment on the grip texture...I was worried about how it would look.


Edit: As a side note:
The thing that I don\'t understand is why, if swords were so simple in the 1700\'s, are a lot of medieval 3d models made very intricate?  If you\'re beating some metal with a hammer on an anvil, most of the swords won\'t be perfect or very decorated.  Just a thought.

[defender43]

WoW, Impressive, Goland! I want to get into 3d modeling, but I have neither the software nor artistic talent.

[Izzy*dot]

Blender is free, and you have plenty of tutorials around to get you started

And yes goland, for a first model it\'s quite impressive. Though I don\'t know, in the first pic the knob on the handle is nice and round, and in the second, because you\'ve brought the face count down, it\'s all pointy and stuff...so I don\'t know if it would be possible to have low face count, but still have a round knob.

[Cherppow]

Greetings

Nice work, I especially like the low polygon version. You can enable the SetSmooth option from the editing panel [F9] to further face smoothness. PlaneShift uses this too.

In the sword\'s tip, you can try flip triangle edges (ctrl+f).

Hmm, about the polygon/face count.
In short:
A face is either quad or triangle.

In long:


Polygon is indeed a shape of 3 or more sides. The difference with face is that a face is \"filled\". One can have a polygon shape without a face. However, in modeling world polygon~face is often used. Different modeling programs have varying views in this, adding to the confusion.

The face count in Blender indicates the number of filled polygons. The exception in this is that all faces are counted as triangles or quads. (In many ways the f-gons are not real faces, but combinations of triangle and quad faces. Also so when faces are counted.)

The most exact way is to use triangle face count. You can convert quad faces to triangles with ctrl+t in edit mode. Alternatively you can add \"Decimate\" modifier in editing panel, modifiers tab, to see the absolute triangle face count.

About the side note:
I think that in the old times swords and other ironwork were made as handwork by blacksmiths, who really put their heart into their craft. Each piece of work was unique and a testament of the smiths\' skills. Closer to industrial revolution, production moved to factories, where things were done efficiently, not with passion. However, I do agree with you that there must have been a lot of poor quality swords out there.

[goland]

Originally posted by defender43
WoW, Impressive, Goland! I want to get into 3d modeling, but I have neither the software nor artistic talent.

Seriously, I can barely draw stick figures.  I did spend a lot of time freshman year doing CAD though.  For my Intro to Engineering class we needed to draw a piston with piston ring, oil ring, and connecting rod....all to spec.  


Izzy*dot:  Ya, I didn\'t really like it all spikely either so I SetSmoothed it like Cherpow said.  Imagine having that spikey thing smashed into your face though?  I think it might be more functional that way.


Cherppow: The decimate thing....I see it revert the SetSmoothing, but the face count doesn\'t change.  The flipping triangles thing....does that command work in blender 2.40?  I couldn\'t figure it out...though I only spent 53 seconds trying...then something shiny distracted me.

Changing the quads to tris did work though.  She\'s got 216 tris and is all Setsmoothied up. I added some lighting near the tip...I was getting some weird shadows there....I gotta play with the vertices a little still I suppose.

[zorbels]

Goland I just wanted to make it short and say great job!

[Cherppow]

Hmm, *tests in blender*

Decimate: Seems to work best in object mode. You may have to click the small \"enable modifier during interactive display\" option next to the modifier name. I have some problems with the face count updating too. Hmm, moving pointer over the 3d window seems to update the counter. (Also the modifier doesn\'t need to be applied, as the face count there already tells what we want.)

Flip triangle edges: Yes, works in my 2.40. It needs to have two or more (adjacent) triangle faces selected. The faces also need to be somewhat flat. It doesn\'t seem to work well trying to flip sharp edges.

Keep up the good work.

[goland]

I took a break from the sword.  I\'ve been working on a long handled axe.  More of an exercise in getting used to blender and figuring out how to map uv textures...plus the head design refused to get out of my mind.



It needs more work I know.  Maybe some etching in the head...some impurities added to the metal and such..Right now it\'s 320 polys.  Without the 2-stage cutting edge it was a lot closer to 200 polys.

[white_slayer]

nice axe where i download blender

[Karyuu]

Google can tell you quicker, you know ;)

Goland, do you start modeling right away, or do you try to draw out your designs on paper first?

[goland]

Originally posted by Karyuu
Goland, do you start modeling right away, or do you try to draw out your designs on paper first?

A little of both.  Like I said previously, I\'m not very good at drawing.  I am pretty good at dissecting things in my head though.  So I\'ll think about an idea for a while then do a really rough sketch and then start modeling.