I’ve working on a fantasy novel for some time now. I’m about a quarter of the way through with it and I thought I’d take a break from the writing and work on modeling the sword that belongs to one of my characters, Shaine Sharra.
This was a project that I thought I would get finished in one weekend, and as of this writing I’ve been working on it for about 2 weeks now. It’s still not finished to my satisfaction so I’ll most likely keep working on it and post further revisions later
Here’s the final version so far. I’m not completely happy with it as of yet. I’m still having issues with getting the metal to look the way that I want plus my environment maps for reflections are not working out right. MOre research is needed in that area, no doubt.
This one I rendered using all kinds of lights as seen in this screenshot.
I was really trying to punch it up and get as much color as possible right in the render. I used Blender’s internal renderer for this one. I might set up the Yafaray renderer later and see if that gives me anything more.
Anyway, I ended up bringing it into Photoshop to punch up the runes on the side of the sword and add the glow and the smoke. I adjusted the color of the top blade and the gold bar with the circles through it separately.
Those parts were all separate pieces so I could render them one at a time and then use the render to grab a selection without a lot of hassle. You can see the separate parts in the below screenshot.
Now these next two were earlier versions I rendered with just a very flat 3-point light setup just to get all the detail to show. You can see I decided to change the color of the runes and the gold bar.
The next two shots I just wanted to get some different angles on the piece to see how everything was looking.
Finally, I decided to try Blender’s Depth of Field capabilities to really focus on a specific part of the sword and just see how it looked. I didn’t really adjust the lighting on these, but I was more concerned with how the lens depth of field was going to work. I used a tutorial from here (http://bencrowder.net/blog/2009/06/tutorial-depth-of-field-in-blender/) to get it working.
Anyway that’s all for now, but check back for a more in-depth tutorial on how the sword was made. Check here for a sword-breaker that I modeled in Blender last year.
Final sword modeled in Blender and post-worked in Photoshop
I’ve working on a fantasy novel for some time now. I’m about a quarter of the way through with it and I thought I’d take a break from the writing and work on modeling the sword that belongs to one of my characters, Shaine Sharra.
This was a project that I thought I would get finished in one weekend, and as of this writing I’ve been working on it for about 2 weeks now. It’s still not finished to my satisfaction so I’ll most likely keep working on it and post further revisions later
Above is the final version so far. I’m not completely happy with it as of yet. I’m still having issues with getting the metal to look the way that I want plus my environment maps for reflections are not working out right. More research is needed in that area, no doubt.
This one I rendered using all kinds of lights as seen in this screenshot.
Blender lighting setup
I was really trying to punch it up and get as much color as possible right in the render. I used Blender’s internal renderer for this one. I might set up the Yafaray renderer later and see if that gives me anything more.
Anyway, I ended up bringing it into Photoshop to punch up the runes on the side of the sword and add the glow and the smoke. I adjusted the color of the top blade and the gold bar with the circles through it separately.
Those parts were all separate pieces so I could render them one at a time and then use the render to grab a selection without a lot of hassle. You can see the separate parts in the below screenshot.
The separate pieces of the sword modeled in Blender
Now these next two were earlier versions I rendered with just a very flat 3-point light setup just to get all the detail to show. You can see I decided to change the color of the runes and the gold bar.
One of the first version of the swordA later version of the sword with different gold material
The next two shots I just wanted to get some different angles on the piece to see how everything was looking.
Finally, I decided to try Blender’s Depth of Field capabilities to really focus on a specific part of the sword and just see how it looked. I didn’t really adjust the lighting on these, but I was more concerned with how the lens depth of field was going to work.
Anyway that’s all for now, but check back for a more in-depth tutorial on how the sword was made. Check here for a sword-breaker that I modeled in Blender last year.
Awsome great looking sword!
It is really looking neat. I can see that it would take a little time. I particularly like the color variations. Very interesting.