This week for homework I was told that I would not be getting step-by-step tutorials but instead an assignment with no instructions, a sword. I was nervous as I had to use what I’d learned in the last few weeks in this project. I began by researching what sword I would like to base mine on and I chose a final image.
I realized that I was choosing a hard design but wanted the challenge. I began with making the handle of the sword, using the same technique from the flower vase class project I had done. I also took inspiration from the straw in the coffee cup to make the small arms of the handle, adding depth and making sure they had thickness was key. The only problem I would say that I ran into was that I had way too many faces on my handle which made it very difficult when it came to UV mapping. I added small details, using the mirror modifier and also bridging faces together.
When it came to the blade I used the knife tool to cut out a shape similar to what I did in the zubat animation so that I could match the shape of my inspiration. I used the proportional editing tool to detail the faces and add a point to the tip of the sword.
Next, I chose the images I wanted to use for the colour, silver for the blade, gold for the handle, and emerald for the detailing. The UV Mapping was my biggest concern, after adding the seams to my sword and unwrapping all the separate faces I realized I had way too many faces. I began to try to cut down on how many I had by going back a few steps. Then once I exported the UV map I went to procreate on my iPad because I needed as much zoom-in and freehand space as I could get.
I added the colour image to blender and realized that the faces were still too big and they wouldn’t stop joining together. After asking for some help I just moved some faces around until I got what I was looking for.
Eventually I came to a final render image and I was very proud of my sword.
I wanted to take it s step further and animate my sword. I used the skills I’d learned from the snowman and zubat animation and got to work. As I had learned in the past I turned on automatic keyframes so I wouldn’t run into any problems and with a reminder from Mike to set my scale correctly.
I got to work to create a dart board that my sword would be thrown into, the one downfall Is that my sword is more of a dagger now. Just like the zubat animation I went into the graph editor and changed the curve to straight lines so that it would be a smooth animation. Originally I wanted the sword to spin while being thrown but I ran into too many problems and couldn’t figure out how to solve said problems. I changed the origin of the sword to the bottom of the handle so that I could create a small shake once the sword hit the dart board. I used UV. mapping to make a really simple board in just a few minutes. I added a few movements to the camera which we have not done in class so I was a bit nervous but I am really proud of how it turned out.
I was originally very nervous about this project but had a really good time making it, I got closer with my classmates as we helped each other with small problems and I found blender a little bit easier to use and find I can move much faster than I ever could on it. I would never have guessed that by week 4 I would be able to make something like this, especially in only two days so I truly am over the moon.