Brycetech: Modeling a Sword

By using the techniques discussed in the knife tutorial and the engraving tutorial, you can make your own sword to hang on the wall or put in the hand of the warrior you make with poser.

Just like you did in the knife tutorial, create a blade shape in your image editor by making a white shape on a black background. Use a resolution of 512 x 512.
To make the image symmetrical in shape if you duplicate this shape and flip it, you can position it so that both sides of your double edged sword are the same shape.
Apply a gradient shade to this image. Next, while still in the editor, apply a gaussian blur to the image. The effects of the blur will taper the transitions of light to dark as well as remove any rough edges that the blade currently has. This will also produce a sharp edge on the blade. Copy the image to your clipboard by going the edit menu and selecting copy (this will depend on your image editor.)
In Bryce, create a lattice and click the "E" to get into the Terrain Editor. Change the grid resolution to 512 x 512 Press Ctrl + V to paste the image in RAM as the basis of the Lattice.
Clip the bottom of the lattice slightly by dragging the clipping tool.
Hold down the spacebar and press the smooth control in the terrain editor. This will turn on the "paint effect". Now you can smooth areas of the knife that are rough. I recommend that you smooth the transition between the base of the sword and the blade. You may also want to smooth the actual cutting edge of the blade some more.
After smoothing the areas of the blade that you want to smooth. Change the method of Brush Behavior to "minimum". Change the level of the brush so that it's slightly less than white. Set the brush to very soft.
Hold down the shift key which will constrain the brush to 90 and 45 degree movements and paint along the blade to make a flattened area. Change the level again and cut decorative holes into the blade. Smooth the surface to suit your taste.
Apply a metal material to your blade. If you don't like the shape you made, return to the image editor and reshape the blade as I did. I wanted a flat base for the blade, so I masked off the base and applied the gradient to the rest of the blade.

Make a handle. The shape and detail of your handle is up to you. .
Just be sure to add details to your handle. Here I added finger grips, you add whatever detail you want to add. Jewels, gold, or some other decoration can add to the appeal of your sword.
Now that you have a handle made, you can etch the blade if you like by using engraving techniques. In this example, I engraved the blade with a terrain and transferred its material to the blade.
This gave the golden engravings.

Site Note:

This is not meant to be an all inclusive instruction on every possible way to have made the final image or produce the desired results. Bryce offers zillions of wonderful ways to replicate, multireplicate, reposition, etc. in its powerful interface. Experiment!

Brycetech: Bryce on the Edge pt.3

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