The Sword - Modeling

 Since this time I was working on a hard surface model, the workflow required simultaneously switching between Maya and ZBrush to achieve the best results in fastest possible amount of time. At first, I decided the parts of the sword I wanted as separate entities. After thinking for a while, I decided to make the sword in 5 parts and keep them separate. At first I wanted to make it 3 parts. One for the handle, one for the blade and one for the overlaying chains and the lock. But during the modeling process, I figured out that if I split the handle in 3 different parts, I could model things easily. So, I separated the handle, the guard and the joint into 3 parts.

            I started with the blade as it was the main part and the easiest part of the sword. Also, I need the blade to match the proportion of the rest of the elements of the sword. So I started with a cube as it looks mostly like a squared shape and used ZModeler to make the basic shape of the sword. After that, just like the concept, I carved a circular hole in the middle and added some cracks and scratches on the blade edges.I kept the detail to a minimum at this stagge because I wanted to add more cracks and deformations at a higher subdivision level and also because I didn't want to further retopologize it in Maya later as I was already going to do parts of it n Maya.


So, after finishing the blade, I wanted to do the handle next. I started with the joint of the handle as that was connected to the sword, although I kept the mesh separate as intended before. But after blocking the basic part and the ring that's going towards the guard, I thought that since I have to make an unwelded ring for the next part of the design, why not keep it separate? So that's when I decided to also keep the handle separate as another piece of geometry. I designed the base shape of the handle and the ring inside Maya as it was faster to do it inside Maya. Also while modeling the ring, I got an idea that I could slightly modify the circle to make a base mesh that I can just reuse to make the chain. So, I imported the sword into Maya after completing the handle and made the chain model. And after it was complete, I also made the lock that holds the chains together, all of which was although unwelded, I kept them as a single object especially because from my previous experience, I could tell that the chain fragments could easily share one single UV map layout.

This is the lowest detail that I gave at that earlier stage.

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