3DSMAX – Sword of Darkness Tutorial (Part 1)

I still notice lots of people trying to get to my 3D tutorial that was on my old website. So, I thought I’d resurrect it:

Welcome to my first in-depth tutorial. This tutorial will hopefully teach you how to make such a sword like I have, see the below picture. I will try to cover everything and make it real easy. However, you should be somewhat familiar with 3dsmax! Over some parts of this tutorial I will not cover every single adjustment; I will show the basics of how to create a certain part, then the rest of the job will be left to you along with some tips for the hard parts. This tutorial covers only modeling and will not touch up on texturing/materials/rendering etc.

Click an image to enlarge

Feel free to explore and try to create a different sword as well as these techniques can be used almost the same for any sword. Before we start, its always good to do a good amount of research on what the sword looks like. Gathering reference pictures are a tremendous help if they can be found. Below are a few pictures you should grab for this tutorial should you be creating the same sword, The Sword of Darkness. Right click on them and hit save as, put them to a new directory for your sword files.

Reference Picture
Blade Texture

The blade texture is just the design edited from the reference picture.

Because I will be using many sword related terms to make myself clear, it is advised you review a couple sites on the anatomy of the sword. Here are a few links which could help:

Sword Anatomy
The Armory
Medieval Sword Glossary

Onto the technical stuff. The sword will be broken down into five different parts. They are listed on this diagram below. Each page will cover a different part of the sword, as we go along we will piece it together. I will use the term quillon for the protruding pieces off the cross guard, I am somewhat unsure about the accuracy of this however. If you know of a correct term for the pieces (Represented as purple in diagram) please contact me.

I did not make this mesh a single mesh because I am only using this for a still. Lastly, aside from trying to help people, I made this tutorial so others could help me. If you find any significant flaws in my modeling techniques please contact me and list suggestions so I can update my tutorial and give credit!

I strongly recommend you do NOT skip over parts of the tutorial, unless you are a veteran, as some parts use techniques which reoccur later on and are not discussed for a second time. As a side note I will often be hiding pieces of the sword for my pictures to make it easier to see, so don’t get confused if your wondering whats going on when half my sword disappears.

With all that covered lets get advance to the layout.