Guest Workshop: Blender - Seperating a sword Blade by: InsanitySorrow

[InsanitySorrow]

Seperating a swords Blade

This is a small tutorial that will show you how to make a small edit to a weapon model, more specifically how to seperate the Blade from the rest of the sword and how to apply a seperate texture to it.

Note: You will need to have a basic working knowledge of Blender.

Step 1: Extract and Import

The first thing you'll need to do is extract your chosen sword model from the Oblivion meshes BSA, well if you're using a vanilla model that is. For this tutorial we'll be using the Akaviri Longsword.

If you are unsure how to extract files, take a look here.

Now after extracting your chosen model, you'll need to open up Blender. Now with Blender open select everything on your screen and delete it, we want a nice clean scene to work with here.

With that all do, go File>Import>NetImmers/Gamebryo (.NIF & .KF & .egm), Navigate to your model, select it and hit Import. Be sure to leave all the import settings at their default values, they're all set up for OB.

With that imported you should now see this on your screen.

Step 2: Clearing out what we don't need

As you can see there are quite a few things on screen we don't need for now, so what we'll do is move them to another layer for safe keeping.

So deselect everything, now select each of the wire cylinders that you can see placed around the sword, these are the collision capsules, press your M key and choose layer two, these will now be moved out of our way, but still there when we need them later. Repeat that step but this time select just the Scabbard, move that onto layer 2 as well. What you will be left with is just the sword model, which will make things cleaner and easier for us to work with.

Step 3: Seperating the blade

Now select the sword model and hit Tab to go into edit mode, so now in edit mode we can make our small change to the model. So press the B key to select Box Select, draw a bow selection around the blade from the tip down to the tip of the guard, this will select all of the blade, you should have this:

Next we'll press the P key and select Selected, this will seperate our blade from the rest of the sword, you'll notice it's no longer available to edit while editing the rest of the sword.

Step 4: A new material

So we now have a seperated blade, but the blade still uses the same texture as the rest of the sword, that's ok if you want it to and say only want to add transparency to the blade, but for us we want something different, so let's fix it.

So to fix this we need to make a new material and apply it to our blade, so select just our blade, bring up your editing menu (F9) and in that menu delete the current material attached to our blade.

Now head into the shading menu (F5) and select the materials button. What we'll do here is rename the blade model from Longsword.001 to Blade. So in the Links and Pipelines box select OB and change the text to Blade, then select ME and do the same again.

Smarty Says: OB is short for Object and ME is short for Material, these need to be the same for our material to be applied properly.

Now with ME still selected press the Add New button to add a new material to our Blade.

So with that done you'll see with have lots of new options appear in out Materials Buttons screen, lots to play with , There are a couple of things to do here, First one is to rename the Material from Material.001 to Blade and change the Specularity to black, like so.

Okay final step for our edit here is to head into our Texture Tab (F6) and add a new texture. Click the Add New button and chance the Texture Type (drop down box) to Image. Now in the image box to the right, click load and navigate to a texture, any will do as long as it's different to the swords texture.

Smarty Says: Using different textures stops Pyffi from merging the two texture paths when you export.

Now go back to the materials tab, on the very right hand side of the screen where it says Texture, click the Map Input tab next to it. Now in the fiurst set of options click UV.

Step 5: Exporting

With all that done we can move our other parts from layer two back to layer one. Now deselect everything and then reselect everything. All our stuff will all be properly selected now. Finally go File>Export>NetImmers/Gamebryo (.NIF & .KF & .egm), name it Longsword.NIF and choose the following settings.

Click OK and it'll export and now we're all done, your have seperated the blade

[Johnn123]

Very nice tutorial sir! Didn't know this trick myself, thx!

[InsanitySorrow]

Thanks , This was a requested tut, should be useful

[donnato]

Yes, several new tips here for me too IS. I`ll be referring back from time to time now that it`s available. Thank you so much for this.

[InsanitySorrow]

That's good to hear Don

[_echo]

Hm, didnt know about P. I always used Y > Split. Good to know.

[The Vyper]

Woot! Thanks for the great tut, IS! Here's my first sword using it:

[InsanitySorrow]

You're welcome

[AliTheLord]

Nice tutorial!!!

[InsanitySorrow]

Thanks