well, it was my first try modeling with splines, that alone took me 2 hours :/

and the pommel is seperate from the hilt. if you look, the hilt was done with diamond splines, while the pommel was done with square splines (might have those mixed up.)

I'm not very good at using splines (explain the symetry and the screwups) all I did was model it with splines, then used loft nurbs to make the splines into a solid object.

I'd love to learn how you do it though :P

For 3DS...

- some experiance with drawing swords
- draw a sword or get a ref pic (you should not start drawing splines without an idea of the overall blade design yet)
- create the balde spline. Roughtly first, then edit it to the final state
optional for symetric swords:
- onyl draw one half of the blade
- mirror it and weld the verticies
- delete the centre lines
- use "bevel" to extrude and bevel the spline to a solid object

Bevel:
-1st bevel increases the size
-2nd bevel reduces the size to default aggain
-the caps on top (aswell as on bottom) should be generated automatically.(if not, selcet the edges yourself and use the "Cap" tool)





After that edit the verticies of the cap
so the blade doesn't look so simple beveled
and optionaly add some carves or "sawtooth" via booleans.

bah! I love you dude!

I'll try that out when I have time.