Speeder Lightsaber – Revisited in Blender 3D

Hello Everybody, today I return to my “Themed” sabers and one particular theme I had last year was my MotoGP inspired hilts. I created a design then applied a paint scheme to represent the main manufacturers and race teams. I had Yamaha, Ducati, Suzuki and Honda models all in team colours. Well I have been watching the IndyCar championship, the Le Mans 24 Hour race and more of this year’s enthralling MotoGP championship and was inspired to build a saber based on speed again….this time in Blender 3D. This is my first original design from scratch using the new software and is really another testbed to see what I can create, so is fairly basic. Enough talking here is Speeder Lightsaber 3D….

Speeder Lightsaber 3D

Emitter and Switch

Checkered Flag Pommel Grille

Comes in Red….

And of course FT Green!

I used this as I said above, to test things out and discover in which order I had to perform certain functions to get the look I want. For example the hilt body is more of a parallelogram with a slanted emitter and pommel, which I had to deform first before I could add the finer details. One happy accident I had resulted in the “checkered flag” pommel grille. I slanted the hilt body then divided the endcap panel (called a Face section). I selected alternate mini sections and pushed them back inside the hilt to create the grille. However after I formed the grille, I thought some edges on the grip looked sharp so I applied a bevel to soften the grip area. What I didn’t know was that it applied a bevel effect on the grill too which gave it a neat concave appearance! Basically though the hilt still looked basic and bland, needing some detail so I divided the side panels and created a raised flag motif on the side grips too which I then applied colour to. So this model comes in Red, Grey or of course my famous For Tyeth Green!

As this is fairly short post, I thought I would give you all a sneak peak at what I am working on for upcoming posts. A good friend of mine emailed me saying how he and his younglings enjoyed my Comic Con post so I’m building a set of sabers for them.

I am approaching the finish line for this post, I hope you liked my reimagining of an old theme. I want to thank you for your support and looking in today, it means a lot that you still call back. Please come back and see what else I have in store in future posts. Till next time.

“Speeder Lightsaber – Blender Version” is a For Tyeth Editions design and is ©Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2018. FTSabersite and all it’s contents are ©Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2016-2018.

The Crossguard Awakens – A For Tyeth Tribute

Hello Everybody, Wow what a post my last one turned out to be! Thankfully this post is going to be a little bit more calm and relaxed (at least I hope!) I promised I would give you all a sneak peek at my progress with the 3D design program Blender. After suggestions from Evil Genius180 and Neo Trinarty, I realised that it would be a good idea to recreate something that was already in existence and the weapon of Kylo Ren, the “Crossguard” lightsaber seemed to be popular…so I decided to build my own “inspired by” model of a 3 bladed hilt. Now the model was built by eye, meaning it isn’t to scale exactly, I just built it to look right so I could get experience. So here are pics of my first version of a Crossguard…

Crossguard test 1

Crossguard test 2

Crossguard test 3

I was pretty pleased how this turned out, as I didn’t have any plans or diagrams to work from I just winged it. As happy as I was, I know this was pretty basic and it is. The hilt consists of just two cylinders, one that is heavily modified to form the main body and a second plain tube for the side blades. To create the model there are  functions that allows you to segment the tube (or whichever object you are editing) and create “Faces”, “Edges” and “Vertices”. Faces are flat panels which form the “skin” of the model while the edges are the boundary lines of the Face. Vertices are the points where two or more edges form a junction. By manipulating the position of these Faces, Edges or Vertices you morph the shape. Very much like Play-Doh or modelling clay but a bit more angular! So by pushing and pulling the model I created the basic hilt and “pulled out” the detail features (such as the area for the switch and the ridges on the grip) then added a tube for the side blade emitters.

Crossguard test 4

Crossguard test 5

In the pictures above you can see the two cylinders clearly, and you may be able to see how the model is divided into segments. When in edit mode each segment gets marked with a dot and you can see all of the segments of the second tube selected and highlighted in orange. If I scaled this selected cylinder the whole tube would grow or shrink according to how much you tweak it. So to make the details on the main body I selected alternate Faces and pulled them out to form ridges. It is so intuitive. And I know the expert 3D modellers out there would delete the bits “inside” the model, I will in future but I’m just finding my feet and making mistakes early. And I did make mistakes, the hilt was a little bit “thick” and I needed to slim it down and work on the pommel. Here is MK2…

Crossguard test 6

Crossguard test 7

It was beginning to take on the shape I wanted, I even added a possible FTE crystal chamber pommel! Well my FTE pommels do look a bit like the pommel on Kylo’s hilt but there were still details I wasn’t happy with. Now the hilt looked too “heavy” around the emitters and the pommel needed more work. About an hour and a half’s effort led me to version 3 and the one you had a sneak peek of in my last Blender post. It has a much nicer shaped pommel, the main body now looks balanced and the side blade emitters have little notch details. There are still gaps between some Faces but these holes can easily be fixed by adding extra Faces. For now here is MK3..

Crossguard test 8

Crossguard test 9

Crossguard test 10

And that just about wraps up this model, except for wrapping some textures onto it so it looks like it is made of real materials….but I can’t do that just yet….I haven’t finished reading that chapter in the manual! I did learn how to take a glamour shot sort of so though (I’ll leave that below!)

I hope you all (especially you Neo!) enjoyed seeing the process I am going through, Thanks for reading this post and your support and I hope you’ll return to see how I progress and my upcoming Blender based designs in future posts. Till next time here’s a glamour shot!

The Crossguard has Awoken!

This design is heavily influenced by Kylo Ren’s Crossguard lightsaber. The Kylo Ren saber is Trademark/©Copyright of Disney/LucasFilm. FTSabersite and all it’s content are ©Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2016-2018.

For Tyeth’s Comic Con 2 – “It’s a Trap!” (pic heavy)

Hello Everybody! Wow! Oh Wow! What a day I had yesterday (Sunday 17th). I received a HIGHLY IMPORTANT SECRET COMMUNICATION from the Jedi Council, who wanted me to take on another mission. This mission involved top secret documents, an Imperial Droid, a Sith Apprentice and a Sith Lord…a Princess plus a SUPER SPECIAL GUEST….but do you know what? I will tell you the story instead it will be easier! (But please stick with this post it is four pages long ok!)

I received the mission briefing early in the morning and I was instructed to go to my local Comic Con to gather intel – yes it was that time of year when my local comic con takes place. Well, what better place to hide and blend in than with a lot of Star Wars fans? I was told an Imperial Droid that belonged to Darth Vader had some really vital information stored within him and I had to get it!

That’s the Droid I’m looking for!! Quick Tyeth move!

Upon arriving I met up with an old acquaintance called Takamatsu to get my first lead on the droid’s whereabouts. Takamatsu is well known as and I think IS the best Bossk the Bounty Hunter cosplayer in the UK. But this time he wasn’t dressed as Bossk, oh no…he was “Edrio Two Tubes” this year! What a costume…and all hand made by himself…unbelievable!

Takamatsu as “Edrio Two Tubes”…this guy is amazing!

Edrio told me that news of my arrival was already known and forces had been sent out to stop me. And Edrio wasn’t kidding…take a look at these Imperial troops!

Yikes! Stormtroopers, Biker Scouts and a Tie Pilot!

They seemed determined to stop me but hadn’t detected my presence yet so I had a chance to meet up with my second informant…and you can meet him too on page two, just click the page link below!

Pages: 1 2 3 4

For Tyeth’s Further Art Adventures

Hello Everybody, today I am going to showcase my limited artistic skills! Well, I really mean a few scribbles I did about 8 years ago. I also have my first attempts at colouring in a Star Wars image where I discover it’s harder than I remember it being from my time as a youngling! Ok I will start with my pencil sketches, and I need to point out I only had a HB grade pencil to draw this so I had to double over on certain parts to get darker lines (and use a hair and some air pressure to get lighter lines). The images are of a couple of characters from a popular BBC television puppet show, Mongrels!

“Destiny the Dog” sketch

Destiny the BBC Puppet

“Marion the Cat” sketch

Marion the Cat” BBC Puppet

Now I know some of the proportions are out but I think I did ok for two thirty minute quick draws. I hadn’t decided I wanted to take up drawing seriously at this time hence the reason I only had one pencil to use but it shows what can be done if you try. I have had to adopt this mentality to my designing as I don’t have the latest 3D modelling software and a powerful computer to run it, but more on this in my sneak peek later in this post! Mongrels was a satirical comedy show and the main characters included puppets of the animal inhabitants of  London’s East End district. There was Destiny, a pampered pooch with attitude that sort of reminded me of a certain Girl Band singer (hence the in-show joke quote  “because I’m Wormy!” you can see in my picture). Then there was Marion….the Cat! A feline with a middle eastern accent, who had a “close shave and SNIP” at the veterinary surgery! Other characters included a “Millennial Fox” called Nelson and his psychotic opposite, another fox named Vince along with rats, pigeons and a badger! As you can tell this programme was aimed at a more adult audience so if you check it out take care not to let young children watch it. Alright I think I need to move on now to my colouring in pages!

I finally got the colouring in book!

Here is a practise page

Here is the close up!

I have been inspired and impressed by two young ladies I have met in the WordPress community who run Star Wars themed sites. I have mentioned them before but if you are new to my site, Kiri runs the site starwarsanon and Mei-Mei at JediByKnight.com. Kiri and Mei-Mei have an on-going feature where both choose an image from “Art-Therapy Star Wars An Anti-Stress Colouring Book” and then colour it in and compare their results in “Fan Art Friday”. I didn’t want to encroach on a series they are doing but I did decide to get the book myself just to relax with (and sharpen my eye to colours). To get some practise however I had a cheap beginners colouring book from which I chose Han Solo to colour in. Only one problem…I soon realised that the scene in the picture was that of the Death Star hanger in Star Wars- A New Hope – and there wasn’t much colour on the Death Star, it was all black and grey metallic! Well I coloured in what I could and shaded the supports of the Millennium’s boarding ramp and discovered that shading and blending pencil crayons isn’t as easy as Kiri and Mei-Mei make it seem! So please take a bit of time and check out their sites for some much nicer colouring creations!

You may have noticed I appear to be stalling a little bit on my site and haven’t posted any new designs lately, well as I have mentioned in previous posts I have had to change the software I use to make those designs. I have had to take up 3D modelling and now use a designing program called Blender 3D. This software is VERY powerful and there are many things it can do (including animation and video editing/ production). The learning curve is very steep but I have been using it for a week now and as a thank you to Evil Genius180 (Hobby Den) and Neo Trinarty at makeroommakeroom.com who recommended the software to me I have a sneak look at a practise model I have made inspired by a certain Knight of Ren. So here are 3 images, the first is my initial attempt at modelling which I have posted before and then two pictures for EG180 and Neo!

Blender 3D worked!

Thanks EG180!

Thanks NEO!

Yes! That is the latest hilt I have built using Blender 3D. Again it isn’t perfect I am just  familiarising myself with the software and discovering what I can do with it. It sort of looks like Kylo’s hilt. In my next post I will have a few “work in progress” pictures showing how this hilt was put together. But I am nearly out of time and will have to end soon. I thank all of you for reading all of this post and hopefully you enjoyed my little scribblings. I hope you’ll return to see more future posts. Till next time.

“Mongrels”, “Destiny the dog” and “Marion the Cat”  plus the other characters mentioned are Trademark and Copyright of BBC Television. The Han Solo image comes from “Star Wars Galactic Adventures” by Golden Books Publishing. For Tyeth and FTSabersite along with all content contained within is Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2018.

For Tyeth Tries…Blender 3D!

Hello Everybody! You may recall I mentioned that the software I used to use to provide a basis for my designs, the Saberforge Adaptive Saber Parts builder, has recently undergone an upgrade. YAY!….Not! Unfortunately there are nice new parts to build nice copies of some famous lightsabers but the software specifications to run the application have also altered and my laptop can’t access it any more. This is a problem, but not one I cannot overcome. I had been planning for this eventuality for a while. I thought this might happen one day so attempted to learn how to do 3D modelling using Google’s SketchUp software, but there were a few hiccups. I did manage to knock out a couple of models but they were basic box-like buildings and a saber hilt that was very basic, as I couldn’t create curved parts (due to only having access to the free version).

Knock Off 3

Knock Off 4

Knock Off 2

Ok, these are modelled in SketchUp and some of you may think they look alright, but they took me over 2 weeks each to learn how to and then actually build them!

However I wanted to create parts that had rounded sufaces, similar to fluted wine glass stems, the problem was SketchUp Free couldn’t work with complex geometry like that. If I wanted to create a window on a curved section, the cut away feature wouldn’t act on the curved surfaces. I struggled for weeks. Then a friend of mine called Evil Genius 180 suggested I try a different 3D modelling software called Blender 3D. As I have mentioned my laptop is OLD and I didn’t think Blender would work on it so left Blender alone. Skip forward 7-8 months and here we are and I can’t use the ASP builder but another gentleman, Neo Trinarty from MakeRoomMakeRoom also advised me I should try Blender. He informed me I could download an older version too that may work on my machine! I had to do something so went and had a second look on the Blender website and sure enough there was a page dedicated to old releases of the software. I found that it wasn’t difficult to install or remove if it didn’t work. Long story short, I quickly downloaded, unzipped the files and opened up Blender 3D. It worked! After looking to see where the controls were I started playing. This is what I came up with, and again not the greatest but these were my first Blender steps…

Blender 3D worked!

Blade socket

Switch Section

Switch Section Detail

Activation Button

Fluted Pommel

I built this in under 30 minutes! And that included my orientation with the software to find all the menus. Actually the task that took the longest was working out how to align the camera to create these screenshots LOL! What I am REALLY happy with is that there are a few subtle “complex curves” in this hilt around the emitter blade socket and a flared pommel. (I also kinda like the fancy switch box section which I bevelled off). As you can probably tell I am very, very excited by this and am raring to learn more (like adding photo-realistic textures and glowing blade thingies). But there’s more….Blender 3D can also do animations! I even made this saber drop from the sky and land on the white “table top” but then it bounced off!

So I want to thank Evil Genius and Neo for convincing me to try this out, I am so pleased so a big THANKS GUYS. Now both Evil Genius and Neo as you can tell must have some 3D modelling experience, well they do and they both have blogs where they display their work.

Evil Genius enjoys building Star Trek inspired starships (and a few lightsabers) and you can find his site by clicking Evil Genius180’s Hobby Den.

Neo Trinarty is a big Whovian (Dr Who fan!) that likes Daleks. You can visit his site and see his creations by clicking MakeRoomMakeRoom.

I am running short of time on this post but before I go and learn some more 3D modelling, I need to say thank you to you all, my viewers and followers. I have just reached 7000 hits which crept up on me and my article about the Saberforge Forum closing was highlighted in a recent YouTube video, so I know you are out there and viewing my site. It means a lot and now I will soon be able to bring you more BRAND NEW designs, so I hope you will return to see those. Thanks and till next time.

Blender 3D is a free Open Source 3D modelling and animation suite owned by the Blender Foundation and Institute. “For Tyeth Editions” and all other material contained within this site is Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2018. 

I’ve Inspired Someone! SaberForge? Maybe?

Hello Everybody, what a day it has been! I have had it brought to my attention a concept of mine might have inspired a saber manufacturer ! Yes, as you my followers know, I have been creating “Superhero Themed Sabers” for a looong time, since March 2017 some of which I posted on Saberforge’s now defunct Forum. Well today the big company has decided to launch THEIR “Cerakote Super-Heroes” range of sabers! Now you ask what are “Cerakote Super-Hero” sabers? Well they are lightsabers built by Saberforge and they have a special firearms grade coating on them to make them appear in SuperHero colour schemes…..sound familiar?

The image above shows (from L to R) my “Blinding Flash Saber“, “Aquarian Sea Saber“, “Panther’s Claw“, “Wolverine Themed” and “Stark Lightsaber” and if you click their names you will be taken to each hilt’s post. There are more including hilts for The Guardians of the Galaxy and The Incredible Hulk, you jut need to use the search bar or Tag Cloud on the right hand side of this page>> to find the Tag links! (Click Marvel, DC Comics or Comic Books)

I have acknowledged the Trademarks and Copyrights of Marvel, DC, Disney, Amblin Entertainment, in fact any company that I have taken inspiration from and have invited them to contact me if I have content they want me to remove. I am proud to say that no such request has been made so far….or maybe I’m just not famous enough to be detected! I also credited Saberforge for the use of their “Adaptive Saber Parts – ASP” software to build the base hilts I photo edit.

However I will no longer be able to create designs using this application as it has been updated and my laptop cannot access it due to it’s limited specifications. I will have to concentrate on using good old pencil and paper till I can afford a PC to run 3D modelling. I am also going to have to diversify and try “SOMETHING….NEW!” and have ventured into artwork based on sabers! Something like this…

Panther’s Clawed

The Saber is mightier than the Quill

SubAquatic Saber

So sorry to my viewers but my output may be a little different in future. I appreciate all the support and kind comments you gave me, they kept me designing more hilts. I will have to end soon but I do have time to tell you I have a few pictures I have drawn and coloured in coming up in my next post

My days designing Adaptive Saber Parts hilts is over BUT “For Tyeth Editions” will continue in other forms and who knows I may be approached by a Master Sabersmith  who wants to collaborate with me in designing! Thank you all and till next time.

One final thing, here is the link to Saberforge’s collection of hilts so you can take a look at them for yourselves and see what you think (for fairness).

[Saberforge CeraKote Sabers]  <This was a link to their page but it no longer exists – but if you Google “Saberforge Cerakote” you should see some of the hilts they released.

FTSabersite and all it’s content is Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2016-2018. All Trademarks and Copyrights belong to their respective owners. Guest Designer hilt designs belong to the Guest Designer and are used with permission.