Master Z Lightsaber – Don Diego de la Vega’s saber

Hello Everybody, a week or two back I posted a design inspired by the new Disney live action movie of Mulan – and the beautiful Katana sword featured in it. Well I seem to have caught a bug and have started modelling hilts based on real world swords and sabers….and in this case a sword that was made famous by Don Diego de la Vega – aka ZORRO! Vega/Zorro was a gentleman vigilante of the California regions who fought the oppressive authorities and tyrants that made the lives of the poor downtrodden folks hell. Don Diego was the son of a wealthy landowner and couldn’t be seen as such to be fighting the local authority so adopted a disguise of a black costume and cape, a sombrero cordobés hat and a famous face mask. In this disguise Don Diego became Zorro and using his fencing skills learnt in Spain he battled for the local townsfolk. Zorro also used a pistol now and then, had a knife in his boot and rode a horse named Tornado…but it was his sword he was most famous for. The weapon was a thin bladed sword with an ornate cup shaped handguard known as a Rapier (one of four types of fencing swords – the others being the Foil, Épée and Sabre). With this weapon he would out-skill the bounty hunters and militia that were sent out too stop the vigilante and as a way to humiliate his opponents he would famously “carve” his initial Z into their clothing using three quick strokes of his blade. Now I build lightsabers, so how could I build a Zorro inspired hilt? Well here are a couple of studio wireframe images to show you what I came up with…

Master Z Wireframe Image 1

Master Z Wireframe Image 2

The saber has a very distinct “Pirates” look to it too and you could imagine Douglas Fairbanks, Tyrone Powers or Duncan Regehr wielding this hilt (they all portrayed Zorro in movies or TV shows – Duncan Regehr is the Zorro seen in the title image above ^^). It has a regular “lightsaber blade” but that is just so I get the usual lightsaber look to the blade, otherwise I would have made the blade slightly thinner. There is the bowl shaped handguard and I even added ornaments such as the Quillons (the bar with the spherical ends) and the curved bar known as a Sweeping or Knuckle Guard. To finish the fancy stuff I added a high polished spherical pommel to act as a counterweight. However you won’t see the pretty polished look in a wireframe image so I think it’s about time for some Glamour Shots….

Master Z Saber picture 1

Master Z Saber picture 2

Master Z handgrip, guard and Quillons

Master Z user’s view of hilt.

Master Z – you don’t want to be on the recieving end of this!

I am really pleased how this hilt turned out as I used to have problems before creating curved parts in Blender let alone a curved part made of a high polished material. My old laptop couldn’t handle the number of polygons (modelling units) and the graphics required to recreate such complex pieces, but my new laptop can! And I have gone to town with my second Rapier saber which should appear in next week’s post.

To wrap up this post I will just give a shout out to Johnston McCulley, the creator of Zorro, who wrote the original story way back in 1919 so Don Diego is actually 101 years old! The character of Don Diego/Zorro first appeared in a novel named “The Curse of Capistrano” which was serialised in five parts in the pulp magazine “All -Story Weekly”. Since then there has been over FORTY Zorro films, countless books, comics, plays, computer games and even a musical starring the masked man.

I will also mention that Zorro and it’s associated names and intellectual properties allegedly belong to a company named Zorro Productions Inc, but there are/have been disputes about who owns the rights. However I have mentioned them so I don’t have to worry about “infringing copyright” or other people’s work….this is a tribute!

That does wrap things up for this design and I hope you liked it. It was fun to build as I even got to visit the pueblo of Los Angeles for the Glamour Shots (just kidding!). I have another Rapier inspired hilt you may have seen in my sneak peek I posted yesterday coming up next week and it was inspired by the biggest swashbuckling film of the 80’s. I hope you will return to see that one as there are some memorable quotes to go with it. Thank you for checking out Master Z today, whether this is your first visit or you are a regular viewer/reader of my site thank you for the support, you are much appreciated. Till next time….

“Master Z” Lightsaber is a For Tyeth Editions design and is ©Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2020. “Zorro” and all other names, logos, images and related materials are Trademark/©Copyright of Zorro Productions Inc.

Master Montoya and Master Z Coming Soon!

Hello Everybody….just a quick sneak peek of some historical styled hilts coming to FTSabersite very soon, Master Montoya and Master Z sabers.

So if you are into swashbuckling and saber swinging then you’ll not want to miss these!

Thanks for looking in today and I hope you can join me again this weekend for my normally scheduled post!

“Master Montoya” and “Master Z” sabers are upcoming For Tyeth Editions and are ©Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2020.

“Scratchbuilt Saber” – a bits and pieces saber

Hello Everybody, this past week I have been busy learning to use my new copy of Blender 3D and at the same time testing old build files to see which models work and which models I can further tweak or modify (taking advantage of the new features). Well I was digging around my workshop and I found another crate (near to where I found my stash of Beskar) that had a lot of old model part files. These were files of models/parts that I started to build but got distracted and started something new (this happens a lot to me…I can hear Qui-Gon Jinn telling me I must learn focus!) and I loaded each file into Blender to see what they were. It turns out there were some parts that could be useful and so I set about using these newfound parts as I don’t like to waste resources and recycling is en vogue. This is what I came up with after polishing the “scratch and dents” out ….

“Scratchbuilt Saber” 1

“Scratchbuilt Saber” Emitter 2

“Scratchbuilt Saber” Switch/RC port 3

“Scratchbuilt Saber” Crystal chamber 4

“Scratchbuilt Saber” Top view 5

I don’t think it turned out too bad for recycled parts! I managed to assemble a nice multi curved emitter with a functional and comfortable hilt body. It has a pretty crystal reveal chamber with four oblong windows to let the crystal shine out. Then I had a spare emitter so I flipped it horizontally and vertically so it lined up opposite to the main emitter and used the second as a pommel! This gives the whole saber a forward leaning appearance a bit like this  [  /———-/  ] as opposed to this layout  [  \——–/  ]   The “/” represents the slant. The saber also features a full crystal chamber assembly and the windows now have a much nicer transparent glass texture thanks to the all new Blender.

As always I further “tinkered” with this base design and made a “Darkside” version in black and it looks sleek, sinister and has just a bit of elegance too I think. But again I will let you decide as I present my second gallery of Glamour Shots, this is Darkside Scratchbuilt…

“Darkside Scratchbuilt” 1

“Darkside Scratchbuilt” 2

“Darkside Scratchbuilt” 3

“Darkside Scratchbuilt” 4

“Darkside Scratchbuilt” 5

The black aluminium texture really makes the green blade, switch and crystal “Pop” and probably would look really evil with a Sith red or purple blade. Maybe that will be a further modification for another post…I could add a few gold or silver accents too, hmm! One final modification I made for this version of Scratchbuilt was to combine two hilts to make a staff and here is the standard silver staff…

A doubly dangerous design….and all from parts that I had almost discarded to the recycle bin! And believe it or not a real life custom saber manufacturer had some off cut and reject parts laying around in a pile of storage bins but instead of using their imagination to put the pieces to use, they bagged all the reject parts into 5 or 10 lbs bags and sold them off to DIY saber builders. However as my parts were digital I used my brain and put them into a new design. I am going to set up a procedure where I don’t delete rejected ideas straight away but store them and review the parts/models before committing them to the Recycle Bin…as it can be surprising what models you can come up with!

Anyhoo, that just about wraps up this post, I hope you enjoyed my journey into recycling! It’s true, you can put all sorts of things to use if you think “outside the box”. I hope to bring you all a few more “rescued” hilts in future. I also have an Obi-Wan Kenobi inspired hilt, a beautiful curved fencing hilt, and a few more totally original bespoke designs from my FT Model range I have started. Please be sure to call back to check these out in upcoming posts. But for now I’d like to send out a big thanks to all of you, my friends for all the support and kind comments/likes you have given me and my site. I have today passed 100 Subscribers (though I fear some may be bots) so thanks to you all, you are much appreciated. Till next time….

“Scratchbuilt Saber” and “Darkside Scratchbuilt Saber” are For Tyeth Editions designs and are ©Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2020. All designs and content within FTSabersite are ©Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite or their respective owners and all Guest Designers’ content is used with permission.

“Warrior Saber” Inspired by Disney’s Mulan live action movie

Hello Everybody, today I am Blending a past design and a new rebuild (see what I did there? Blending?). Now last year around July news of a new Mulan live action movie based on the Disney animation broke and a few promo images and a teaser video released.

Disney’a Mulan promo image (Copyright Disney Studios)

I saw the images and trailer and was interested as I saw that the film has swords in it and Katanas in particular. I knew there would be lots of people making 3D models of the sword so I thought I’d do my version of it. Due to circumstances and how busy I was over the last 6 months I didn’t get to post the design even though I did post this teaser…

Mulan Saber teaser poster from last year!

And as you can see I pushed the limits of my model-building skills by creating an embossed/carved reproduction of the Mulan family crest/dragon on the handguard! But as you can see there are those pesky “Fireflies” or noise pattern on the image. This annoyed me but my old laptop and Blender couldn’t make the images look better without processing the image for hours on end. However fast forward 7 months and I have new hardware and the new Blender 3D v2.81 and so I figured, “I haven’t posted the design so why don’t I modify it and see how my new setup copes?” I reloaded the old Blender file and started to improve (I hope) on the original. Here is that new version, this is “Warrior”…

“Warrior Saber” inspired by Mulan 1

“Warrior Saber” inspired by Mulan pommel 2

“Warrior Saber” inspired by Mulan tassel 3

“Warrior Saber” inspired by Mulan the business end 4

“Warrior Saber” inspired by Mulan environment shot 5

The original Mulan inspired build for comparison 6

In my last version I attempted to use the techniques I used on my LOTR “Barad-Dûr Saber” to recreate a hammered metal look for the hilt handle and pommel ring. This made the hilt appear to be made of wrought iron with lots of hammer pockmarking and I also tried to recreate the dragon handguard. As I mentioned I managed it but the rendered images didn’t do justice to the model. I discovered I had made a few minor errors too in my fist build so I rectified those and added carvings around the edge of the handguard too…and I prayed to the Force that Blender’s new render “despeckle” function would work. Thankfully it did and I reckon the engraved detailing turned out nicely. I will admit the tassel hanging from the pommel still needs some work but with my new more powerful laptop I can use the “Hair” function to improve it. The “Hair” modifier recreates hair follicles but creates a lot of strands that need to be calculated and processed, my old laptop couldn’t manage that. Overall though I think this updated model looks OK and the final renders are a vast improvement. I am really pleased with Blender 3D and not only am I able revisit and tweak my old designs…I have already come up with around half a dozen new hilts….or one design a day! All of which I will be featuring in upcoming posts.

That just about wraps up this post but I would just like to point something out regards the movie’s release and more importantly the Coronavirus outbreak. I sincerely hope that a remedy for this terrible virus is found quickly and deployed successfully and my thoughts are with those already affected, those that have succumbed, and their families. I mention this virus outbreak as it may affect when the Mulan movie is released (it is scheduled for March 21st as of time of posting)…but the health scare could change that date.

Thank you for visiting FTSabersite today and I hope you liked my new updated “Warrior”. All of you, my viewers/readers are much appreciated, whether this is your first visit or you are a regular, thanks so much for your support. I hope you will all return to see what I have in the pipeline in upcoming posts. Till next time….

Oh! and p.s. Hope you all had a Happy Valentine’s Day yesterday…I made sure I got my card…I wrote it myself!

“Warrior Saber” is a For Tyeth Editions model and is ©Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2020. It is inspired on the weapon seen in the upcoming Disney live action adaptation of Mulan due out in March 2020. “Mulan” and all names, logos, images and related material are Trademark/©Copyright of Disney Studios.

 

Upgrades! For Tyeth tries Blender 3D V2.81a!

Hello Everybody! Today is a BIG day as this is the start of a new era for me….I have upgraded Blender so I am running the new 2.81A version (as I type this I have seen v.2.83 has been released but that isn’t a stable release yet). This means I have access to a new modelling feature called EEVEE which is a “real-time renderer” so I can make a model and apply textures/materials to it as I go along and the new laptop automatically modifies the model and textures as I make changes. This means I can see how the finished version of a saber will look almost as soon as I have started building it! Oh, yes…did I just mention the words “new laptop”? Yes I did….my new toy has arrived! I now have an updated computer which is amazing compared to the computer I used before…

This is a Lenovo X61s 12 inch laptop and it has 1GB of memory and a whopping 64GB hard disk…it even ran on Windows 7 – real high tech! But now I have the big brother of this computer with a 14 inch screen, Core I5 processor, 8GB of memory and 500GB hard disk so I am able to run the latest versions of Blender! I installed Blender yesterday afternoon and within an hour I had built my first version 2.81 saber, would you like to take a look? Of course you would so here you go…

FT’s first Blender 2.8 saber 1

FT’s first Blender 2.8 saber 2

FT’s first Blender 2.8 saber 3

FT’s first Blender 2.8 saber 4

FT’s first Blender 2.8 saber 5

This saber isn’t based on anything specific or any particular hilt it is just a testbed, something that was in my head that I modelled. The new software is even more powerful than the last version I had. Almost 99% of the functions can be accessed from the studio/workspace screen so was able to build this so fast. But even if a needed function isn’t on screen then there will be a dedicated tab and secondary screen layout where it will be visible. For example the screen to model the object would be different than a screen for rendering (creating the images or videos) – but there are “hot keys” to switch between the various screens allowing you to preview your progress as you go along. This software is so slick and fast I think it could do the Kessel run faster than the Millennium Falcon!

Blender 3D v2.81 Studio

Rendering is also something that is vastly improved with 2.81. I knew it would be better but I had no clue just how good it was gonna be. Some of my old renders had lots of speckles of light and looked “grainy” due to how the graphics chip recreated the lighting for the image but you may have noticed the pictures above were very, very focused and pin sharp with no little “Fireflies” – Blender users call the speckles fireflies! You can see them on the gold pieces on the hilts below… Blender has a new function similar to one developed by industry leaders in animating (Disney Pixar) that removes the speckles and sharpens the image, but when I installed Blender I wasn’t aware of it. Imagine my amazement when I saw the first picture I created! The difference was like watching a movie on a mobile phone, then seeing the same film on IMAX! So impressed was I, that I rendered a few more so here’s another gallery of some glamour shots, enjoy….

FT’s Blender 2.8 Twin Sabers

FT’s Blender 2.8 Twin Sabers 2

FT’s Blender 2.8 Twin Saber cave 1

FT’s Blender 2.8 Staff Saber 1

FT’s Blender 2.8 Staff Saber 2

I am just lost for words…and the image I showed with the Fireflies above took 40-50 seconds to render, whereas these new pictures took much less time. I pressed the button to render the image and I counted 1…2…3…and it displayed onscreen. Less than four seconds! This will cut down my workload by about 75%. I don’t know how it will handle animations but if Blender works this fast for single images then videos will take a fraction of the time too. I will work on some animations once I have transferred all my files to my new set-up. I can’t wait. Here is one final “poster” I came up with and it has the Blender “Eye” logo looming over the planet like the Death Star!

Well, that just about wraps up this post, I hope you liked it. I will be looking through my old Blender models and seeing which ones would benefit from being tweaked in this new version of the software while I work on new saber designs so I hope you’ll return to see all of that in future posts. Thank you all for your support of me and this site, whether you are a regular visitor or are new to FTSabersite – you’re all much appreciated. Till next time….

Blender 3D is available for free at Blender.org

“FT’s Blender 2.81 Saber” is a For Tyeth Edition design (built and rendered in Blender 3D v2.81!) and is ©Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2020. “Blender 3D”, “Blender” and the Blender “Eye” logo are Trademark/©Copyright of the Blender Foundation.

Beskar Breaker Saber – A PsychoSith design

Hello Everybody and welcome to today’s post. As I was rummaging round my warehouse last week I also discovered another fantastic design from my friend PsychoSith of the Ultrasaber’s forum. On this forum he posts what he calls his “Saber Doodles” – some fantastic pencil and charcoal sketches of lightsabers. Psycho is very modest about his art but he has great talent (as you can see from this post HERE ) and this saber I am about to show you is another example of his imagination. Psycho designed this as a a Zweihander or two handed sword as used in Europe, but Psycho envisaged this as a saber that could destroy objects and sabers made of Beskar! It is a large powerful weapon…..here are a few pictures…

PsychoSith’s Saber Doodle

A short “Shoto” version

These pictures show Psycho’s picture he posted on the forum and immediately you can see the hilt is a beast with a crossguard design and a second crossguard below the main blades. The word Zweihander translates as “Two-hander” and you’d need both hands to wield this weapon. The second picture is a test design of a slightly smaller version of the hilt for people that would struggle with the full size Beskar Breaker. But you want to see some Glamour Shots right? OK here you go I just happen to have a few….

PsychoSith’s Beskar Breaker 1

PsychoSith’s Beskar Breaker 2

PsychoSith’s Beskar Breaker 3

PsychoSith’s Beskar Breaker 4

PsychoSith’s Beskar Breaker 5

PsychoSith’s Beskar Breaker 6

In these pictures you really get to see all the little details that PsychoSith included in his design that made such a big difference! The aggressively knurled handgrip with trigger activation switch bar, the heavyweight pommel, the imposing crossguards and finally the menacing blazing red blades. Now I always think that a picture is good but a video is better, right? Alright here is a small animation I produced (and because this thing is so huge I just managed a few rotations before I tired myself out trying to swing it about!)….

Hopefully this video will have given you an indication of just how big this saber is…it is a beautiful big beast! i want to thank PsychoSith for sharing this design and allowing me to post it here. I hope to add a couple more of his designs in future (and I already have a Shoto version lined up to show you). But this just about wraps up this post.

I have been busy looking for inspiration and I have a few new sabers to post in the upcoming weeks including a few curved hilts with a regal feel and a couple of sabers inspired by Obi-Wan Kenobi’s classic saber from A New Hope. And I hope you will all return to see those. I will now thank you all as I always do, you’re support for me and my site is amazing and keeps me designing and posting. Whether you are a first time visitor or a regular reader/viewer then thank you very much, you are appreciated. Till next time…..

“Beskar Breaker Saber” is a PsychoSith Sabers design and is used here with permission. “Beskar Breaker Saber” and “PsychoSith Sabers” are Copyright of PsychoSith (member of the Ultrasaber’s forum – SaberForum.com ). The Blender 3D model and animation were created by For Tyeth/FTSabersite and are Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2016-2020.