Dyad Sabers – It’s all about pairs (and boots)

Hello everybody, first off thanks so much for all the kind comments on my 500th post last week it means a lot. So today I return to a collection I had been promising a while back but then my Windows 10 install crashed and I thought I had lost them. These were my original concepts collection of hilts I built to stretch my understanding of Blender’s latest version. This was the second design I came up with so I thought “I know, I’ll build two of them” and so I created a Dyad – which is a catchy word I used for the design name. It is a fairly basic design but for around forty minutes work it turned out OK and it featured a few details that were improved over past versions of Blender. Anyhoo, here is the first gallery of pictures from the workshop….

You might be able to tell that this saber is quite sleek, not too fussy, has a good grip but I did make a small compromise and added a crystal chamber. Unfortunately it wasn’t till later when I was taking the Glamour Shots that I noticed when viewed from the side the saber looks like a bricklayer’s “Spirit Level” tool with the chamber looking like the level’s bubble chamber! I’m not sure whether there are bricklayers in the Star Wars universe anymore as most buildings are now of a Duraplast or metal construction. OK so I had best move on and let you see the next gallery and this one is the Glamour Shots…

I did make a vanity decision and made this hilt with a green core assembly and inserts with a black shroud. Green is sort of my thing and I figured I could work it into my “Branding” if I ever put these in production! I think the saber has an edgy look to it and the bell emitter is semi recessed, surrounded by a shark’s mouth cut-out in the shroud. I also added some “Tombstones” which are the small rectangular adornments that slot through the shroud and help hold the emitter in place. These also give the saber a look similar to Ahsoka Tano’s hilts from The Clone Wars cartoon. Ahsoka was famous for wielding two sabers so I thought I should build a second hilt to accompany this one so I gave Dyad a new colour scheme for the core. Here is the next gallery…

This colour I quite like and it is one you don’t see on lightsabers very often. The candy orange is really a contrast and complimentary colour to both the green and black. Now I have a balanced pair of hilts, and in Star Wars everything is about balance. But as always I couldn’t just finish here and as I had a ”duality” theme going on, two sabers, two colours, a double bladed version was needed. This is one final image of how two Dyads could form a saberstaff double bladed hilt.

That just about wraps up this post, except for an exciting bit of news I’d like to share. I have been hinting and mentioned that I am in the process of assembling a Jedi costume and I have received my tunic, tabbards, pants and robe and they fit nicely (I just have a few minor alterations to make). However the outfit didn’t come with boots so I looked for a pair of cosplay Jedi boots…but when Mrs T saw the pair I found she was a little concerned how long they would last. She told me “if you are going to buy a pair you may as well get a decent pair..” and offered to help me buy a quality pair and I may have gone a bit mad. I have ordered a pair of “proper” replica Jedi boots as worn by..(?)…in The Phantom Menace! I spent over an hour exchanging emails with the manufacturer in real time so I could send in my measurements for the boots – I’m REALLY nervous now hoping I got the sizing right. Pictures will be posted in a special FT Fashion post when they arrive and I’ve finished the outfit.

Finally I’d like to finish with my usual thank yous. Thanks to all of you who have visited and supported me and FTSabersite, whether today or as a long time viewer/reader. I can’t publish a blog without you and you’re all very much appreciated. Till next time……

(Have my boots come yet?…No?….OK maybe tomorrow….)

“Dyad Sabers” are a For Tyeth Editions design and are ©Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2020. “Ahsoka Tano” and Star Wars are Trademarks/©Copyright of Disney/Lucasfilm.

FTX-Wing Fighter – Fit for my 500th!

Hello everybody and welcome to a special post for me. Way back on August 17^th 2016 I posted my first ever design here on FTSabersite – yes I’ve been around that long. Little did I expect to still be coming up with material almost four years later. I spent around a fortnight setting this site up and a friend of mine, Savannah95 helped debug it for me and make sure all my links went to the right place and I went live with my first design, which you can see here…

This was made using a third party online saber building app, and I entered it into a design contest held by the company that created the app…and I won! That gave me the confidence that I could create sabers and I must have come up with over 500 by now! Ah yes 500! That is also the number of this post, my milestone I reached today. And to celebrate I wondered “What gift would I like for my 500^th?” The answer was….an X-Wing maybe, so now I use Blender I built one and here it is…the FTX-Wing….

These work in process images and wireframes show how I progressed and complex the model is. Of course I had to have a gold plated ship too. However as nice as these studio shots are you want to see the Glamour pictures so here is gallery two…

The first three images are slight work in progress test images and you can see how I modified the cockpit and even added R2-D2. I think this is a little bit different than a lightsaber and it turned out nice for my first spaceship. I used a lot of modelling techniques and features within Blender including Mirror Modifiers to build one half of the ship while Blender automatically “mirrored” the opposite half. Then I used a new tool add-on that adds nice crisp cut-outs, recesses, grooves and slots (around the engines). I even remembered to add navigation lights!

But then I thought “Ok, I now have an X-Wing…what can I do with it? I know….take it on a mission!” So I decided I’d try to recreate a piece of movie history….the Death Star Trench Run!….

I made this little video recreating my attempt to defeat the Death Star. (I watched a documentary on how the Empire fastened the parts of the Death Star together…..it was RIVETING!)

And I have my friend Neil of https://makeroommakeroom.wordpress.com/ to thank for the Death Star trench. He told me about another Blender function that I used to recreat the panels and blocks that make up the trench walls….the Discombobulator function (yes that’s what it’s called!) I then swung the camera around 180degs and filmed the aft view of the FTX-Wing and get a close up view of the engine pods and the glow I created for them. I’m really proud of these as they look really close to the original FX in the re-released version of Star Wars (George Lucas added more ships and glowing effects). You can see much more clearly where I’m flying to…I’m flying to the end of the trench to finish my mission. Was I successful? Let’s take a look….This is Emerald Leader reporting in…..

OK, again I know I’m not going to worry Disney or Lucasfilm with my film making skills but I bet for a moment you thought it was real! And at the very end I did reach my objective – the exhaust port I aimed my torpedoes at was shaped as a 500! Success!

That just about wraps up this special 500^th edition of FTSabersite and as always I’d like to thank everyone, and I mean everyone who visited from day one to today. You have been fantastic and I have loved getting to know some of you better, I have made good friends which is priceless. Now before this sounds like some sort of retirement speech I’d better let you know I still have 7 saber designs and 3 more spaceship designs to display so I might just have enough material to get to 1000 posts….who knows? I hope you will return to find out in future posts. Till next time, stay safe and thanks once again….For Tyeth, Emerald Leader!

“FTX-Wing” is a For Tyeth Editions design insired by the Incom T-65 X-Wing seen in Star Wars. The model and animations were made by me For Tyeth/FTSabersite and are ©Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2020. Star Wars, X-Wing Fighter and all other names, logos, images and related material are Trademark/©Copyright of Disney/Lucasfilm.

FT’s Curved Collection Sabers

Hello everybody I have been busy modelling starships and fighters recently so I need a BIG post of sabers and I just happen to have one today. I mentioned many moons ago that I had a curved hilt design similar to Count Dooku’s, well I am posting it here now. I based this on my hilt Aquaman Bend Lightsaber – FT Blender Version 2 and my “Khaarnage” a saber for Alex Khaar – Inspired by Lady Revan’s FanFiction hilt I built for my friend. Initially I took the hand grip and the pommel of Aquaman Bend and the emitter I used on my rendition of Altenweg Shoto and Darkshoto – Inspired by PsychoSith’s Altenweg II I built and added a new claw to the emitter. This claw looks more like a fang so I named this version Bane Mamba. Bane was the Sith Lord that established the “Rule of Two” where the Sith practitioners were reduced to just two members, the Master and the Apprentice – whilst the Mamba name came from the snake and the association with venomous fangs. OK, enough chit-chat, this saber has been a long time in waiting, here is Bane Mamba Edition….

The hilt handgrip is the Aquaman part but with a twist. The handgrip originally had a shroud to mimic the scales of Aquaman but this time I added the “scales” to the inner core and curved that core to produce the saber’s body. I took the emitter from Altenweg II Shoto and cut a slot into it so the emitter was forked. I then modelled the Mamba “Fang” which catches the light from the blade in a very sinister way, you could say it looked poisonous. To accentuate the snake skin look I added a Crystal Chamber and shaped it into a “scale diamond” styled window. The hilt doesn’t have an on/off switch as I envisioned a sensor inside that detects when the owner performs a gesture motion to switch it on. This means you could set the saber so when you perform the En Guard salute like Dooku does then the saber switches on automatically when pointed upward. But I didn’t stop there…oh no! I modelled TWO more versions. Here is gallery two with the Dark Mamba….

Now this design caused a bit of a problem for me. I designed it using parts from previous models and some unique twists I came up with but when I showed the gold coloured MatCap preview image to a friend on the forum I use they said “It might not be a good idea to post that on this forum as it looks like…” then named an existing design from a well known manufacturer.

However I feel my hilt is sufficiently different and so is my creation….and I’ve posted it here. Now there is a similarity to the mentioned product (they are both bent!) but my hilt has an activation switch that I added to the finger grip recesses. The product in question uses a standard switch on top of the hilt making it prone to being accidentally clicked on/off whilst duelling. With the set up I created the switch is protected and still has four indents for the users’ fingers to grip. I have shown the hilt without the crystal chamber window but one can easily be added. And the reversed colour scheme gives the hilt an even more evil look…but I took it one step further and modelled an Inquisitor version….(because nobody expects the Inquisition!)….

I modelled this again, as far back as February, I have been so backlogged, and I hadn’t watched Star Wars Rebels yet. But I had seen pictures of a character called an Inquisitor and they wore jet black outfits and helmets with bright red edging to trim the garments. I thought the look would be good on a saber and I applied a full dark black paint job and where the accents of silver and black where on the tow hilts above I changed to red. It set the hilt off perfectly and looked just like the Jedi hunting Inquisitors. Then I got to watch Rebels last month and I got a surprise.

When one of the Grand Inquisitor removed his helmet, he had red tattoos or marks on his forehead and around his eyes…and they almost matched the two little fangs on top of the emitter at the base of the slot! I have been known to be able to predict the future but that little detail was pretty spectacular to have modelled. And so to finish this collection, I just had to get a “Family Portrait” of all three together!

Phew! That’s it! Thank you so much for checking all of this out. I’m pretty pleased how they turned out. I am quickly approaching the end of this post but as always I’d like to finish by thanking you all for the support, chat and comments you have shared with me over the past 499 posts you are all very much appreciated. And if you caught that I am about to hit 500 posts next time, so I’d be honoured if you’d join me for that one. Stay safe till the big 5-0-0!

“Bane Mamba”, “Dark Mamba” and “Inquisitor Mamba” are all “For Tyeth Editions” and part of my Curved Collection of hilts. The designs and all images are ©Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2020. Any and all Star Wars names, logos, images and related material are Trademark and ©Copyright of Disney/Lucasfilm.

Zyggerian Gold Sting Saber

Hello Everybody, I have been hard at work in my new “Ship Building Studio” as a friend of mine has asked if I could model a very large spacecraft for a story he is writing. It is going well and I kinda like the ship I have built so far, but as I send proof of concept images to the gentleman he keeps coming up with modifications he’d like me to make. So I haven’t had much time to dedicate to sabers, however I do have the limited edition version of my recent Zyggerian Sting Saber I can show you. As you’ll recall the Zyggerians were a species that specialised in Slave Trading until the Jedi and Republic outlawed the practise. However I imagined “what would a high profile, wealthy Zyggerian buy as a gift to either themselves or other Zyggerians?” This is what I came up with…a limited edition Zyggerian Sting Saber….

The whole saber has been coated in “Phryyk” a golden material that can be found on Lord Sidious’ lightsaber (The Emperor). Phryyk is very rare, valuable and found in only a few places around the galaxy. The saber still has the special dual crystal set up to allow it to be used as an “Electro Light Whip” or as a standard lightsaber bladed weapon. While I was animating the Bronze Zyggerian Sting saber I thought I should do the same for this limited edition….

I filmed this from a different angle to get some different lighting and reflections. One day I may make a full movie! But I’m still waiting for updates to my laptop so until then I’ll have to stick with short animations and images. Speaking of which, how about another gallery? Ok here are some more pictures….

I can see an egotistical, rich Zyggerian using this but I can assure you this hilt as with the Bronze version I built are safely stored away from mis-use in my vaults (aka as Cloud Storage – see I’m getting tech savvy!).

Now as I mentioned above I have been busy building other objects aside from sabers. This includes four starfighter models and a very large military ship all of which I’ll be bringing to FTSabersite in future posts. I will also be posting about my new costume which I’m in the process of making alterations too….but slowly it is coming together so I hope you can join me back here for that. In the meantime, thank you so much for your continued support of me and my site, each visitor that comes here means I will keep creating and posting. You are all fantastic friends, please stay safe….Till Next Time….

p.s. Don’t worry I still have around 6 or 7 sabers to show off too!

“Zyggerian Gold Sting Saber” is a For Tyeth Editions design inspired by the Star Wars Clone Wars cartoon. The design, 3D model and imagery are ©Copyright of For Tyeth/FTSabersite 2020. “Star Wars The Clone Wars” and all other names, logos, images and related material are ©Copyright of Disney/Lucasfilm.