Shirasaya custom

Its my first mesh and my first skin. If Ive got this right, a shirasaya is a old japanese sword with wooden grip. If anyone knows if theres anything else to it then tell me.
The skin is not finished yet, detail will be added and some minor bugs will be fixed. Planning to get it compiled for the TS katana.

Comments and suggestions are more then welcome!

The grip looks ok ... but the sword should have a shiny glow on it (I know that's difficult), but it looks a bit like a large kitchen knife to me at the moment.

Still, impressive work for your first skin & mesh !

Force, a large kitchen knife is exactly what a Shirasaya looks like lol.

Here's a modern one: Shirasaya

I think Katana's look better, but to each his own (they are overused).

A friend of mine, a couple years ago, got a custom made Kitana from Korea . . . yes, it's real, and yes it cuts down trees in a single stroke, just like in anime lol.

This model looks very nice indeed, I wonder if you can speed up the attack or something like that (taking that this sword is much lighter then a kitana) you'd have to edit some code to do that probably, but maybe its in a pak file somewhere.

I call this a custom shirasaya because the blade isnt bent as it should be. http://www.ingali.com/English/show_item.php?REF=XL0310 Here are a katana, a tanto and a wakizashi in shirasaya style.

And about katanas, a real one would be hammered in several layers, the maximum number recorded is 10,736,461,824 layers! A finished samurai sword would be tested by cutting a corpse of a man in two piece with one move, from the head to the crotch, or a huge pile of bambu. Rarely they used living prisoners that were sentenced to death. The sword would also be tested by cutting through stone, if there were no scratches in the sword after that it was a good sword, so Im not surprised it can cut down trees in one move, the Japanese history is amazing! :biggrin:

wow, that sounds really cool, I wish I had a katana!!! (and that I could use it). Your work is impressive, I think.

Dude, azelito, I was kidding, I doubt he'd try to cut a tree with his sword, I mean the thing cost like 500 bucks (that's also rather cheap if I'm not mistaken, for a genuine katana anyway).

But yeah, I doubt that's how they test it now lol. Also, he did order it from Korea, so. Also, he knows how to use it, Kendo for 10+ years, he could probably take on the legandary worrior Samnanuske lol. (Dammit, I can't wait for Onimusha 3).

Also, yeah the Japanese history is very interesting, it's also the one country that's experiences almost everykind of government and lifestyle lol.

I believe a shirasaya is actually just the name for the wooden fittings- often old swords are installed into them for storage purposes, rather than looks. Basically the blade is put into a wooden scabbard/handle, and a wooden cover is custom built for it. (My Dad collects the Tadayoshi line of swords and has a few million dollars worth of them!) The Samurai didn't fight with their swords still in their wooden scabbards- they had proper tsuba and the whole fittings shebang, so basically your model is 'wrong' unless you want to make the handle look detailed/proper, or unless it's meant to be someone messing around with an old sword.

I was guessing something along those lines, but I dont mind it being wrong. Its a custom blade in shirasaya.

Yes the model is correct and looks really nice (it's a very straight and dull blade though, look into making it a bit more curved and 'shiny'?), but I don't think many people would actually use it still in the wooden fittings- make some lovely gold plated fittings and a tsuba instead :smile:

And about katanas, a real one would be hammered in several layers, the maximum number recorded is 10,736,461,824 layers!

*cough*reality check*cough* Over 10 billion layers? I doubt it. I'm aware of the layering of samurai weapons, but that's silly.

Even if each layer took only one second, that would take more than 300 years to make :razz:

Yea, you are correct. I must have gotten a number wrong somewhere there :biggrin:

Post the skin flats! I think the blade could use some more highlights/detail though, can't really tell.

aze, for a first effort, i think you did damn fine bud....gj......the devil is in the details... :wink:

Doc B... :dodgy:

The mesh is a f**king joke, I thought it would take a whole lotta more room. I think Im gonna have to redo it. :biggrin:





<EDIT CLASS="mesh"> Heres the new mesh, much better!





</EDIT>

Or you could realise that's about 34 foldings of a sheet... :razz:

That's a good point, come to think of it :redface: Sorry Aze.

Gollum said:
That's a good point, come to think of it :redface: Sorry Aze.

HMM, ok forgiven. :dorky:

If you want a cool blade make it have a kickass hamon (white crystal line down near the blade) and a dragon inlay. Then people will wanna use it :biggrin:

Or make a traditional Japanese Halberd...

Actually Leperous, you can only fold 7 times then it becomes almost certainly impossible :razz:

That's only valid for a sheet of paper Gwilmong... A micron width sheet of metal could probably take an even larger number of foldings with the right technology :bandit:

Plus I thought the limit on folding was 8 or 9? They fold it a couple of times and hammer it down into basically a new sheet, I don't know if they trim any excess metal off as I can imagine it would get quite fat quite quickly.

You can fold the metal again and again to make a sword that is very strong and hard to crack. Lep is right, you can do a couple of folds, then hammer the metal until it is the same thickness as the original piece was, then repeat - I don't think there is a fixed limit to the number of times this can be done, but when there are no more dislocations in the material, you no longer gain anything by doing more folds... TB can probably clear that bit up for us :smile: