Katana Sword Project

Stage 1-Reference

I have started to practice my 3D assets skills again, so I chose to make my character's Katana sword. I started off as usual with a reference image which was uploaded on to a plane in Maya.

Stage 2-Low Poly Model

Once I had the image plane sorted I moved on to the modeling of the actual low poly asset. This was a quick and simple process with using the extruding tool on a cylinder and using the vertices to shape the asset. While shaping I followed the image placing to try and get the bend in the asset. 

Stage 3-UV Unwrapping

The next stage after modeling the low poly model was to UV unwrap it, for this I started with an automatic unwrap and then I opened UV Editor. I moved the UVs into groups such as one group for the long part of the Katana, one for the handle and another for the grip. Then I started to cut the UV edges and sew them to the places for the correct unwrapping. However I faced a problem, some of the UVs were curving or bending. To fix that I selected the outer edges and pressed Ctrl and right click to bring up a pop up menu, I moved the cursor to the section called 'To UV' which lead me to another pop up menu but I carried on moving the cursor to the section called 'To UV'. Once 'To UV' was selected all the edges I chose changed to their UVs which meant I could use the align tools to straighten the the curved edges in the UVs. Finally all I had to was lay them out and size them so the checker pattern was even on the asset.