Katana – Page 1 « sonicsilence.net

Katana – Page 1

Switch to an Orthogonal View (Numpad 5) from the Right (Numpad 1). Ortho views are better for modeling because there are no spatial distortions to muck up your manipulations.
Enter Edit Mode (Tab). This is the mode from which you can actually manipulate the verts of the object in question. You can’t model otherwise!
Switch to Vertex Mode (Ctl-Tab). Now we are only affecting vertices. Vertices are the most basic object in a model, with Edges being a pair of adjacent vertices, and a Face being three (or more) connected vertices.
Select one of the bottom-most verts.
Enter Drag-Select Mode (B). This mode allows you to grab a series of verts (or anything else, for that matter) by dragging a box around the desired objects.
Drag to select all the bottom verts.
Turn on Snap (the magnet icon on the window bar). Snap allows you to make precise transformations by always moving in even amounts.
Drag until the bottom verts are on the x-axis (at 0 in the z-axis, or on the origin). We will only be working on one half of the model and then mirroring the results much latter.

Repeat the steps to move the top verts closer to the middle forming the basis of the top half of the blade (around 0.5 units high).
Bring the left and right sides in around 4 units to form the sides of the blade.

Switch to the top view (Numpad 7).
Using the above techniques pull the front and back verts out to form the length of the blade.

Zoom in and select all the verts at the front of the blade.
Extrude (E) the face about 1.5 units. By extruding we are adding more detail and giving us more geometry to work with. It is very versatile, and is possibly the most powerful tool in modeling.
Select the top two verts and Merge Verts (Alt-M) depending on the order you selected either “at first” or “at last.” Merging verts is another powerful tool, and one that you will get a lot of miles out of.
Pull it back about 0.5 units.
Now merge the bottom two verts as before forming the beginning of the tip of the blade.

Toggle to Edges (Ctrl-Tab) and select the two edges that make up the blade portion of the tip.
Now we Subdivide (Ctrl-E). Subdivide is pretty much the final piece of the modeling triumvirate of Extrude/Merge/Cut. With these three tools there is literally nothing you can’t model.
Select the new edge across the blade and pull it right and to the front to round off the tip.

At this point you can clean up the triangles we made (quads are better at this point) by selecting the faces (Ctrl-Tab to switch to them) and pressing Alt-J to join the tris into quads.

Now is a good time to save (Shift-Ctrl-S). It is always a good idea to save multiple iterations of a project. Just saving over the same file leaves you without a way to back track if something goes wrong (and when you are first starting, this will happen a lot). I suggest using a numeric scheme and naming this file: Katana01.blend.