Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=382320&Start=1&Artist=swfreeman&ByArtist=Yes

Hi, I have been trying, with no great success, to model Gunnm's giant balisong (butterfly-knife) weapon. I was wondering if anyone was up to trying their hand at it. SWFreeman has a pick in his gallery at the link below. It is basically a large ventilated blade with handles that can either fold along both sides of the blade to make a bar, or fold out and back to create a naginata like weapon. Thanks,

Unfortunately, she's standing in front of most of the knife in this picture. How about another link?

Hmmm...sorry, this is a bit stylized, but will give you a better idea (I hope)

If you can get more pics of it, you'll get a better one! How about one showing it folded... Message me when you got some & i'll take a Whack at it! Marco

Oh, and a detail of the blade itself

Maybe this animgif might help?

Oh! I see! The Handle splits in 2! Yes, that gif helped! Well, i'll do it after supper. Shoga, send me an email through the 'sity system so that i know where to send it! Make sure that your email can receive big files! :-) Marco

Look at regular butterfly knives .. the structure is the same. The handles form a rectangular case around the blade, usually with a clip at the end. The clip is opened, the two pieces hinge out to form a hilt, and the clip closed there to keep them together. Most of the knives are about 5-6 inches long ..seeing it as a sword is interesting.

well Gally is a combat cyborg, a normal person couldn't lug that thing around. :) The idea of Gunnm inspired props in poser intrigues me, a lot on cool nasty cyber stuff in that manga.

ooo, that sounds very nice. might it be possible for you to post this to freestuff? if not, no biggie, especially seeing as it'd probably be pretty popular.

Well, i'll give it to Shoga. Then he can give it to others. Or someone can host it if they want! Later! Marco

Some people have mocked Aiko from DAZ as not being suffieciently "manga" or "anime" in her features, but I find her to closely resemble Alita/Gally. Crown Aiko's head with the Yuka hair from Studio Maya (dropping the base color to near black in the process), and purse her lips, and she'd be a near dead ringer! Someone needs to recreate her beserker cyborg chassis as a texture and the illusion would be complete. Or, am I merely stuffed chock full of wild blueberry muffins? ;-) Sincerely, Bill

MMMmmmmm Bluuueberrry Muffins....... Hey does anybody have SWFreeman's stuff downloaded?? I had some of the guns but lost them to a virus. They aren't downloadeable anymore.

Glad to see interest in one of the most exciting manga I have ever read. I like book 3 the best, the one about MotoBall.

How about this?

Wow! Electro! You beat me to it! :-) What Modeler did you use & what technique? I'm starting mine now in C4D. Now, this is interesting. I hadn't noticed that the handles were jagged like this. The proportions look good! Excellent Work! I haven't read or watched any Manga since "Ghost in the Shell", so i'm pretty out of it. Marco

Wow! That looks really good, Electroglyph. Battle Angel the anime actually predates GITS by nearly a decade }-)

I don't want to sound picky, cause it looks great, but can the handles enclose the blade when folded?

I used Rhino 2 sr3 for the modeling. I inserted the blade image as a background and traced the contours. Based on the image of the blade I assumed that it pivoted on the third hole. To make the knife actually close and hide the end of the tang I will have to change the handle from the image you posted and make the guard longer and grips wider to cover the blade. This is what it looks like closed. there aren't actually pivots or a blade recess modeled. Is this what you want? Knife is in OBJ format scaled to be the height of Vicki in poser. The OBJ file is in the open position and you will have to import into poser and rotate if you want a working prop. I have a map from uvmapper I've included but haven't textured it. The default colors are what you see from Rhino. If you want changes let me know.

Attached Link: http://www.geocities.com/electroglyph2002/3Dresources/freestuff/free.html

Hey all. I'm headed to bed. I went ahead and created a colored PZ3 file and put it on my geopages. It's a freesite so you have to load it from the page, no linking to renderosity. It's not very robust but you can now pose it. Read the gbreadme file for instructions or do as follows: To close or open the handle click on the ugpin and the lgpin and rotate the zrotate dial. All handle parts are parented to the pins. To move the knife move the blade. The pins are parented to it and all parts should go. If you want changes post to this thread and I'll read it tomorrow.

Wow sweet work electroglyph . Now if i can only get Aiko to do that evil grin like the animated GIf .

looks to me like the blade is interchangable and why it has 3 holes at the end . here is another version ?

this time as a stand alone. Man i have to read this one now. I saw the origanl movie like 5 times . Didnt know there was anything new on it.

more detail in wrist blade one

Say, Tasquah, you mean a grin something like this? ;-) Sincerely, Bill

Wow Redfern. Is that really Aiko? I've always though she was almost as ugly as Judy. And far from Anime/manga. But this pic is really great. And close to the character in the drawings too :o)

Honestly, this Alita/Gally stand-in really is Aiko. True, Aiko does not have some of the features fans normally associate with anime and manga females, but I saw an innate resemblance to Kishiro's work in "Gun Dream." Hasn't anyone noticed Kishiro gave Gally actual lips? She often has them pursed or puckered. Aiko has a "purse" morph that captures that look quite well. Also, as anyone can see in the manga captures above, Gally's upper and lower eyelids join. When Studio Maya released the Yuna hair (not Yuka as I mistakenly typed in a prior post), the resemblance, at least to me, became uncanny. I'll be glad to offer the face pose, but tou'll have to wait until I leave work. Sincerely, Bill

Thanks Electroglyph. I'll pull it down and try it out around lunchtime. Looks great. Redfern, that is a wonderful interfpretation of Gally's expression. Are you saying that is a straight Aiko face with just an expression?

Wow redfern that one great looking grin on her.

That's right, Shogakusha. I didn't use any magnets or imported morphs. Those are merely face dials. What also probably helps is the nagle of the shot. The Face Camera apeture is set to 100 mm with the X Axis tilted to -25 degrees. At another angle, the grin probably would not look right. The eyes textures are not the default Aiko versions. I used a pair from a Stephanie free pack titled Wyndie. They look more detailed. I also like to add a minimal ambient glow to the eye parts, usually a gray setting of 79. That's for the iris, pupil and eye white, not the transparent eyeball. I use this technique with most of my figures. It gives them a subtle intensity to their expressions. Since there are currently no Gally beserker cyborg textures around, I used NikitaCreed's free cyber suit found at RDNA. For such a close portrait, I could get away with it. Honestly, I'm surprised so few have used Aiko to recreate Gally. There are one or two images in the gallery that have employed her. However, with her Damascus steel blade now available, that might change. Wait, I have an idea. NikitaCreed went nuts over my Baron Harkonnen I made with Victoria 3. I wonder if I can bribe her to create a texture of Gally's cyborg chassis in exchange for the settings? I'm a scummy bastard, aren't I? ;-) Sincerely, Bill

hehe you go bill . I thought i saw some cyborg parts for free some were at RDNA . Will have to check that out. For some different versions of Gally .

Back Again, One more thing. Since I spawned props from the mesh you can delete the handle parts to get just the blade.

I took a look at your prop over lunch, Electroglyph. Looks good. I played with the Hierachy (rotation centers and parenting) so I can open and close it more naturally for animation or even just posing. I managed a quick animation, but alas I have no where to post it. My site on Poserosity is gone. Thanks!

thank you very much, electroglyph. i'm sporting an evil grin myself at the thought of its many possible uses. mike and vincent better beware. >D

I can host here. Renderosity will let me link to the page and download from my freestff site. Geopages is happy as long as you load from an html page and look at the popup ad. The only problem is if I get more than 3 downloads (5meg)per hour they turn me off for an hour. If you changed the hierarchy just zip and mail back to me. electroglyph2002@yahoo.com that came with the site doesn't get used and should take the file.

Electroglyph, I'm still playing with hierarchy, materials and getting the joints just right, but when I am done I will certainly send it back to you. Would you like the animation for the moment? Give the folks a teaser? }-)

Attached Link: http://www.mzzkiti.com/PsychoGrin.zip

As promised, here is the "pychotic grin" to turn Aiko into the Battle Angel. As I stated earlier, tilt your camera on its X axis to roughly -20 to -25 degrees for the most dramatic effect. Just place the .fc2 and .rsr files in one of the face folders. Enjoy! Sincerely, Bill

Nice bill thanks loads. I am kind of working on making the other arm blade thing out of parts from electroglyph upload. The one in post #22 . Should work with a cylandar for the arm band and slight altering of the end of the knife.

Attached Link: http://www.geocities.com/electroglyph2002/3Dresources/freestuff/free.html

The New version is up! Special thanks to shogakusha for creating the excellent dials and the avi I turned into this gif. I'll post a link in general freestuff tomorrow. I wanted to give you all first crack at it. Enjoy,

Thanks electroglyph and shogakusha.

Dang.... too bad I don't have Aiko. Nice to see somebody can get a decent face out of her. Now that I think of it Aiko and Gally are about a perfect fit since the body styles are similar. As for the lips thing. Kishiro started doing that several books in so towards the end (well before he restarted it again anyway...) They were getting freakishly large. Adam Warren , was inspired by this and started doing the same thing in his most recent Dirty pair comics, I can't say I'm a fan of the freakishgly inflated lips, but whatcha gonna do. :D BTW I never would have thought of Using the Yuna hair, but it really works. :)