I'm making a sword in Blender. But it's Poser I'm concerned with. I want to make a decent looking steel sword mat file. Any suggestions on how to set that up?

What sort of sword? Pattern welded, damascene, old and reliable... all have very different surface qualities. A sword is not a sword. Rapiers are different to broad swords which are different to longswords which are different to katanas and scimitars...

Depends what type of steel you are envisioning.  You can use Snarly's EZMetal or peruse this forum link from RDNA:

http://forum.runtimedna.com/showthread.php?33166-Raytraced-reflections-on-a-sword-blade&highlight=steel

What sort of sword? Pattern welded, damascene, old and reliable... all have very different surface qualities. A sword is not a sword. Rapiers are different to broad swords which are different to longswords which are different to katanas and scimitars...

I'm talking a longsword. If it'll help, I'll see if I can render a pic of the blade in question.

Here's a quick render of the sword. I want to give the blade a "brushed steel" kind of look. Shiny, metalic, but not mirror refelective. I think the word is "Anisotropic".

I'd go with Snarly's as well. Obviously very fine brushed effects if that's the look you want (never see that in real swords, but NM). One thing you might do is create a separate mat zone for the edges so they can have different qualities (either more reflective, or deeper brush marks to suggest a coarse stone used for sharpening... also helps to have the edges 'glint' if they have a different reflect value).

Iron is blue grey. Swords are usually a mix of iron and steel. Steel is more 'silvery'... shift the iron colour more towards white. Made reflective, your blade is currently looking OK for steel, or add a touch of blue.

Well, I have to hit the sack, but I'll run down Snarly's EZ metal in the morning and peruse the thread Hborre pointed to. Thanks guys. I'll post results.

Iron is blue grey. Swords are usually a mix of iron and steel. Steel is more 'silvery'... shift the iron colour more towards white. Made reflective, your blade is currently looking OK for steel, or add a touch of blue.

Steel IS iron (iron mixed with a pinch of carbon), so I doubt anyone could tell the difference between iron and steel just by looking at it. Swords are steel, because iron, on its own, can't be heat- hardened to hold an edge. Remember that any metal using any fancy shader in any renderer is going to look shite unless you give it a nice environment to reflect. And it's going to look different in a different environment.

And this text input box is STILL BROKEN!!!!!

While pure iron is silver coloured, most folks have never seen pure iron.  Cast iron is iron containing a lot of carbon (2-4%) and silicon, so it is grey.  Back before Bessemer Converters, steel was made at the forge by literally hammering the carbon and silicon from the hot iron...

Hmm.  Before the Bessemer process, steel was made by the crucible method, which is a very time consuming process, that of heating to a molten state, back in the early days, meaning weeks.  Iron hammered is not really steel, but wrought iron.  Pure iron is a rather crap material, it may be hard, difficult to achieve, and it's primary quality is brittle.

Surface appearance for Iron or steel can be difficult to discern, there are so many different types or alloys that steel can be made with almost any properties you want.  Trying to discern between one and another on appearance, forget it.  Hammered steels will have a different appearance depending on what process is used, however a sword is usually hammered thin, doubled over, hammered to weld the two, repeat the process until you have the required number of laminations to give the desired strength.  This will give the different patterns.  The laminating process also welds the laminations together, in effect,many layers to give it strength and some flexibility.  Where these layers have been worked or polished will show in the surface giving the visible patterns.

As far as the patterns, there will be no such thing as two with identical patterns, or even similar, it's the result of the smith doing the work. Modern steel or iron, there is no guesswork, the appearance of the finished metal will depend more on the desired qualities of the material and the methods used.  I have made for my own use, cast iron flats, with a ground finish that until it is exposed to moisture will rival the finish achieved with 4140 HT, which is a prehardened chrome-moly steel.  I have also ground and polished 1018 and 1020 steels, which will give an appearance closer to gray iron than a steel. 

I would say, Earl, find something that pleases your eye and use that.  Nobody can confront you with "That doesn't look authentic", because there are so many variations, the task would be to prove it isn't authentic. 44 years of metalworking, I do have some idea what different steels, irons and alloys look like, ancient or modern.

Doric.

I suppose I could just take myself down to the history museum and see what old swords look like. Gives me an opportunity to check out the museum anyway. Haven't been there since I was in grade school.

There are excellent examples in the Higgins Collection; images of some of the collection are here...

http://vqs61.v3.pair.com:8080/emuseum/view/objects/asimages/3063

Steel is one of the most difficult colors.

The metal, the exposure to surroundings, hardened, hammered, grinded, poloshed, rusty.

There are cheap swords and there are swords of unbelievably high quality. The US ended up giving back a number of surrendered Japanese swords after WWII. Turns out they were historic pieces hundreds of years old. Only an incompetent swordsman lets his sword get rusty.

Tja, you can Always Google..

"RGB for Steel" 

There are cheap swords and there are swords of unbelievably high quality. The US ended up giving back a number of surrendered Japanese swords after WWII. Turns out they were historic pieces hundreds of years old. Only an incompetent swordsman lets his sword get rusty.

Or a dead one

Here's a quick render of the sword. I want to give the blade a "brushed steel" kind of look. Shiny, metalic, but not mirror refelective. I think the word is "Anisotropic".

The problem with this render is no environment. You'll have a hard time getting a convincing looking reflective metal without an environment -- either a map on the material itself, or raytracing with a world to reflect. This is one of those occasions when HDRI environments and raytracing really shine. What metals "look like" is a function of the environment around them. If you create a synthetic 3D environment with no lights and nothing to reflect, they'll look like nothing much.

one of the best pieces of advice is to pay attention to the blade, in your modeller get in real close to the edge and add a few extra edge loops to make the edge a little bit rounded, it is this that will catch specular highlights and look a hell of a lot better, also pay attention to the inner part of the sword the fuller, a LOT of models out there are very basic and dont add edge loops to this part, making it look unrealistic, again this adds the extra specular highlights,as for a material itself, my own real swords (arming sword and hand-and-a-half sword) are at a mirror finish its only the odd scratch and tiny rust bumps and dents from swords hitting it that provide any texture apart from a mirror - even when i see actual photos of my swords the mirror reflections on them look a bit strange lol so maybe a bit of artistic licence is  needed - a good looking sword and a realistic sword can be two different things :-)

a point on brushed steel, i have splinted leg armour which is steel that ive wirebrushed with a drill :-)  to look at this texture with a modellers eye it is soo boring because from more than a foot away its just a dull flat mid grey, the bump map needed would be only visible from about an inch away!  i brushed the metal coz im too lazy too keep polishing it lol a drill takes 5 minutes yay

I just downloaded Snarly's EZMetals. Again, I'll have to wait till i get home from work to try it out, but I did check out the Gallery. I didn't see exactly what I'm looking for, but Iron seemed to come the closest.  The brushed steel just looked a little too mirror-y for my taste. Would be nice to see a combination of the iron and steel look. Don't know if that would work, and don't know how i could do it though.

In RDNA's freebies, there are some really old material files that produce some pretty nice metal shaders. I don't even know if they host those files, still. But, if they do, they're not half bad and one could make some minor adjustments to them in order to get the effect one wanted in pretty short order.

Assuming I can be bothered to keep polling for responses (getting an ebot is just about impossible now), show us an example of what you want. I enjoy specific material puzzles.

Also, perilous7 makes a really important point. I have downloaded sword models endlessly and they almost all suck. Either they are woefully lacking in polygons so highlights don't catch where they should, or they have endless piles of inconsistent normals and twisted normals resulting in a confused surface full of illogical highlights. Since this material is all highlights, that's kind of annoying.

Trying to keep things simple, I made a very simple shader I intended to show you as a starting point. Then Poser crashed and I got pissed off but I'm willing to try again. Not sure exactly what to make so I won't bother posting endless variations that aren't what you want. There are endless details you can put in - this shader has no detail at all - just smooth, homogeneous metal.

Again - random few ebots come to me from this site, so my awareness of responses may be sporadic.

This sword is also flawed but it's the least flawed of many I tried yesterday.

is that an invite to sell my line of sword objects BB lol 

the materials that BB has on those sword objects are pretty much how my swords look in normal outdoor daylight settings - one more thing i will say, if you are using swords in poser make sure the smoothing on the flat edges are sorted and it does my head in as it completely ruins all the edges due to the phong shading - edge breaks needed if im correct?

Now you've got me paranoid about how many polygons my sword has, BB.  :)

Here's a (finish or smoothness or roughness or blur) catalog of sorts. It's a simple metallic shader built with:

Color White, Diffuse 0 (!!), Reflectivity .8, IOR 4

Blur (aka Reflection softness) varies left (0) to middle (1) to right (4)

Every version has different settings on the Blinn node so that the reaction to a Poser light matches the reflections of small bright objects in the scene.

The formulas for all possible variations are not important or helpful if there is one specific shader you want to create. Or I could give you the formulas and you can make an infinite number of variations.

If you think this metal is too "black" I can raise it up - it is "blacker" than the swords I posted earlier.

I lean towards the last three on the right. And honestly, I can't tell much difference between the third and second from the right.

I have to admit though that the thought of a Black Sword intrigues me. But yes, I'd like the formulas please.

(Note: I number these 0 through 10, left to right - there are 11 total)

You can't tell much difference? Did you look at the flat cells behind the pawns carefully? Curved surfaces fool you - your sword is only slightly curved so the flat cells tell a very important story.

Look in cell #8 - you can still tell that there is a pawn reflected in it. Whereas #10 is completely obliterated - if you saw that by itself you'd barely know what it's reflecting.

Another catalog: Reflectivity=.9 IOR=6

I'm glad you pointed that out, BB. I can see the difference a little better there.

Ughhhh - I see that my Blinn formula is off - I've been tweaking it for about two years but I have not been doing a lot of super blurry reflections lately. They take so long to test. Time to adjust the formulas again.

Anyway - another catalog - not quite right formulas, though.

This with Reflectivity=.95 and IOR=10

So after numerous Poser crashes and other mishaps, here's something really simple to use.

This is a nice middle-ground on the mirror vs. satin finish. It is the simplest possible metal shader I could make so as to minimize confusing options, while still providing a good result.

Here is are a couple renders - one indoors, one outdoors.

For a more polished/mirrored look, change two numbers: Reflect softness and Blinn eccentricity.

For a "black" sword, change two numbers: Reflection_Value and Index_of_Refraction

Thanks, BB. I'll play around with it as soon as I get home. I did go back into Blender though and increased the number of polygons in the sword. I'll render the results then.

For a ridiculous, mythical "white" sword (no real metal is this bright), raise all the numbers like this:

If you want to incorporate some impurity - you can plug things in to modulate the Reflection softness, the Blinn eccentricity, or the Fresnel_Blend outer color (which basically controls maximum reflection level).

Here I used a Granite node to make some subtle spots. The blade on the right in the render has the Granite.

We can get a sprinkle of tiny divots by adding a couple more nodes.

(Note my display units are inches - that bump value is -.001 inch - make sure you pay attention to your units)

Bagginsbill

Thanks for your time with this.

The idea of that Black Sword has kind of grown on me. But I'm thinking of having some writing etched into the blade.  I'm wondering if it would even show up on a black sword.

Would be a cool effect if I  could get the writing to glow.

Find some Elvish writing. (I had to stretch the crap out of the sample I found so it matched this sword's UV layout)

Shove the metal nodes into an HSV and then mix with a Blender, controlled by the writing.

Looks like this

Day vs. Night

Bagginsbill

Thanks for your time with this.

You're welcome! Show me some swords!

Shoot! I want to model a sword just to use this.

Nice work, BB! 

My rendering skills are sorely lacking. All that work BB did and I STILL can't make it look right. And worse, I KNOW it has to do with the environment I put the sword in.

Now you've got me paranoid about how many polygons my sword has, BB.  :)

what is more important is HOW  you have them arranged on the model, any sort of twisting of the poly faces look awful when a reflective metallic material is applied, so long as you add enough polys to avoid this, most of the time you can skimp a little in other places, ive seen some cracking models that hardly seem to have many polys at all, just skill and experience i suppose, like most things in life.

The idea of that Black Sword has kind of grown on me. But I'm thinking of having some writing etched into the blade.  I'm wondering if it would even show up on a black sword.

Would be a cool effect if I  could get the writing to glow.

one of my fellow knights has a sword with a blacked metal hilt, it looks really nice, i dont think the blade is blackened as it is a heat treatment that can alter the elasticity of the steel, plus every time you used it it would come off lol

Shoot! I want to model a sword just to use this.

Nice work, BB! 

do it! a sword creating challenge is always good! :-)

My rendering skills are sorely lacking. All that work BB did and I STILL can't make it look right. And worse, I KNOW it has to do with the environment I put the sword in.

when i get home ill try and post some pics ive got from outdoors so you can get a handle on the reflections, i think sometimes with environments you just gotta play until it pleases you as realism doesnt always look that good (as i will show you lol)

I don't know anything about real metals or real swords, but I found dozens of black blades in Google.

Here's a video of one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_L7N-7Z8-M#t=40