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.

Yeeeaah, I, uh, I think I went a little crazy.

lol id say so but in a wrong way! on the flat part of the blade you can get away with relatively few polys its just getting them to line up properly to the edge part that could be tricky especially as it tapers to a point. there are some good tutorials online about modelling for subdiviison surfaces to make the flow of polys consistent, they are applicable to all 3d packages and come in as best practice for poly modelling in general, i suggest you have a look as if you plan on detailing lots of objects like that your system will start to crawl as your scene builds up - if you are just rendering single object then it doesnt matter so much.

ill try and have a look and see if i can dig up some examples for you

i have to say BB the pics you just posted with the divots in looked even more realistic :-) although may need to be small tiny clumps in areas and then none at all, that seems to be what happens with my stuff, but im sure its 20 seconds with a noise node and its sorted :-)

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.

Without seeing anything from your Poser setups or renders, I can't give specific advice. Here are some tips, though:

Use good HDR images with an environment sphere. By good, I mean ones that actually have high dynamic range. I posted a comprehensive series about this topic - worth a read. --http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2877297&page_number=3Here's a great source of free, high resolution, high dynamic range images: http://www.hdri-hub.com/free-samples

Getting light levels and "exposure" right is often a matter of trial and error. Get it wrong and you may find shaders don't behave as you expect. All my (post 2010) modern shaders are as physically accurate as I can make them so if they look wrong, you probably have the environmental lighting off. I use my light meter, even when I think I know what I'm doing. If you're even slightly not clear on what's happening, get and use my light meter.

Use gamma correction and use it correctly. 

hope your gonna write that book BB ?? ...before I'm too old to read it  lol

everyone always wants swords ........ why not a nice iron gate or a shiny ploughshare now and then even a weather vane would be fun once in a while  

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

Those black blades do look cool, the finish is sometimes called "Manganese" or "BlackOxide", I was looking into it a few years ago because I wanted to know how to "black" some parts I was planning to cut with my CNC machine.

It's quite neat really, it can even be done at home, here's a guy who "Blacked" his own knife if anyone is curious:

Thank you BagginsBill. Some very handy things there.

@EClark: If I get a sword modeled, can I post it here?

@EClark: If I get a sword modeled, can I post it here?

Dude, knock yourself out.

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.

Don't let it get you down.  I'm having the same challenge which is more from me trying to just render the sword without an environment.  It's helping me to have a better understanding of the settings and how to make necessary adjustments.  I'm trying to use these settings for these weapons http://www.daz3d.com/classic-weapons-of-the-east-part-1-china

I'm really curious to know which sword models BB used in his various test renders?

It's a turbosquid freebie.

http://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/knight-sword-max-free/597028

Thanks BB! :D

There is some nice stuff on that site, and I was unaware of its existence. Excellent!