Quote - Reddog9, your the first person I've heard of on this site, that uses PCLinuxOS. Four months ago I got that operating system, but when I asked about it.  No one's ever heard of it.
I might have to make a couple petitions, and see what operating system I like best.

I've been away from this site for a while. I just go PCLOS about 4-6 months ago I think. I download about 5 different LiveCD's to try. I liked that one the best. Knoppix was one. I haven't tried Ubuntu, Debian or any of the more familiar ones. I like the KDE Desktop. There are some issues with the OpenGL support. One thing I noticed before (I'm running a new mother board now then I had 4 months ago, so it's a little different), when I was running Blender in PCLOS, the screen res was running by default at 16bits and Blender was a little slow. When I changed it to 24bits, it made a big difference with Blender's speed.

Wow.. That looks really nice. Great job.

Quote - I checked my PCLinuxOS software

I'm using PCLinuxOS on my desktop. I think it's great.

I've heard talk about this before. I made be wrong, but I don't think it's possible the way it's set up 'natively'. I know how you could do it though. - Just save your image map. - Reload it as a texture. - (Which will give you a white background with a black wire map) - Use it as a negative alpha map for transparencies. (Or Make it a negative image in your favorite paint program.) -Apply the Transparent Shadows to the objects you want to receive the shadow. Just follow this info : Transparent Shadows Just use your UV Map for the image instead.

Quote - THANKS! I was having the dreaded black spot problem on a couple of .obj files I imported. Your thread reminded me to check the normals, problem solved. :)

Glad I could help. Scott

I came up with a flow chart for you to try and show how to apply your texture to different options, like Color Map, Normal Map and Spec Map. The Spec map can be difficult to see unless you have a light reflecting off of your object at just the right angle. The sword is looking pretty good. I'd almost bet that the dark spot on the tip may be from a surface normal facing the wrong direction. Hope this helps. Texture/Material chart

Quote - Nevermind.  I found my sword in DAZ.  It was near microscopic. lol

Thanks so much for all of your help.  It is very much appreciated.

You bet..Glad you found it. I'm working on your Spec Map info.

Umm... one other possibility could be.. where your model is in relation to 0,0,0. If you model it in Blender at say.. 200,200,0.. I believe that is were DAZ will import it at. Try moving to absolute center in Blender. You can also try, exporting a Daz character out to OBJ, import it in to Blender, without resizing it. That will show you what size to create your model and where it should be located at. Bare in mind, DAZ Characters have a LOT of faces, and will slow down your Blender extremely. You could work with 2 different layers, DAZ Character on one and your sword on another. That way, you can turn off the DAZ character when your not using it for reference. I can help you narrow it down later, my Daughter is playing 'Tamagotchi Town' on my Laptop which is were I have DAZ Studio loaded.

Quote - I must not be doing something right, because the only change I'm noticing is the handle turning gray.  I load the grayscale image in the Textures tab, go back to Materials and click the Spec button in the Map To tab but that's what it gives me. 

I'll try to help you out with the Spec Map. Sounds like, if your handle color is turning gray, it's being applied to the 'Col' map. I realize it is confusing at first, but once you start learning your way around, you find out how much you can do with Blender. I've added a PDF Version to the Tut. The link to the PDF is at the end of the Tutorial. (Cleaned up my spelling too.) Sword Tutorial w/ PDF Version at the bottom

Quote - Your tutorial was actually pretty easy to follow.  
It took me all afternoon to make this thing with it.  I'm not terribly happy with how it turned out, but I guess it's okay for a new guy.

That looks pretty good. :) I can see some nice detail in it. I suppose the toughest part is trying to find a nice clean image to start with. > Quote - About the part on adding a specular map, would I load that through the Texture tab instead of the original image?

Umm.. (Trying to do this from memory) .. From the same 'material', add the spec map as a new image, then go back to the materials section.. you should see it listed below your 'texture' image. Click the spec maps name, then go to the 'Map to' (?) tab, and select only the 'Spec' button. Basically, do the same as you did for the Color and Bump maps, only apply this one to the "Specular" only. They will all be contained under the same "Material"

Quote - Yay! Let me know when it's up there so I can go approve it.

It's in. Since my site may not be up 100%, I'm looking at making some PDF versions of them so people can take them with them if they wish.

Ahh.. usually.. only one side of a face is visible and the other side is invisible. I think it use to go by following the vertices around in a clockwise direction, that side would be the visible side. While editing your model in Blender, you can make the surface normals visible. There's an option button availble. It creates a blue line extending out from the visible side of a face. With this on, you can tell if all your faces are pointing in the right direction. Sometimes, when you model something in pieces, and stick it together, some faces end up pointing towards the inside of your model. This is visible when you see 'black' seem lines along some edges of your model. Going to edit mode, selecting all the vertices and pressing "CTRL-N" will flip all normals to the outside (Usually). If your model gets complex, this may not work (I've had problems with this in the past). You can select individual faces and flip normals one at a time if need be. I'm not sure, but having the object 'center' in the correct place, may affect the 'Flipping of vertex' normals. Have a great day everyone.

Quote - Wanna put that in the blender 3d tutorial area here too?  Pretty please?  More people might find it that way :)

Can do.. I've got to go right now.. might not make it in there 'till Sunday night.

Quote -
Wow!  I love that shield.  I can only hope I'll be able to make stuff like that someday.

The shield was really easy. It's only a few dozen faces with a large scale image applied to it as well as to the bump map.