ive seen some fantastic videos on a hair system available for maya, basically draw a couple of splines and the hair kind of "lofts" in between and so is very controllable and the hair render is awesome .

Talos ill have a bash at making you an object you can use ok? shouldnt take too long its only really a cylinder with a helix wrapped around it

whats goin to happen here now ol BB has gone?

makes me think of when superheros dissapear/get disallusioned with life etc and then the city goes slowly downhill into chaos, riots, looting,cats and dogs getting along just general anarchy? who can save us now............

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 :-)

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

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)

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

Nice work, BB! 

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

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

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.

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?

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

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 :-)

why dont you get daz studio as its free and load the howie farkes stuff up on that?im sure hes brought out some stuff thats studio compatible?  render to make a background and comp in your fore ground stuff? 

i like the tattoos they are getting very close to looking realistic :-) hair could do with a bit more specular but dont know if thats just a problem with hair mats