Another one of my entries in illusions designs Magazine Cover Contest. All of the swords in this render are from Swidhelm's Armory. You'll notice all the swords are rusty and old looking except for the viking sword I magnified. Normally, when I use a premade model, I almost always retexture them. This is for two reasons: 1. I always feel a bit peculiar in using someone else's hard work and passing it off as my own. Retexturing them makes the models a little more "mine". 2. Poser materials don't always transfer well into Vue. This is particularly true of metallic textures. However, when I went to change the Viking sword, I noticed the magnificent textures for the pommel, crossguard, and blade. So I used his texture maps and fiddled with the reflectivity etc. until I got it right. This is a pretty historically correct texture, from the Runes to the wood grain texture in the blade groove, and in the pommel/crossguard . This occurs as a result of folding steel and iron in the forging process, resulting in what the knife catalogues refer to as "damascus" ( not the same thing, but there's Marketing for you!) I had the fortune of seeing one in a museum and it was identical - polished smooth in the flat areas of the blade, with the grain effect still showing in the groove. So thanks again Swidhelm, I couldn't have done this picture without ya!