Orcrist

Orcrist is an elf created sword found during the journey of Thoren Oakenshield, a dwarf, in Middle Earth… and features in the Hobbit movies. I handled the Orcrist prop used for the movie while on a visit to Weta Workshop in Wellington, New Zealand and saw one of the limited edition weapons-grade replicas at the Royal Armouries in Leeds, Yorkshire, UK. My virtual world avatar has Ocrist. And as of September 2018, I have my very own United Cutlery Orcrist sword replica.

3D Model Import to OpenSim

I made use of a Blender model by VoltaJack_ from Sketchfab which is licenced CC-BY.

VoltaJack_ https://sketchfab.com/VoltaJack_ Orcrist – LOTR
https://sketchfab.com/models/e27c666d637a40c68b36f0c487c2e704
License: Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-4.0
Author must be credited. Commercial use is allowed.
Model: .blend

Poly reduction and tidy up for OpenSim was done by Fred K. Beckhusen (Ferd Frederix) of Micro Technology Services, Inc. and I did the final texturing, adjustment of scale and wearable positioning and packaging.

The mesh reduction method as described by Fred is as follows.

  1. Starts at 236K triangles – about 10 X the limit. I applied a Decimate Modifier at 0.1 ratio (90% reduce) and it went to about 25K tris. Still over 4 avatars worth of triangles and more than the 21K limit. Did a 10X again (a total of 100X reduction) and it came in at 3,440 tris, looks acceptable, still a lot more than a custom build from scratch, but that what you get when you start with a high poly model.
  2. Then select all the vertexes in Edit mode with ‘a’, and do a Vertex (Ctrl-V)->Remove doubles. This drops extra vertexes.
  3. The other wise thing to always do is Mesh-Cleanup Delete-Loose to get rid of any lines or points. Opensim/Sl hates them ( there are none)
  4. Last one is Mesh->Cleanup->Limited Dissolve. This gets rid of extra dots and lines by collapsing them away.
  5. Added a smooth shader and an edge split modifier to get the blade smooth but with a sharp edge. Adds geometry, but it looks much better.
  6. Final is 3.5k tris, versus 236K. I can get it to 1.5K, but it would need more manual cleanup. I did clean up some few tris the distorted in it.
  7. Separated the end of the sword so you can add a texture.

The Blade normal map was produced using https://shadermap.com/home/

Other Swords

Swords for Download:
https://sketchfab.com/MortemNightshade/collections/sword-downloads

KangaroOz 3D
https://sketchfab.com/KangaroOz-3D
Sting Sword Lowpoly
https://sketchfab.com/models/c4f80dfbb61745d6807dd511d3e74fd4
License: Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-4.0
Author must be credited. Commercial use is allowed.
Model: .fbx converted to Collada .dae via Blender 2.78

Jason Brenton
https://sketchfab.com/Brentacon
Orcrist Sword – Lord of the Rings
https://sketchfab.com/models/1dcbab3210dc431db0dc910f65a3bb35
License: Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial CC-BY-NC-4.0
Author must be credited. Commercial use is allowed.
Model: .fbx converted to Collada .dae via Blender 2.78

Orcrist in Second Life and OpenSim

For a while my Second Life avatar has had an Orcrist sword purchased from the Second Life Marketplace. This is shown below alongside the new Orcrist in OpenSim.

Orcrist in Scabbard

A little adjustment of the blade texture allowed a scabbard to be produced…


Orcrist Sword Prop Replica by United Cutlery

As of September 2018 I now have an Orcrist Sword Prop Replica made by United Cutlery.

United Cutlery Orcrist

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1 Response to Orcrist

  1. bat says:

    The Hobbit – Song of Durin (Complete Edition) – Clamavi De Profundis
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxfoa23skHg

    The Hobbit – Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold (Complete Edition Cover) – Clamavi De Profundis
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LY0lLcz3Qis

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