A few days ago i watched the movie final fantasy : advent children, and i was amazed by the great animations and modeling in the movie. So i decided to try to model Cloud’s sword from the movie. Here is my result after 4 hours or something like that. It took me a long time to model becouse of the small number of references that i found.This is just the base sword ,i need to model the other 5 swords
P.S : I know that the sword guard doesn’t bend when the sword closes, i need to work on that part a bit more.
advices and comments are welcome
very nice. is the handle that simple? love to see some textures and a yafray render
It popping open caught me by surprise, Sexy. I like it. That reminds me 5 more days and I’m tucking blender away for some final fantasy action.
It popping open caught me by surprise, Sexy. I like it.
Me too. I’m surprised we don’t see more animated GIFs here.
Thanks for the replays. I have a problem with the armature for the handle. is it possible to make the handle close moving just one bone? here is a gif with the result i want to make
I want to move just the midle bone upwards and the 2 small bones left and right to folow it and the 2 big bones left and right ones to follow but i need their base to remain in place so that they just rotate
Here is a gif with a working guard. I still need to figure out how to set up the armature for that 
I started the second sword
and here is it combined with the firsfh one
It’s looking really good so far. Keep going. I’ll be watching this one! On the animation aspect, I have no clue. I’m not a very experienced animator.(or modeler haha)
damn… seriously… damn…can you imagine that I tried this somewhat overly enthousiastic 2.5 months ago… you’re good, can’t wait to see it textured and… someday… an animation?
I have had a short whack at the unfolding thing
The three frames are in order (I have only done half of the unfolding thing, and ignore the first 2 bones in the chain, they became redundant)
I figured even thought the bones move in more than one dimension (instead of just outwards they also move upwards) your able to restrict the vertices to only move in one axis arent you…
If its not what you want then sorry, I dont even have a basic knowledge of the armature system
I played a bit with armatures and in the end i concluded that i dont have a clue what i was doing, so for now i wont do the guard armature.I made the 2 upper swords,here are the pictures of the swords alone and combined with the rest.hope u like it.
Does his sword suck up other swords and add them to it or something (not seen it) (not a big fan of FF either, the only one I liked was 10.)
wow your making some quick progress on this.
Yeah the swords can be combined in a couple different configurations.
nice swords, even though the movie had a weak plot it was cool.
the movies plot wasent so bad when you compare all the tie ins… and realize its a 2 hour continuation of a 80+ hour game that spanned 4 disks… cant have lord of hte rings epochness in only 2 hours…
as for the sword… theres ALOT of resource material out there… believe me… just have to use google image 
rigging the handle as seperate plaes instead of trying to use a bome mesh to deform one shape would be easier…
MANY have been trying to 3d the sword… and ALL have some up with the same realization… modeling it based on real world spacial physics is impossible… and learned that for the final scenes… several variations of the swords were used that would have comprimizing flaws either with earlier formings… or real world counter parts… but wiht the way those bikes drove around its obvious that physics werent to important ot th emovie
when the buster sword was added onto… watch the movie again… youll notice that the inner support blade was fully expanded the entire time that things were added onto it… so that will be needed to be done to your renders to make it more accurate.
another thing missing frot he buster blade is the hexagon mesh plate in the handle to mid section of the swort that the outter blades slid open on yet held them to the inner blade… it looks liek you have a part of thi mesh modeled but as a main part of the inner blades workings.
I gotta say, i love this project. Havent seen the movie, but the sword designs are really good. Keep it up.
drew
http://www.ff7acmovie.com/articles/ff7ac_reviews_and_analyses/clouds_6_piece_sword_in_ff7ac.html
see if this here gives any usefull info for your research
Thanks all for the replays
DragonFyre- Thanks for the link, that was just what i was looking for. Now i have a better idea of how the swords are combined.I also at the begining tought that the base sword needs to be opened when it is combined with the other swords becouse combined the hand guard was opened but if i try to combine the other swords when it is opened it is imposible to combine them.A big mistery for me was also why the bottom of the hand guard in some places in the movie wos closed and somtimes opened.Also now i know how is the guard opened and closed i didnt know that the sword handle rotates and in that way openes or closes the guard. I guess i need to work on that a bit more. I started the other swords
just a render with the last sword combined with the rest. I will start adding details now and maybe some basic materials
Wow. Nice. Are you going to UV map each part individually?