Modeling a "keris", need blade help (2.49b)

Support Modeling
1

Quick questions,

Blender version 2.49b
I’m currently modeling a keris, otherwise known as a kris.
I’m having a little problem with the weird curvature of the blade though.

Not only am I having trouble actually getting the blade to zigzag-curve nicely, I’m having problems like this where the faces end up triangulated upon rendering.

  1. How do I “properly” model such a wavy blade?
    I used the Extrude key after isolating a good cross-sectional line of vertices, then scaled them down using the Falloff - Connected with a Linear constriction. That kinda messed up most of the lines though so I had to manually rotate and scale them x-x

  2. Is there a way to “flatten” these skewed faces?
    I realize that it’s because the vertices that make up the rectangular face are not perfectly aligned “flat”, but I have no clue how to rectify this.

2

I think the best way to do it would to be with a bezier curve. Try this:
add a bezier curve, and subdivide it twice, and move the handles around to get a wavy-ness. That will be the spine of your blade. Now add a bezier circle, select all points and hit V. Now you have a square. That will be the shape of the blade looking down the tip. Go back to your original curve, and in the curve buttons, there should be a button and a field to set it for ‘bevel object’. Toggle that on, and in the text field, type the name of the bezier circle. Your bezier curve should now have the ‘bevel’ of your bezier circle, but it needs to taper down toward the tip. You can accomplish this by selecting the vertexes of your curve, and using alt S to scale them down. Or you can scale only the first and last points, and do a specials menu >> smooth radius
(edit) also, if you want to work with what you have, make knife cuts or loop cuts just to the sides of all angular bits and then subsurface
(edit) specials menu is hotkey W

3

I did a little test, and imo, the best way to do it is to start with the curve method, then convert the curve to a mesh, then make the loop cuts, then subsurface/set smooth, here’s the result I got

4

Thanks for the help!
I used the Beziers like you suggested and got this after converting both the blade and the handle Curves to meshes:


I’m keeping these low-poly since I’m making items for a game, but your suggestions really helped a ton. x3

actually TBH this is the first time I’ve ever used Beziers…geez they’re useful o.o
I need to start fiddling more than making.

5

glad it worked, if you need it more low poly, before you convert, change the resolution settings for both your bevel object and the main curve. they are in edit buttons.