The RedQueen

Same assignment as Empty Skies, same thousand-triangle budget, and generally the easier of the two shapes. The Red Queen — Nero’s sword from Devil May Cry — is mostly a long straight blade, so the budget goes almost entirely on the hilt.

720 triangles. Most of them ended up around the grip and the housing at the base of the blade, which is the only part of the weapon with real depth to it; the blade itself is a small number of long faces running its length. That split is the whole lesson of the exercise — spend geometry where the shape turns, and nowhere else.

Like the other one it stops at the mesh, untextured. The red and the trim in the reference are doing a lot of work that geometry here isn’t being asked to do, which is the point: get the silhouette right cheaply, then let a texture carry the rest.

The reference image is the game’s art rather than mine.

Another early Stanly Community College piece, and like Empty Skies it reached Sketchfab well after it was made.