I’m doing a personal project replicating the original 1990 film turtles within Unity game engine to make a short cinematic for my demo reel. I thought some of you might be interested in following along! Nothing commercial at all, just for my demo reel and for the childhood love of these characters and film.
In this video I begin and complete the initial 3d model for the katana weapon the character Leonardo uses throughout the 1990 film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Interesting, I will certainly be following this project. Good luck and nice art
Could you update here James? I’m interested in your progress/process and final results, but I don’t use facebook at this time.
Thanks for updating here. 
Technical modeling question -
What purpose doe the very tiny polygons (shaded in pink below) serve along the sharp edge of the blade? I’m guessing this is to support the normal map better and to reduce harsh shading when using only one smoothing group on the final model, but your input is welcome.
Please tell me that you are going to have the movement/motion look like just like the costumes, and not “improve” it. Cause that would be awesome.
“Go Ninja, Go Ninja, GO!”
[related]
Destruction of youth…
As a side, and demoralizing note, the actor who played the kid in TMNT 2 :
Ernie Reyes Jr… was in a recent episode of the Librarians, where he played an old man (Monkey King).
Sigh… time just seems to keep moving forward…
[/related]
Tmnt 2 was and is still my favorite movie. I am completely looking forward to seeing this when it’s finished
Those classics were a couple of my favorites when I was younger…now I’m grown up…and they are still some of my favorites! I got my kids in on those as well…good movies hold up well I’ve always said.
You’re exactly right, it will hold the lighting and normal map better. I can collapse that edge very easily after normal baking takes place. Once I collapse it I can set that edge to be a “hard edge” in Maya and it will look razor sharp (smoothing group in 3ds Max). However in the films the front edge of Leo’s katana was actually pretty blunt and had a discernible flat edge to it. Might be to make the weapon look more cartoony and less “violent” for kids?
Yes I will update here at the same time I update that page! All of the same media, images and videos.
I believe Ernie was also Donatello in the first film? Not sure if I remember right. I do know he was having some serious health issue his family had set up a GoFundMe for (a year or two ago maybe). Was hoping he wasn’t on the edge of passing away or anything. He’s only like 45 years old today, so don’t feel so bad, he’s not that old yet.
In this video I start the texturing process for Leonardo’s katana weapon. The texturing pass is not completed in this video and a normal map sculpt still needs to be done for leather handle.
looks cool James. Following. 
I like how fast you are working in these videos. That is the speed needed to be able to get things done! And still produced a nice result as well.
Thank you. It’s time sped up, but I did work really fast. Got a decent base texture for the entire katana in about an hour. Still have a lot of polish to do on it though…especially the leather wrapping on the handle.
