Forging the Blade

The Soul Reaver


I will be recreating the Iconic Soul Reaver using Maya and other various software's for rendering and texturing the blade.

The Weapon must reassemble the Soul Reaver wielded by Kain at the end of Defiance.

I chosen this weapon in particular because is was very memorable for kid me at that time, and yet after all these years, I still have those memories and the iconic blade is still one of the most badass design for a dark fantasy sword.

My own Thoughts About Weapons in Games

I use to draw weapons and characters when I was in school and college, they weren't the most creative but I really enjoyed making doodles of weapons in particular. I always wished that one day I'll make them "real".

Of course it would be insane to actually forge one of those weapons, but what if I use that creativity and skills to create them in 3D instead.

Why the weapon are interesting and how they are implemented in the game:

I think that weapons in videogames are one most important thing related to specific games, and the various guns, rifles, swords and shields make out the vast majority of videogames entertainment.

From non gamer perspective, casual players may just had a few games on Call of Duty playing around with different rifles testing out and shooting at enemies, enjoying a couple of games before going back to their duties.

Hardcore player would spend hours dedicating themselves to create "builds" on Dark Souls run around their favourite weapons.

Gaming industry puts a lot of budgets on videogame cosmetics with microtransactions, I am against all of this, but creating high level models for weapons is in high demands in most game industries.

if we take a look at popular games such as Fortnight, League of Legends, Call of Duty, Counter-Strike Global Offensive, Apex Legends, Player Unknown Battleground, Valorant. Just to name a few on PC.

These games are very very, I really mean it, really popular among a vast variety of different gamers.

From the casual gamer to the hardcore gamer, to that one guy that want to chill with his friends, to massive esports competitions, everyone had heard or played these games.




This version of the Soul Reaver will be a combined version of both the Spectral and Material forms of the Vampiric blade.

I want to give a tribute to the game itself and the reboot announcement by creating and designing a new variant for the sword.

Weapons in videogame are used to represent the personality of the characters who wield them.

An example would be Dark Siders 


More Specifically I went trough the Concept Art Books. and studied the design of the weapons.


Dark Siders 2 have a particular design and interesting style.

The main weapons wielded by death are very iconic and gives the idea of how fearsome the main character is.

My Idea

I want to create different parts of weapons and different style for them for a modular system. I will not focus on Unreal Engine or Blueprinting, I already explored this during my four week Projects. Instead I will assemble the Weapons and Post them on my Sketchfab just like I did for my Honours during my 3rd year at university. 

The main goal is to create high level models, focusing on quality and not quantity.

I will Start first with following a specific tutorial and improving all my base skills. I have to get better and showcase the best of myself.

Establishing a Design Language

when we design this as concept designer, we have to make them consistent and on the same theme.

The scythe that Death wields on reaper form is an upgraded version of what he wields originally.


Why Weapons and Updates of Blog

Why are weapons cool in games? and how I can replicate coolness?

Why I think the design are interesting, how I would incorporate the ideas on my own weapons

Goal: combine both version of the weapon, describe why is cool, interesting, make sure is visually appealing, compact, why is like it is?

why does make the weapons that make them cool, why are fitting to the world, 

on blog: give personal opinion of why the weapon is appealing to me, and the audience.

Going back revisiting Blogs and updating on how, why, the weapon works and how it would be affect the player and the viewer.


Work Flow


Creating the Weapon will require me to use Maya for building the base model, ZBrush for the details and Substance Painter for the Textures

First step would be to create the shape of the Weapon using Maya, for this I imported a plane picture that I found in google and created the low poly model using Maya.

I used these as references for the main stile of the weapon, based on the original Soul Reaver from the franchise.



This is a 3D model based on the legendary Vampiric blade from Defiance.

I want o maintain the skull on the weapon as is a key symbol of the weapon itself. I do love skulls on swords!


One of the aspects that i love of videos games are the dark fantasy edgy weapons that are available in those games, and the Soul Reaver is one of my favourite.

Creation of the shape

During my work this week in Maya, I was studying the details of The Soul Reaver

The plane image was easy to read and simple to follow, i made sure to recreate the same exact shape of the image in 3D.




The serpentine blade and the vampiric skull are iconic element of the Soul Reaver, the sword shape itself is particular.


I created the shape using Maya, following the guidelines above. 



The blade I created reassemble the one from Legacy of Kain, I made sure to capture as much as possible all the particular details in the shape.


I'm particular proud of getting the skull acting as a connection between each individual part of the weapon.

The Original form of the blade is Created In Maya.

I made sure that the Model was suitable for Exporting in other editing software's, such as ZBrush and Substance Design.

I need to create the density and details of the Weapon in ZBrush First

Then Bake the Mesh and apply the textures on it.

To do that I grouped all the components, and renamed all the low poly meshes with: _low 



I also had to cut the duplicated faces so that I can model them on ZBrush.




I imported the Model in ZBrush for more adjustments.

Example of ZBrush work flow.



The Soul Reaver was successfully imported into ZBrush.




Assemble the Meshes in ZBrush using Subtool. an then using Append to combine the Meshes in a group, so it would be easy to modify them.





A few inspiration I could use to make this weapon more cool are from DarkSiders 2 and World of Warcraft Wrath of the Lich King

The Deathkights can equip and wield a unique weapon called runeblade, this particular sword or variants of it have runes on it, with special glowing effect, and a skull as a ornament similar to the Soul Reaver. I really like the runes these weapons have.


The Skull has a special effect on it with glowing eyes that give it a more demonic appearance, something that I wish to recreate with my variant of the Soul Reaver.


DarkSiders 2 have lots of cool weapons, one of these interest me in particular for his shape and design.
The Harvester, is the main weapon of Death the main character of DarkSiders 2.


This Scythe has "bat-like" details on the blade itself. this is such a badass design that I would like to recreate on the "ornament-wings" of the Soul Reaver.


These were all ideas, but then I decided to stay close to the original Blade,

My previous version of the weapon had issues so I had to redo my model and make it look as close as possible to the Weapon presented in the game.


My version of the Reaver was too "flat" The shape was there but the model didn't turned out the way i wanted, so i went back and worked on the skull and the textures.


The skull has to be more rounded. i worked on the details of the blade and made sure to keep the base version as clean as possible.


Once I worked on the correct shape i took it back into Substance and baked it with an high poly version of the model.


Now the model was closer to the original.

I also posted the model in my sketchfab and is available here.



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