I've adapted something I read about to, wich was in an effort to remove similair like white spots from strat-map models .. wich was to break stuff up, or better said "detach to element" ..

when I use the first sword I get this;

(just the officer in front .. quick-and-dirty copy-and-paste job in BI :))

so I detached the actual blade and detached both sides from the blade from each other, basicly making the sword into 3 elements (and a bunch more vertexes!!);

with a much improved look ... now you can actually make a distinction between blade and handle(?) and also can distincly see the sharp tip of the sword ... as it should imo!!

so I tried to continue on this path and each side of the blade got detached into a right and left part .. but the results where minimamal if any at all;

so I decided it wasnt worth the vertexes to split the blade into 4 elements but the addintional cost of vertexes with 2 elements imo clearly shows that those are worth it ... on a high-lod at least ...

for refrence, the sword from the other side;



ps; it seems the game *prefers* swords in form of a 1/2 square stick, make it remotly flat and you'll have to deal with the above .. at least it seems to become much more obvious at that point ..
also wether I used a gloss-map or not didnt seem to matter ..


G