⏱️Nickname
Crystal Hammer is my nickname since about 2001. I mostly use the shorter form CryHam, on internet.
Here is the story behind it.
📜History
The name Crystal Hammer struck me while playing Eye of the Beholder II (1991). It was literally an item to pick. A key used later to smash a glass wall. It could also serve as a weapon.
I liked it instantly and recognized it would be a great nick for myself. I realized much later that it can also mean a real name and surname (rather for a female, while I’m male).
At some point I decided it’s too long for a nick (for forums, IRC) and shortened both words to first 3 letters. I enjoyed it too, because it could also mean a crying ham (or hamster), which was even more fun.
Funnily enough, after modeling my 1st hammer, I was playing Spell Force 2 (2006) and I saw another such item. It was a reward weapon. And even funnier I was playing as female named Crystal.
🔨Old Logo
The 3D hammer for logo is quite old, from about 2002. I decided about its shape while learning basic 3D modelling. I created it in 3D Studio Max R3, used as hobby in technical school. Nowadays I use Blender.
I made the decorative 2D text in my program Crystal Font from around 2006, which I implemented at college. Used fonts: Anvil and Heidorn Hill, with some other (I forgot) to fix the odd gothic H and add different M. Those were then my favourite fonts. I like a lot the “metal band” look of it too.
Most likely I combined them together in 2010 for the old Stunt Rally ver 1.0 video and all further avatars, used first on OGRE forum.
It was okay for small avatars. But since being so old and given what I’ve learned I recreated it much later.
👁️Other appearances
Unknown to me, there were many appearances of Crystal Hammer. I found them after searching myself on internet (who didn’t).
In 1988 there was even a whole amiga game with this name, which also had a cool music mod, like most of them.
Seems to be a popular weapon from time to time in other games like here, or a mod here. Then I found a drawing of many different types of crystal hammers here. It’s cool to see so much variety. I prefer the symmetrical shaped. But of course I like my original one most.
Nowadays with plenty of games, weapons and concepts there are way more such items, easy to find.
✨New Logo
💎3D model
Well in 2025 I finally remade my Crystal Hammer.
I used Blender for modeling and for rendering LuxCoreRender addon BlendLuxCore for Blender.
Both amazingly great, FOSS and woking well on Linux. Which is crucial for me, since I don’t use (except at work) and despise all other types of software (closed source, commercial etc).
It took a few days (like 5 I think) to make the model and then tweak lights and final look to my prefereces (which I had a lot of actually).
It does take a lot of time to render even on my modern PC.
With a ray tracer like LuxCoreRender which does millions of rays per pixel, there is actually no end. It could render for 16 minutes or even 45 and still have white pixels. Those get removed by denoiser. I’d say ray tracing in real time sounds like a joke when compared to this, must be really simple.
I tried also rendering caustics (were brighter on floor, which isn’t visible) but performance was like a fraction (not around 1 million of rays per second but few thousands), way slower, and it wasn’t worth looking at either.
At start there were many changes and quickly checking (10 seconds) how it looks was enough.
Later because of the detail and all those tiny crystals reflecting (and slightly emiting light too) it usually took few minutes to render and get an idea how a small recent change affects it. Which renderer for longer (over 10 minutes) would have even more light and tiny shines.
I used only LuxCoreRender materials and sum of few Blender noises generated, no image textures.
I am glad of the final result. Now about 23 years later I seriously see how simple the old model and logo were. Obviously I could probably still change it or add even more detail, same like the last time when I had more ideas for it.
🔤Text
Now I still have to finish my text logo.
I decided to not use any fonts for it, but instead model all letters also in Blender. After all I had experience with drawing text logos. BTW I learned using curves in Blender.
Work in progress 🚧.