Fantasy Crystal Dagger 3D Model

In between my studying of rigging and animation, I decided to undertake a creative exercise for myself, in which I would 3D model a type of weapon.

I decided to search for some artwork of a fantasy themed dagger that I would use as reference. The artwork I used as reference for this project was done by Arthur Malagon (the specific artwork I referenced is called "Epic Weapon Set" and can be found with the following link: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/8wBWxm).

To start the process, I used Affinity Photo to draw "zones". These zones helped me separate the components of the dagger into pieces, making the process of 3D modelling smoother.

I then went through the process of 3D modelling the dagger in Blender. I started with the crystal blade, focusing on modelling from the front view first to get the shape of the blade just right before adding some depth to the blade after. I also created a cylinder of crystal at the bottom of the blade to connect to the wood.

I then 3D modelled the wood around the blade and below the handle. This process was more delicate than modelling the blade, as I needed to make sure the wood wrapped around the blade properly.

The string was next. I started off with some simple planes to form the shape of the string around the wood, in which I then filled out the string shape.

The last part of modelling was the gem attached to the string. This was simple to model, I just needed to model a hole inside the gem so the string could thread through it.

The next step was texturing. I used this as an opportunity to play around with the shader nodes to develop my understanding of them for future use. For the crystal and gem, I was able to add a gradient of turquoise and green through the use of a colourRamp node. For the blade in particular, after some internet searching, I was able to add edge highlights by using the following combination of nodes: geometry, bevel, dot product, and colourRamp.

For the wood, I wanted to add darker lines to give a more textured and rough appearance. To do this, I used the following nodes: texture coordinate, mapping, wave texture, mix.

For the string, I used a very similar set of nodes to the wood, but duplicated and then edited to have horizontal and vertical lines to represent the interwoven materials.

The was quite a fun quick project to do, and I even learnt more about texturing with shader nodes. I might try creating more 3D props in the future.