Crystallized dagger - poster design.
Crystallized dagger - beauty render.
The reflective and refractive materials were a nice experiment, but figuring out the right material and lighting settings took a lot of time.
Dagger base design - wireframes.
The base version without subdivision or extra decoration in the hilt is 1900 tris.
Close-up 1.
Close-up 2.
Close-up 3.
Closeup of the Boolean meshes.
For the crystallization effect, I separated the crystal from the dagger using booleans and a ridiculously dense, heavily distorted helper mesh.
Material studies: 4 jade variations (procedural, inside Blender) and steel (from texture).
Material studies: red gem, clear crystal with and without displacement, blue crystal with and without displacement.
This is based on Indian Khanjar daggers from 17th and 18th centuries.
The original idea was to portray a weapon that's in the process of transforming into a magical item, showcased with and advertising a magical oil or ointment that caused it. I didn't get to push it quite that far, so this will have to do for now. If I ever return to this, I'd like to add in some more graphic design elements, and of course the ointment itself.
The jade and crystal materials are created procedurally inside Blender. The final material is less jade-like, but worked better for the beauty render. The steel material uses various texture images and some slight procedural elements. The transparent materials were all done inside Blender's Cycles engine, and are relatively simple.
Reference 1: https://art-of-swords.tumblr.com/post/164306335818/art-of-swords-khanjar-dagger-dated-mid-18th
Reference 2: https://art-of-swords.tumblr.com/post/164306339468/art-of-swords-khanjar-dagger-culture-indian
