Perparing for “assignment 2″ in 3D1

I was looking at two objects i saw that the jar would be something easy to model and I knew that it was something that I would manage to complete pretty easy. Looking at the dagger I realized that this would be a more difficult choice, but there were reasons to why i chose it. If I would start modeling this one I would learn a lot more, the complex shapes and details would suit me well when I want to start working in more advanced 3D and I am eager to get better. And this would benefit me even greater as I want to model weapons etc. for the future and future game ideas. I figured that this start would help me reach my goals.

So I had to know where the dagger was from and the history behind it. I went down to the museum again and asked for some help. So as it appears, this silver dagger is a Danish dagger, owned by the fleet admiral Jens Truidsøn (I googled all the info about this dagger, and got the name from there). It was found outside Kopparsvik in Visby down at the sea bottom. Now how did it get there? There was two big fleets residing within the area to attend a funeral (a really big funeral), a German fleet and a Danish fleet. Even though they were warned about an oncoming storm, the Danish commander told the fleet that if anyone moved from their place they would be executed, the German fleet did not follow that order as they did not belong to the Danish fleet. This resulted in one of the biggest storms disasters in Scandinavia, around 7000 people died and washed up to the shore and more got stuck under the sea, around 14 ships sunk that day in 28 of July, 1566 AD.

The visual style I am aiming to achieve is the medieval one, inspired by a more realistic style such as the ones Assassins Creed illustrates through their games.

I will try to bring out the depth in the blade, the cavity you can see at the base of the blade. I Want to get the details from the handle, the tip of each side, and also the hollow part of it. I don’t know if I am going to be able to illustrate the carvings, but as I have understood it this can be achieved through texturing.

I don’t want the knife to look bent or big in any aspect, I want it to be perfectly symmetric, thus to keep it more realistic and not by mistake make it look cartoony. Or of some other material than steel.

I need to keep the handle in the shape that it has, if I make it thinner it may look more like a letter opener, and that is not what I want to achieve at all. The markings on the knife make it feel like its European, but the bottom bulb reminds me of French designs. So I will try to make it identical to what it is in both size and shape, and try to keep it from being the typical Viking knife or French dagger.

A dagger is usually something discrete and carried all the time, it becomes kind of a fasion when wearing it. So the details are very important too, but as it is an European dagger I want it to resemble that as well, try not to make it look like middle eastern in the style.

So what risks do I face here when modeling the knife? I think that the inexperience I have with modeling will be to my disadvantage, I may get some trouble keeping the structure and clean enough for future texturing. As some of the things on the dagger are so thin, it may cause some serious overlapping faces. So I’ll try to keep a space between everything and design it with care.