This dagger is for a character I have started ages ago and will hopefully finish soon. She uses this type of dagger not for battle but once the enemy is defeated, this dagger will deliver the final blow.

There is some symbolism around time and night to be found around the character. The moth dagger as well as the sword, which should be owl-themed, are creatures of the night. One is hunting, one is hunted. I will write more about this symbolism once the character is done.

Modelling

The modelling process was mostly straight forward. The moth itself was the only part that involved sculpting, which resulted in something I had done for the first time now: I retopologized the moth in TopoGun and then imported it back to Blender. Then, I needed to find a way to bake the normal map for the moth but I could only do that after combining it with the dagger so that I could UV map the whole object. After having combined it with the dagger and UV mapping it, I separated it again and exported it back to TopoGun to bake the normal map for the moth itself. It’s simple enough and not the most effective way. But I tried it this way and it worked fine.

Texturing

The texturing was very fun. The base metal is slightly colored even though it should look like silver. The moth body, however, is not colored, which I think is a subtle way of setting it apart from the dagger. The wings are then of course colored in what should look more like some gold or brass type of metal.

I wanted the whole dagger to look fairly used and old, so wherever it wouldn’t often be touched I added fairly dark colors (the crevices and all that). But even the places that would be touched a lot aren’t very clean either.