[FINISHED] Metro Exodus/Artyom's Bracer

abrynildsen

Hello! 
I will use this thread to document my new project from beginning to end, which is to recreate Artyom's iconic bracer from the Metro Exodus game.

I have a few goals in mind for this project: 
1. Get out of my comfort zone. I have mostly been creating weapons for the last year, and I fell into a nice rhythm modeling guns, but I've been feeling burnt out lately, and I need to challenge myself with something new.
2. Expand my skillset. This project will test me in stuff I've never done before. i.e the leather will mostly be sculpted in ZBrush, and I have very little experience with sculpting. As of now I think this will be the main challenge in this project.As a challenge to myself I will do as much as possible in the modeling/sculpting part of this project and leave as little as possible for the texturing.
3. Have a portfolio piece by the end of it. When this project is done I hope to have a piece I'm proud of. So far this year all the projects I've done isn't something I want to showcase. 


So, on to the actuall process I've made so far! 


I started, of course, by gathering reference material. The original artist's artstation was very helpful for this, as they've posted really detailed renders of their work from multiple angels. This reference board will most definitely be updated and evolve throughout the project. 


I've also been able to create a basemesh for the bracer. This it how it looks in ZBrush before I've started the sculpting progress (With a few subdivisions) 




I will update this thread whenever I have made process on the project, any and all feedback and CC is welcome!

abrynildsen

So, life and work has kept me busy, and I haven't been able to do too much work on this project since the original post. So far I've been able to add stitching to the fabrics, softening the edges and giving it a more polished look. However, I'm really struggling with sculpting the leather. Normally I'd simply do the leather in Substance, but I really want to try to sculpt it. Any tips and tricks on how I should go about doing it? 

abrynildsen

I felt like taking a break from the bracer, and start working on some of the gadgets that are equipped on this thing. The leather proved to be a little bit of a headache, and after being stuck for a couple of days I decided it best to move on. I can always return to work on the leather and fabrics more later. 

I started on the geiger counter, and man, it was fun. On this piece I really got the chance to try out a new workflow I've been wanting to test out with the Live Boolean function inside of zBrush. It proved to be a little bit more challenging than I anticipated, but so far I can say I really like this workflow, and it provides a lot of flexibility. 

The geiger counter isolated: 


the bracer and geiger counter combined: 



The next part is creating a nice alpha for the diamond shapes on the geiger counter, and after that I'm gonna do a damage pass on it, to really roughen up the edges.

As always, feedback and CC is welcome! 

abrynildsen

Some general progression pics for the geiger counter: 

abrynildsen

The darkness has hit Norway, and I'm feeling unmotivated and tired 24/7, so I haven't been able to make nearly as much progress as I would've wanted to by this point. 
However, I have been able get SOME work in, and I'm on my way to finish both the compass and the clock for the bracer. 






The clock is proving to be quite a challenge, but I'm having a lot of fun working on it. 

The night winter time is dark and full of terrors. 
Hopefully my motivation comes back soon.

Crazy_pixel

That looks like  a fun project I like your progress and the clock looks super nice. Do you want to make just a highpoly mesh or  a realtime asset!

abrynildsen

@Crazy_pixel, thank you, appreciate it! The plan is to make it a realtime asset, with textures and everything 😊

Crazy_pixel

@abrynildsen sounds great, looking forward to see your progress

abrynildsen

Here I am, once again, with a update! 
Since last time I've been able to get quite a lot of work done, and I'm quite pleased with how I've progressed. 

I've been able to make the lowpoly, unwrap and bake everything. 
This time around I wanted to try a different baking-progress. Usually I've been doing all my baking inside of Substance Painter, and while that usually works out well, I often find it difficult to get exactly the result I want. I've been wanting to try out baking in Marmoset Toolbag, since I heard it's far superior to SP for baking. And my god, I love it. Being able to separate all my parts into baking groups, eliminated the need to explode the model and made the whole progress a lot easier. Also being able to manually paint offset and skew to correct mistakes is a godsend. Big fan. This is probably old new for a lot of you guys, but I'm really excited about this, and I will definitely use Marmoset for all my future baking. At least until a new and better program shows up.. 



Everything is ready for texturing in Substance Painter, and I'm very excited to slap some dirt and grime on this model. 


Lowpoly with normals and AO in substance painter.

abrynildsen

So, it's been a little while since my last update now! Despite christmas holiday, christmas parties, visiting family, and everything else december brings, I actually have been able to put in quite the effort on this project. I'm very close to being done, all the texturing is complete, now I just need to assemble it and make a badass render!  
But first I have two more days of travelling to do, so it will have to wait just a few more days. 

abrynildsen

I finally consider this one done. I've learnt a lot from this project, and my god has it been fun. It took a little longer than I originally thought it would, but that's how it often is, having to work on these projects between my day-job. 
There's a lot of nitpick I would like to fix, but right now I'm quite pleased with the result, and I'm feeling a little burnt out on this project.  

Again, any and all (constructive) criticism is more than welcome!