Thompson M1A1 Submachine Gun

I based this model off of the M1A1 Service Variant that was standardized in October 1942. This model has many aesthetic and service differences from its previous models but some of the notable ones are the rear sight, the sights, selector switches, and the stock. The M1A1 also did away with the drum magazine compatibility which greatly sped up production and lowered cost throughout the war.
Creation Process: Inspired by historical photo references, each component of the Thompson M1A1 has been recreated with an unwavering commitment to accuracy. The model captures the essence of the 1942 M1A1 service variant.

Special care was taken to ensure historical accuracy, resulting in a model that would resonate with both history buffs and firearm enthusiasts. I collected tons of references from each of the service variants and got to compare and contrast how different elements of the weapon had been changed and adapted over the years of service.

The gun asset was baked and textured in Substance Painter at 2048 x 2048px and then rendered in Blender.

Stylized Forest Sword

Based on “Stylized forest swords” concept art by Maria Meijer on ArtStation.
I made the high poly sculpt in Nomad Sculpt, decimated it, and then finished making the low poly retopology in CozyBlanket. Baking and texturing were done in Substance Painter with maps exported at 2048 x 2048.
Lit and rendered in Blender, Unreal Engine, and Unity as a comparison of material representations.

photogrammetry Sneakers

To make this prop I took one hundred and sixty-four photos of a single left half of a pair of Air Jordan sneakers that I borrowed from a friend. It took about ninety minutes to align the images and reconstruct the model on my personal workstation in Reality Capture.

After reconstructing the single left shoe, I put it into Blender to mirror the model and create the right half of the pair. I then loaded the models into Nomad Sculpt on my iPad Pro and tweaked the shoelaces to be slightly different shapes and help create the illusion of a complete pair of shoes. Finally, to get the full cleanup pass done I took them through Zbrush to polish, unwrap, and decimate the mesh, and then took the photo texture through Materialize to make a faux-PBR style texture set.

While I was tempted to take the shoes in Mari and use texture projection to edit the texture so that I had a full pair of non-mirror shoes I decided to limit myself and see what I could render with just a single virtual shoe posing as a complete pair. In my final render I wanted to give the illusion of a pair of shoes floating among the clouds, inspired primarily by the name of the shoe, the Air Jordan.

My final render as seen above was made with a simple setup of a faux-HDRI sky icosphere with a sky blue emission material, Volumetric Cloud Generator by Daro Source, and Gobos Light Textures by Bproduction for that last 2% of believability.

Texture Maps