It's starting to finally come together! All my base textures are created so I'm now at the point of refining shaders, adding fine detail and troubleshooting issues. The end is certainly in sight, but with the 2-3 hours a week I'm able to commit to the project, it will still be another month or so.

Using Mari, I've been going through the process of projecting a collection of photographic reference onto the model, head to toe. The metal endoskeleton I plan to mostly do procedurally with the ai standard surface shader.

Been teaching myself XGen with the help of the groom department lead at work. I enjoyed working with XGen - it's fairly intuitive without too much guesswork. I was able to learn enough to give Arny his trademark doo.

Before I jump into texturing, I thought I'd 3D print a bust of the asset. Last year, I sculpted and printed a bust of Ash from Evil Dead and was lucky enough to get Bruce Campbell to sign it. I doubt I'll have the same luck getting Arnold or James Cameron to sign this one, but one can dream.

Side note: I may delay texturing for a little while, since my current PC specs aren't very compatible with Mari. I've been wanting to upgrade my machine for a while, so this is a good excuse. However, to do so in a well researched, future-proof manner will take time and money. In the meantime, I plan to sculpt some quick models for printing and reel additions, so stay tuned for that.

More test renders.

Testing out displacement maps with some very basic shaders and lighting.

Built a simple arm rig in Maya to pose him out and give him a little more attitude.

Laying out UVs for the shotgun prop on a Thursday night.

Finished modeling Arny's shotgun.

Arny showing off his new face detail with a steely Kubrickian glare.

Finally I get to do some more fun stuff again, after spending the last month doing UVs and re-topo in what free time I can find. Now I get to go back to ZBrush to detail the necrotic flesh!

I hollowed-out and retopologized the body. Now to bring it back into ZBrush to project the detail back onto it and start sculpting the edges properly.

Topo Tuesday! Working on re-topology for the Arnold half. I'm not planning on rigging it (never say never), but I do want a clean surface for texturing.

A picture of my office setup at home.

Endoskeleton UVs done! 6 UDIMs, and I cheated the head to have a bit more texel density than the rest, since I plan on doing some close-up renders of the face. Thankful to be done this chore. I need a beer.