Katsumoto Samurai Armor

For my block A project at Breda University of Applied Sciences (BUAS), I recreated Katsumoto's armor from the movie: 'The Last Samurai (2003)'. I had 8 weeks to get from collecting reference material from the movie, to having the final gamready mesh in Unreal Engine 5. The goal for this project was to recreate a realistic piece from Edo Japan.

I used a metahuman model for the base and proportions. The blocking out was done in Marvelous and Blender, which I used in Zbrush to create the highpoly. Nanomeshes and Zmodeler were lifesavers during this project. Certain details were done using standard brushes as well as custom alphas. I could add all the detail meshes using these tools. The retopology was done in Blender and UVs were done in RizomUV. I then baked the utility maps and textured it in Substance Painter. Rendering is done in Unreal Engine 5.

My portfolio was missing a few things and one of them was a good focus on clothing and/or armor. I think I've created a good portfolio piece for myself and I learned quite a lot from this project.