Having an aged or heavily used look to it would probably be amazing. Its hard to make something look like its worn down to an amazing extent though.

too severe, too big and too sharp, if you could thin it down a bit and soften the edges it would be much better.

if you think the shadow would work to add detail, which i agree with, try thinning it down a bit and repeating it on the sides.
things like odd shadows always make more sense if you repeat them.

Tweaks to shadows, made the "eye" wider, some fiddling with highlights/shadows to better define shapes, found a nice scratched-up metal texture, added some little details and whatnot.

With a brushed steel look, you cant just darken, you also gotta lighten or else its like putting a bunch of little pressed lines in your head.

It should look a little more like this, see how there is lots of variety between the dark and light shades? Also less big lines, and a ton of little small ones going in the same direction.

Yeah, I opted for the more randomly-scratched-up metal instead of brushed steel since I wanted the wear and tear feel. Might try brushed-steel at some point just to test, but sticking with this for the moment. I do see what you mean with the contrast though, currently messing with joint textures but I'll go back and see what I can do with that afterwards.

EDIT:
Some (hopefully) fairly subtle gradients added to add some contrast across pieces per TomW's suggestion. Also the left shoulder texture, which will be different from the right.



EDIT2: THE EDITENING:
Found a brushed-steel pattern with subtle scratching and such. This is perfect.

Hanzo I think the set is looking great so far man. But i must ask why you are making yourself a set even though I have never seen you in game. hmm

He may be in single player sometimes.

Nice set! The vertical visor looks a bit derpy, maybe you should widen it a bit? The join texture looks amazing, The curves are pretty nice.

It's mostly out of boredom and wanting to do some art, but I've been playing a bit lately.


I'm pretty happy with the current width - in my mind it's less a visor than a scanner or power core or something but maybe that's just semantics.

Progress before I call it a night - I tweaked a few details on the head and am well into the left arm. As mentioned previously I'm intending the arms to be asymmetrical: the left will be more heavily armored than the right, hence the fairly hefty-looking pauldron and forearm protector. Been really pleased thus far with how well the seams between joints and blocks look, and joint textures mean I have a lot more leeway in terms of my color scheme. They also allow me to realize much more in terms of details - it's nice to be able to fully flesh out things that I imagine on the character's shoulder rather than simply hinting at it on the bicep. I still need to add some wear to the 'painted-on' orange details.

If I can remember to, I'll take a few screenshots of my texturing process for the right arm for those that might be interested.



Fun fact: I'm also sitting on a grand total of just under 50 open tabs in Google Chrome right now. Approximately ten of those are my normal web browsing, the rest are piles upon piles of reference images and assorted design resources.

Really cool to see you making textures hanz0.

The eye/power core thingy looks kinda weird to me. In your old set you built around the eye so it made sense to me - visually at least. In this head I see some sort of helmet protecting what seems to be an already solid framework for the head (It looks like a helmet on top of a strong solid metal ball to me?). I don't know it could just be me I guess. I can't connect the helmet to the eye visually.

No, I do see where you're coming from and it's something that I've been thinking about too. Unfortunately, short of reworking the entire head (which I'm not averse to doing if I have to, mind you) I'm having a hard time coming up with a definitive solution.

EDIT: Doing some sketching of alternative heads. Liking 3 and 4 myself.


EDIT2: Gave the head some Helghast-y orange eyes for fun. Maybe if one of the alternative helmets works out really well I'll keep messing with this head and then sell it off.


EDIT3: Worked up the V4 head from my concept sketches.