My software crashed a lot making this , but it ' s finally done . Thanks to my wife for putting up with my constant cursing at my computer , horrible sleep schedule , and crankiness . Modeled in Zbrush , textured in Substance Painter with 127 output maps , rendered in Vray at UHD with the GGX shading model and particles done in Phoenix with 50 Million particles of fire , smoke , and sand . I would also like to thank 3 ds Max for crashing while it was crashing , leaving vray to render by some miracle and not force closing itself this time , Xzibit would be proud . I learned creating this that when you intend to sculpt a hardsurface model in Zbrush , meaning stuff like armor , you have to plan and execute all of your borders and edges before you get into making the high poly smooth mesh . I did that for details I thought that mattered , and didn ' t for things I thought I could fix when I was making the newer mesh . That was a mistake because the amount of time I spent fixing the geometry was far longer than it would have taken me just to plan better while I was sculpting . When you want to texture a model you have to unwrap it , meaning flatten out all of the geometry so when a texture sits on it , it is not warped and looks natural . Zbrush has tools to do this automatically , and I had too much faith in them . I had to do several fixes in 3 dsmax that just seemed idiotic , where Zbrush decided to cut some places that made absolutely no sense , even when I told it not to touch certain areas . However , the idiot was me , for not checking the mesh better , for depending on an automatic tool , and then blaming the tool when it did most of the work for me . I like physically accurate lighting , shaders , and cameras in 3 D , it ' s my shit . I spent too long trying to make Substance Painter textures work like they were supposed to in Vray , and again it was me who was the idiot . If the texture you are trying to use is based on a physical property , the gamma has to be 1 . The default in a lot of programs like 3 dsmax is 2 . 2 , which is fine for nonphysically based shaders , but fucking retarded when you ' re trying to follow certain rules that fall in a threshold between 01 . This should have been obvious to me but I had to delve deep into the internet to find an answer that slapped me in the face and pride . A lot of what I learned seems obvious now in hindsight , and I am glad I learned it . The hardest part about this project was starting it , the fear of failure is a strong force behind procrastination for me . I am glad it ' s over , I feel like Frodo at the end of LOTR , but happier and less fucked up about it . TLDR You gotta git smart to git gud son , don ' t let your dreams be dreams , yesterday you said tomorrow .