Hey guys! This is my recreation of Spartan 117’s helmet! Does it look close to the original? I did all the modelling in Blender then the compositing in photoshop. I spent a long time on this scene and I am pretty happy with the result! 
Leave your critiques in the comments. (Look below for another image)
Vert count 41,725
Cycles
Rendered at 1920 1080 80% Res
Also there is something wrong with this scene. Can you figure out what it is?
Nice helmet loved that game 
The flashlight dug in to the sand looks dull.
And master chiefs helmet is not so clean !
Love the thing reflected but it’s hard to tell what it is 
Thanks! I tried so many things to make the sand look better around the helmet but I just couldn’t figure it out. Also I know it’s to clean and I will work on that.
Yeah it definitely needs some work, for me it’s mainly the sand up close that needs to look more alive.
Close up the grains from the bump look slightly large for sand at least without a look of smaller grains of sand.
Particles is definitely something you can use to give some of the detail.
A slight DoF effect could also be applied to smooth out the close corner and the background (it’s not necessary but it could hide poor detail in the back).
What i’m going for with what i mention is in the image below. However your image is slightly different as it looks more like dusk with the sun so low (and this is downhill) but i think it looks tasty .
Also looking at it right now, the sun is reflected on the visor yet the helmet is casting a shadow in that direction, unless it’s a oracle hovering there
Ok I will try your suggestion today and post another image! Thanks. Also you link does not work for some reason.
Ok I have been doing a lot of work on this scene. I am pretty happy with the material for the visor but not really for the helmet itself. If you have a suggestion please tell me!
One thing about sand it gets pushed around when interact with objects so depending on how much force applied it should create at least a really small crater around it/ some sand that pushed away on getting there.
Also the helmet got there somehow (probably rolled over there?) leaving marks. Otherwise if it been there for a while it might have some sand blown onto it.
The material depends on it should look watching tutorials on how to make materials is nice, one of the better cycles tutorials I’ve found is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4s3o21Owm0
Part two is where he starts creating materials but getting some terminology never hurts.
One thing that would help is to smoothing out the edges on the helmet, the sharp ones, now it looks as a halo 1 helmet which is nice but making the material, the edge might not look as expected.
Lastly the back of the helmet looks to dark as some light would bounce, adding a light with low emission lighting up the back helps but i’m unsure about the best way to properly fix it.
