So for this render, I built everything inside Blender from scratch then textured in substance. The mech itself is a mix of hardsurface modeling and some kitbash detail panels I modeled to break up the geometry. Once the main shapes were blocked out, I beveled the edges, added panel cuts, and set up a clean subdivision workflow so the armor stayed sharp.
The environment is literally just a field of scattered bullet casings. I made one casing model, set up a emitter and used them like you would grass or something.
The firing effect is a combination of a simple emissive ‘muzzle flash’ mesh, some smoke using a particle system with a custom transparent PNG, and a few shells being ejected with random rotations. I rendered it with Cycles using HDRI lighting plus a soft rim light to make the metal pop. Most of the shading is just a mix of metallic/roughness tweaks and procedural grunge textures to give the mech a used, industrial feel.
Once everything looked right, I bumped the samples, added a little bit of depth of field, and let it render. Nothing too crazy
