Death Stranding: A Love Letter

While playing through Death Stranding, I became enamored with the minimalist, functional designs of the world and it's elements. After spending some time with the game, I wanted to pay homage as a fan, and to take up some of the cargo boxes as a challenge to teach myself Blender.

The overall goal was to learn Blender from zero, by creating some concept models and final renders, and to do all of it in real time. I also wanted to create a range of lighting scenarios to sell various moods and push new pipelines in the software.

I took a few liberties with the hard surface designs, riffing where it felt right, but by in large, tried to maintain the integrity of the idea of functionality above all; something the original concept designers on the project achieved so well.

The final rendering is all done in Blender's viewport (Eevee), minus some comp and balancing in Photoshop. The modeling is primarily non-destructive high poly, heavily reliant upon Hard Ops and Mesh Machine, save for the tape and stickers, which are sculpted subdivided meshes. The materials are all procedural, with the only textures present being the decals and labels. Huge thanks goes to the team over at Kojima Productions for the inspiration, and the killer concept designs.