Emanuel Pessel created this project as both a portfolio piece and an educational exercise, with the main goal of exploring Unreal Engine’s Substrate system through a biological subject. As the artist puts it, Substrate is “still a hotly debated topic and most of its guides are centered around cars.”
To create this headcrab, he used ZBrush, 3ds Max, Substance 3D Designer, Substance 3D Painter, Akeytsu, and Unreal Engine 5.7.4. Emanuel also emphasized that no AI was involved, aside from using it for spell-checking: he published a comprehensive 62-page case study documenting the entire process, giving other artists a resource to learn from.
