Creating Futuristic Stalker Mech in 3D with Blender

Introduction 

Hey! I’m Max Marharit, a 3D Concept Designer. I got into 3D art over 10 years ago and have explored a bunch of different programs and styles along the way. About 4 years ago, I discovered my passion for hard-surface design, especially after diving into CAD tools, and that’s when I decided to focus my portfolio around it.

Since then, I’ve had the chance to work on projects like Subnautica 2, Star Atlas, Off The Grid, Angelic, and a few other unannounced AAA titles that I hope I’ll be able to share more about soon.

Stalker Mech

A while back, I was practicing mech design in VR and came up with around 12 different concepts. I ended up finishing two of them in 3D, but there was still one more that stuck with me: I knew I wanted to revisit and polish it someday. Not long after, I joined René Mitchell’s mentorship program, where we were supposed to develop a design over four weeks. That felt like the perfect opportunity to return to that 3D sketch and take the idea further.

This time, I wanted to approach the design a bit differently. I focused more on the emotion the concept would evoke. The inspiration actually came from that scene in Jurassic Park where the kids are hiding in the kitchen and the raptors start hunting them down. There’s something really intense about how fast and threatening those creatures are once they notice you – that mix of speed and tension was something I wanted to capture.

I was trying to find the right shape for that mood, make it more aggressive, add speed and dynamic to the design.

I tried to shape the mech in a way that felt aggressive and fast, leaning into that predatory vibe. After lots of iterations and brainstorming, the idea started to come together more clearly.

I also like to build mood boards to help keep everything consistent. Usually, I’ll create a PureRef board with reference images, sketches, and notes or arrows pointing to areas I want to explore. I update it at the end of the day so when I return – sometimes after a break, since I juggle personal projects with a full-time job – I can instantly reconnect with the original vision.

At one point, I was exploring different "faces" for the mech, trying to decide what kind of presence it should have. Eventually, I started leaning toward something more insectoid and alien, which really helped amplify that creepy, unsettling mood I was going for.

Modeling

I always try to pick the best tool for the project, so my workflow can vary depending on what I’m working on. If the design is very blocky and hard-surface-heavy, I usually jump straight into CAD. But if it’s more complex, has organic elements, or if I’m still figuring things out, I prefer to start by doodling in 2D or sculpting in VR. VR modeling is great for mech design, it makes it easy to iterate quickly, kitbash, and having live symmetry is a huge plus.

This mech was no exception. I started in VR and played around until I was happy with the overall shapes and direction. Once I had something solid, the next step was cleaning it up, so I brought it into Blender for retopology.

At that stage, I focused on defining the main shapes and refining the proportions. Once things started to look balanced, I did an overpaint to test out some colors, decals, and get a better feel for where I wanted to take the final design. That helped spark a few new ideas, too – added net guns, which ended up becoming a key feature of the design. It gave the mech a clear function: to hunt and capture targets.

Topology

For the final pass, I like to work entirely in Fusion 360. I find CAD modeling super efficient for adding details, especially for hard-surface work. I used the blockout from Blender as a base and traced over it in Fusion. For larger, more organic shapes – like the main body – I imported a SubD mesh from Blender, which can be converted into a solid body in Fusion. That way, I can apply Booleans and make clean cuts without messing up the surface smoothness.

When dealing with a complex design like this, the key for me is breaking everything down into manageable parts and tackling one section at a time. But it’s really important to have a solid blockout first; without it, the proportions can fall apart pretty quickly.

I followed the blockout from top to bottom, combining major pieces into components as I went. That not only helped me keep track of what was finished, but also made it easy to isolate and hide parts when needed, which really speeds up the workflow.

Texturing

Like most Blender users, I’ve built a custom setup around my own workflow and needs, mainly focused on material creation and rendering. For this project, I used Fluent: Materializer to create a fully procedural base for my materials. It might look complex at first, but once you understand how the node structure works, it’s actually pretty straightforward.

Here’s how the main material was built:

1. Foundation Layer – This includes the base color and roughness, both broken up with tiling grunge maps. I also use a rounded edge shader to generate soft edge normals, with some extra surface noise add realism.
2. Edge Wear – It’s subtle in the render, but this layer adds light metal edge wear that catches the light nicely.
3. Decals – This is where I place logos, numbers, or warning signs using Materializer’s decal system. What’s great is that it doesn’t require UVs, and I can even apply wear directly to the decals.
4. Dirt and AO – This layer adds ambient occlusion, dirt, and slight color variation to the albedo, helping the whole thing feel more grounded and used.
5. Aging Effects – I also used an addon called One Click Age to add more aggressive wear on top – like rust along the edges and scratches in high-contact areas.

All my other materials follow this same logic. I just tweak the values, color, roughness, metalness, based on the surface type. For example, to create a rubber material, I’ll disable the rust layer, increase roughness, and darken the base color, but still use the same foundational setup.

Lighting

The lighting setup for the scene is pretty simple. I used an HDRI + Sun combo as the base to get a natural look, and then added a couple of area lights to help highlight the mech and bring out more detail in specific areas.

For rendering, I used an addon called Render Raw. It’s super handy because it lets me adjust post-production settings directly in the viewport in real time. If you’ve ever used Lightroom or Camera Raw in Photoshop, the interface will feel very familiar. I usually tweak things like contrast, color balance, exposure, and a bit of sharpening to give the final image a polished look without leaving Blender.

For the key art shots, I built out a full forest environment. It turns out there’s a Blender addon for almost everything these days. In this case, I used Lazy Forest to quickly populate the scene with jungle elements. It made it way easier to build a believable background without spending too much time on environment modeling.

Conclusion

I worked on this project over the course of about four months in my spare time. If I compressed all the actual working days, it’d probably come out to around 3-4 weeks of focused work.

The biggest challenge was definitely building a strong blockout that could evoke emotion. That’s the stage I put most of my energy into – trying different versions, reviewing them over and over, and constantly adjusting. I’m really thankful to René Mitchell, who pushed me early on to go for bolder and more dynamic shapes. I truly believe that the success of any design lies in its foundation. For me, a good blockout is usually 60% of the entire job.

My advice to beginner artists is: don’t rush to the final result. Try different versions at each stage. In my experience, your first version is almost never the best: there’s a good chance the second or third attempt will be stronger. That kind of exploration is also great practice for building your imagination as a concept artist.

Max Marharit, Concept Designer

Interview conducted by Emma Collins