Sutton Hoo Great Gold Buckle

22,906 tris, 1 4k Texture image.

One of the most richly detailed Anglo Saxon artefacts is this gold belt buckle found in the ship burial at Sutton Hoo, estimated to be crafted around 600-650 AD.

I wanted to step up from my previous model of the Alfred Jewel by creating a game ready asset with baked texture maps. I began modelling from excellent reference photos from the British Museum, sculpting high poly details with a tablet where necessary. I worked from low poly to high poly instead of creating a low poly cage after the fact. During the UV unwrapping stage, it became apparent that the overlapping knotwork topography would make things difficult, and not the most optimised, but the final result is what mattered and I'm happy with the way it turned out. I baked and textured in substance painter, using custom extracted alphas for the heightmap of engravings.