STRATUS XL Game Controller

As a PC gamer, I tend to be playing with a mouse and keyboard, however, for platformers and some of other genres, you just can’t beat using a controller. When I was developing my game Medieval Steve I was always using a controller to play-test. My controller of choice was a Stratus XL by SteelSeries. I chose that particular controller as it worked across multiple platforms; namely Android and Windows.

I took this controller to exhibitions with me when I was showing my game to the public during development. Over 4 days of constant attention from the thousands of people that attended EGX and Insomnia events, the battery of the controller just kept going! I was amazed! So much so, I decided to make a model of it, to immortalise it in digital form, forever!

Making a model of this particular controller was a bit tricky as it required a lot of boolean work, which – at the time – Blender wasn’t the best at. So, I would typically create the boolean modifiers and go in afterwards to clean up the topology, as I was getting nasty artifacts that were reacting with the lights badly. Creating the PBR materials for this was simple enough, just your basic matte plastic, high gloss plastics and rubber. Nothing too challenging, but, I learnt more about separating my meshes into smaller, more manageable sections.