This is the brazilian three-banded armadillo (Tolypeutes matacus). This species and the southern three-banded armadillo are the only species of armadillos capable of rolling into a complete ball to defend themselves.
Armadillos are special animals and the only mammal that wear this kind of protective shell consisting of boney scales and keratin.
I choose this animal as a personal project because I was interested in how I can sculpt and texture their distinctive shell.
In the end I sculpted eveything by hand withouth the use of alphas or VDMs (except for very high frequency skin detail) to achieve a very organic look with unique scales. For the slight layering effect of the scales I processed the displacmentmap in substance designer and reapplied it on top in zbrush. C&C are welcome
Lovely work…I feel your pain on this one as its obvious you spent an age on the texturing and sculpting process
Thank you. It was indeed labourious and I did regret that approach sometimes. Though texturing wasn’t as bad. I Used substance painter and all the bakes were really helpfull in generating usefull masks.
I love nature, what an incredible animal 
Jaime
Really nice work!
I wonder if I can use the first pic for educational use… My assignment is a project about bionic design of armadillo, and I need a pic to show how it looks like both curled and uncurled. I will mark the source below the pic.(If I get your permission )
Hista
Hi Hista,
if it’s just for non-profit educational use feel free to use it. I would be happy if you would credit me underneath the picture.
Best
frix
Hi,
Is this model available for purchase for commercial use? I have a mobile game in development and this model would be perfect for one of the playable characters. Targeting mobile so I’d actually need the low poly version of this but I’m familiar with this process enough that it shouldn’t be an issue. If you could provide a low poly optimized version for mobile, using the high poly sculpt to transfer the details to a normal map , then that’d be great, but would like to possibly buy the model otherwise depending on price.
Just let me know if it’s available for purchase!
Best,
Charles