Production Asset Breakdown: Apex Fighter Gloves (FiveM)
Overview
This has been one of the most exciting—yet challenging—projects I’ve ever worked on. I was incredibly fortunate to collaborate with Sebastian, who played a vital role in several parts of this massive undertaking.
Together, we designed two factions, Apex and Weave, for the Prodigy RP server. This included a wide variety of clothing and exclusive characters. @cheeddii was also involved in the creative process, and @loath provided invaluable help with the implementation.
Featured Asset: Apex Gloves
Today, I wanted to showcase a quick and fun part of the project: the Apex Gloves, part of the fighter outfit.
Note: This is not meant to be a “perfect” portfolio piece; it is a real production asset built for performance and visual impact within a live environment.
- Time Spent: ~5-6 hours.
- Focus: Durability, tactical aesthetics, and optimization.
Softwares used.
My workflow for creating high-quality clothing assets for FiveM involves a mix of high-poly sculpting and precise optimization:
| Stage | Software Used |
|---|---|
| High Poly Sculpt | ZBrush |
| Retopology | Retopoflow (Blender) |
| UV Unwrapping | RizomUV |
| Texturing | Substance Painter |
| Final Assembly | Blender |
Workflow Breakdown: Tactical Glove Design
1. Base Mesh & ZBrush Sculpting
I used the base hand meshes as a foundation, remeshing and subdividing them to prepare for sculpting in ZBrush. I also utilized subdivision modeling within ZBrush to define the structural panels.
Detailing: I added fine details using simple stitch brushes to give it that manufactured look.
2. Panel Extraction & Refinement
I extracted specific panels and performed additional modeling to evolve the design from the initial block-out to the refined high-poly version:
Reference Image
Final High-Poly:
3. Floating Geometry
I relied on floating pieces for various details. Since the baking process handles the projection, there was no need to manually bridge or weld the meshes together.
4. Retopology & Optimization
I’ll admit, I went a bit “bananas” on this stage. I wanted to avoid manual retopology, so I opted for a workflow involving subdivision and shrinkwrapping.
While the vanilla hands are approximately 2k tris, my version ended up at 5k. It’s double the original count, but for my standards, it’s a solid trade-off for the visual fidelity.
5. Texturing in Substance Painter
A massive amount of the micro-detail was handled directly in Substance Painter.
I experimented with the orientation of the fabric grains and tweaked the values to ensure the different materials really stand out from one another.
6. UV Mapping
Full disclosure: I’m not exactly proud of these UVs, but we were in serious crunch mode! 
Inspiration & Faction Variants
The biggest inspiration for these was this pair of Mechanix “bad boys”:
I also created a version for the opposing faction. It didn’t turn out quite as polished, as I put it together in about 2 hours.
Thanks for reading! Feel free to drop any questions below. If you want more breakdowns or technical deep-dives, let me know!