Because with hindsight I wasn't quite as happy with my initial MP5 Fusion skin, I decided to rework it.
It ended up taking more time than I thought, but I wanted to try to get it the best I could this time.

One challenging aspect was trying to get the perspective right.

While many skinmakers use projection mapping with great success, for the cylindrical objects it became quite difficult to look convincing at different view angles.
So even though I think I previously was on the right path by distorting the mesh itself, just using a lattice wasn't quite as accurate as I wanted.

So after playing around with Blender's geometry nodes, I found a way to distort the mesh to closely match the projection mapping, while not affecting the bottom area too much, so I could get the best of both worlds.


The plasma also was a bit of a back and forth between trying to make it physically based vs. just using gradients, so I also ended up using a hybrid approach.
Luckily for this part (as well as the back display) I was able to use projection mapping, to make it more convincing.


So I hope you enjoy the end result!
I will only post this color version for now, because I'm excited to see how the new model and shaders could improve it even further!

Thank you for taking a look and stay tuned for more...