Hideo Kojima brings real-life Metal Gear bento box into Fox Engine

Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima received a unique gift from Sony Computer Entertainment Japan to mark the Metal Gear franchise's 25th anniversary this year: a bento box featuring edible faces of some of the series' most important characters. But instead of eating it, he decided to immortalize it in another creation of his — the new Fox Engine — and post the production process on his Twitter account.

Calling the commemorative gift "too good to eat anyway," Kojima and his team scanned the box into the engine in 3D (second image above), then applied a normal map to the scan (third image above). After getting the full box done up in the engine and ready to go, the developers put it in Big Boss' hands and placed him in what Kojima Productions calls the Fox Engine's "glass room" (fourth, fifth and first images above).

According to Kojima, the entire process from scanning to finished in-game model took about two hours.

The Fox Engine is the technology that will power the next Metal Gear Solid game, Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes, which is in development at Kojima Productions on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.