Published
May 4, 2019

Alien gun concept

This video is the conclusion of 3 #ZBrushLive sessions where we worked on a sci-fi gun concept

Alien gun conceptAlien gun concept
Alien gun concept
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Alien gun concept
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Alien gun concept
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Alien gun concept
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Alien gun concept
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Alien gun concept
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Alien gun concept
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Alien gun concept
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Alien gun concept
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Alien gun concept
Play Icon
Alien gun concept
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Alien gun concept
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Alien gun concept
Play Icon
Alien gun concept
Play Icon
Alien gun concept
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Alien gun concept
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In this tutorial, I’ll show you the final step to set up the ZBrush concept of an alien gun for rendering in Keyshot. To illustrate the simple workflow, I’ll use a ‘Sci-fi box’ but the exact same process can be applied to more complex objects. The first 3 parts of this series are #ZBrushLive streams sessions

PART 1 – Blocking out the concept

The first 3 parts of the series are recordings from live stream sessions from #ZBrushLive

In this episode, we’ll set up the primary shapes of the alien gun based on a quick thumbnail sketch. I’ll walk you through a simple technique to ‘trace’ geometry over a reference image to generate geometry.

Using the SnapShot 3D feature in ZBrush 2019 could be an interesting alternative to the process I used in this first part.

PART 2 – Refining the sketch

In this second step of the process, we’ll start to use Dynamesh and fine-tune the shapes and volumes.

PART 3 – Adding details and custom alphas

In this third part, we refine some of the sketch transition and polish the surfaces. We’ll re-build the ‘plasma cylinders’ from scratch and create custom alphas with a simple, yet powerful, technique using a cube, Live booleans, insert meshes and the GrabDoc button.

Final concepts / renders

Below are some extra images of this project and the sci-fi box. The images (decals) I used to texture the final gun and the sci-fi box in Keyshot are a great Sci-fi pack from Munkhjin Otgonbayar that I bought from his ArtStation.

sci-fi box final render:

AFFILIATE DISCLOSURE: This tutorial may contain affiliate links which means if you decide to make a purchase through a link, I may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you.
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Sci-fo Boolean box

The ZIP file comes with the ZBrush tool file with the boolean sci-fi box and the FBX version. Feel free to load this into ZBrush and practice the steps from this tutorial.

Check it out
Sci-fo Boolean box