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:

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