Making of Post Apocalyptic Zombie Hunter

Self-taught 3D artist Humam Munir shares a quick rundown of how he made the awesome Post Apocalyptic Zombie Hunter in 3ds Max and ZBrush

In this making of I will show you my workflow from initial idea through to post production and the finished image. I wanted to push myself to the next level in my art so I decided to create a complicated vehicle that is fully detailed.

The idea

I am really inspired by the Mad Max: Fury Road movie and used the vehicles as references for this project. I especially liked the rig and decided to make my own rig. I thought about designing an old race car that has rusty pipes, chains, big engine, and big tires; set in an environment that is somewhat ruined with dry weather and a cloudy sky. After roughing out the idea I started gathering references.

References

Modeling the body

For the modelling I used both ZBrush and 3ds Max. I started with the body of the car and continued modelling until I had done all the various parts. I try to keep the subdivision levels as low as possible; otherwise the vehicle would quickly become slow to work with. I then used a Subdivision modifier to smooth the mesh.

First I used poly by poly technique to create the base mesh then exported to ZBrush to get more details.

Starting modeling – wheel arch

Car body mesh

Modeling the details

I prefer to start with the simple objects and work my way up to the more complicated. For the grill panels on the side of the car I started with simple cylinders and converted them in edit poly. Once all the cylinders were done I export the part out of 3d Max in to ZBrush DynaMesh. A simple brush creates a damaged look and ZRemesher s perfect for adjusting the number of polys, although it wasn't that important for this project.

Building the side grill

I used exactly the same technique for creating the engine, except I only used 3ds Max. The tires were done in 3ds Max and ZBrush, again using the same basic technique.

The engine

A tire

The chain and barbed wire

Making the chain is simply a matter of making one link and duplicating it until you have the length required. I follow this workflow SimpleTorus>EditPoly>ExtrudeEdge>Copy>Attach. Problems can arise when linking the pieces together using Path Deform Binding modifier; to correct this use Splines.

Making the links

Correcting problems in the chain

The finished chain

Barbed wire is relatively easy to make you simply make the barbs using the Twist and Bend modifiers and place at regular intavals, remembering to rotate them at different angles along the wire.

Barbs and wire

Barbed wire ball

Putting it all together

With all the pieces modelled I put them together and went on to create a simple environment. The ground is simply a plane and the whole thing is exported to ZBrush to be sculpted, and finally export the displacement map. I also made some grass, plants and then used a MultiScatter plug-in used to distribute them.

Putting it all together

Ground displacement maps

Lighting setup

I had quite a simple lighting setup for this scene and was able to adjust it quickly. The scene was lit by a hemisphere with a sky texture in a LightMtl, I also made a direct light in V-Ray with Physical Camera.

Lighting set up

Textures and Materials

I'm very bad at unwrapping and I decided to use the simplest way… first I use unwrap modifier in 3ds Max, then I exported the model to ZBrush to use it's very powerful unwrap tool.

Unwrapping the model

Then I started PolyPainting – prior to using PolyPaint you should subdivide the model because the quality of the paint depends on subdivision.

PolyPainting the model

Now I start making my shaders. First is the body shader, V-Ray blend mat was my choice here. I used different costume mask, some of them made inside of ZBrush, some are from 3dtotal libraries and some are made in Photoshop.

Costume masks

Glass material

Black-metal

Rust

Render settings

Some test renders and render settings

Test renders

Render settings

Render passes

Post production

As you can see I did separate element for grass to have more control.

I hope this making of was interesting and helpful for you. If you have any questions feel free to contact me. Thank you and good luck.

Post production

The finished image

Related links

Check out more of Humam's work here
Humam is also on Facebook
Grab your copy of 3ds Max Projects here