Self taught 3D artist Mohammed Nazmul Hoque shares how he created Warground using ZBrush

In this tutorial I will cover the workflow I used to make Warground in ZBrush. I am attracted to mythological stories and fantasy a lot. For this reason I thought it would be interesting to create something based on the artwork of Xiaoyu Wang. I really enjoyed the entire process of creating Warground and paid particular attention to carefully creating the giant's proportions & anatomy.

Step 1: Gathering references

It's important for all projects to visualize the concept. In the first stage of my work I try to collect as many references as I can. I usually put all the images into a single file so that they will be easier to view.

Xiaoyu Wang's concept

References

Step 2: Blocking and sculpting the giant

The first and most challenging part of this scene was modeling the giant figure. In ZBrush I originally tried to build the giant with spheres and DynaMesh but it was taking too much time to figure out the sculpture. Instead I used the MaleAverage.ZTL as a base mesh; this is really good for doing quick blockouts and separate polygroups. It's also helpful for separately sculpting in details and for UV mapping. Once I was happy with the giant's anatomy I used Transpose Master to define the pose and work out the proportions. I find it help to quickly work out the pose and what I want the focus point to be; in this case I want the viewer to focus on the giant's left hand.

Sculpting the giant

Detailing the giant

Step 3: Head detailing

I started the head by blocking with the help of the Move and Standard brushes and continued refining until I got a result I was happy with. I used a Standard brush to sculpt and structure the face. For further detailing I worked on highest subdivision level six and used a custom leathery skin texture for the wrinkles.

Sculpting the head

Step 4: Hand

In this image the hand is the most eye catching part of the giant and the main focal point. Using the same brushes I exaggerated the hand gesture and volume for the figure proportion and variation.

Detailing the hand

Step 5: Sculpting the solider

To establish the composition of the scene I created all of the soldiers in different poses from a mesh with basic detailing. I focused on their poses to give the impression that they are in the middle of a battle; fighting and being smashed by the giant's hammer. In the original concept there are soldiers hanging from the giant's belt, I originally was going to use ZBrush's mannequins but this is a time comsuming process so I decided to use proxy mesh to quickly sculpt and place the soldiers in the scene. To detail the figures I used the CurveTube and Standard brushes, as well as a custom crack brush (see step 6).

Sculpting the soldiers

Posing the soldiers

Detailing the soldiers