MODEL A MILITARY POUCH IN ZBRUSH
Discover how to create a military water bottle pouch with 3ds Max and Zbrush
In this tutorial, I will guide you through the process of creating a military water bottle pouch that meets industry-standard quality in high-poly modelling production for games. We will be using 3ds Max to create the basic geometry that is required for our military pouch, making sure the overall dimensions are correct followed by giving it a beauty pass in Zbrush, adding all of the real-world details such as fabric folds, creases and general wear and tear. You don’t need to be an expert with these applications as we will be running through a step-by-step process, but having experience or a general idea of the layout helps.
The goal for this tutorial is to create a high-quality, high-poly military water bottle that you can add to your portfolio, or maybe even 3D print with a 3D printer. So, let’s get started!
01 SET UP YOUR 3DS MAX SCENE FOR SUCCESS
Once you have a reference board set up and ready to go, the next task would be to set up your 3ds Max scene. In doing this, you are creating a comfortable workspace for yourself to successfully execute this task. When I launch 3ds Max, the first thing I typically do is create a plane mesh in the viewport. To do this, go to Object Type on the right side of the UI, select Plane and drag out into the viewport. Next, find the image of your reference material in the assigned folder and drag it over onto the plane in your max viewport. The image should now be visible.
02 BLOCK OUT BOTTLE FOR YOUR MILITARY POUCH
Once you are happy with the current layout of your Max scene, we will proceed with blocking out the water bottle for your military pouch. To start this, I typically use a cylinder shape followed by extruding it upwards and adding edge loops. To start extruding this mesh, select Extrude under Edit Polygons. Next, select a visible vertical edge, click Ring followed by holding rightclick>connect. Follow this process until you are happy with the overall blockout of your water bottle mesh.
03 BLOCK OUT THE LID FOR YOUR WATER BOTTLE
Now that we have completed the blockout of the military bottle, it’s important to produce a nice lid to go with it. To do this, I again start with a cylinder mesh, followed by extruding upwards and then Insetting so we can create a nice space for the middle section to be extruded further upwards. Once we have done that, it’s always nice then to chamfer off the top part so it creates a nice round shape. To do this, select Chamfer in the Edit Polygons menu. I would then select the rings around the lower cylindrical area and extrude for the outer ring.
04 DETAIL YOUR BOTTLE BLOCKOUT
Once you are happy with the blockout, at this stage, we will add more detail to bring it into a mid-poly stage. This is important before you commit and apply Turbosmooth modifiers to your
mesh to transition to the high-poly stage. Let’s start by adding grip detail to the lid of the bottle. To start, select the middle edge loops, right-click>connect. Increase the edge amount to 2 and separate wide enough for a nice grip detail. This also ensures that once smoothed, they maintain shape. Next, extrude the faces visible in this image and apply the Relax option under Edit Geometry.
Once you’re happy with the lid, it’s time to move onto the body. To start, chamfer out the sharp edges to get nicer edge flow along the edge of the water bottle. Next, select the edges along the side areas and chamfer slightly so they pinch once turbosmoothed. Next, apply your Turbosmooth modifier. I usually do a single level and then collapse my modifier back to editable poly.
05 ADD TEXT
Once you are happy with the turbosmoothed water bottle, we will now bring the asset into Zbrush to emboss text onto the front of the bottle. To start with this process, select Text under Splines and type ‘For Water Only Do Not Apply Canteen To Open Flame Or Burner Plates’ into the text panel. You will now notice that the text you type
will appear in the viewport. Next right-click and select editable poly. In the modifier stack, select Shell and adjust both sections of the text to create a full 3D model of the text. You will notice now that there is a lot of Ngons present on the text; this will cause issues when importing to Zbrush. To fix this, go to the modifier list and select Turn To Poly. Enable both tick boxes and your mesh should now appear with the correct amount of edges visible.
06 IMPORT BOTTLE AND TEXT INTO ZBRUSH
At this stage, we will import the water bottle and text into Zbrush. To do this, select both the text and high-poly water bottle, go to File> Export As and save as an OBJ file in your desired directory. Next, open Zbrush, select the Load tool on the right-hand side of the UI and select your OBJ file. Once you see your mesh appear in the Tool submenu, click and drag in the viewport, and you will notice your mesh appear. Next hit Edit at the top of the UI.
07 MESH THE TEXT ONTO YOUR HIGH-POLY MODEL
Zbrush is a very powerful tool when it comes to meshing several shapes together. This includes text, which makes life easy for the artist, as they don’t have to worry about manually adding edge loops etc. Click on the Subtool submenu, followed by the Split submenu and then select Groups Split. Zbrush will now split your water bottle into
two Ztools, one for the bottle and one for the text. Next, select the geometry subtool, click Dynamesh and increase the Resolution to any point past 1,024. This means, when you select Dynamesh, Zbrush will re-mesh the water bottle with nice dense polygons. Next, select your text. Head to the Polygroups submenu and select Group As Dynamesh Sub. This means when you Boolean addition, it will merge the text with the water bottle, giving that embossed look. Next, select the water bottle, merge down onto the text layer and click-drag in the viewport. Zbrush will now perform this operation.
08 BLOCK OUT THE MILITARY POUCH
Once we have completed the highpoly water bottle, we will proceed with blocking out the military pouch. To start, create a cylinder mesh to build the soft fabric base. Using the techniques you have gained in this tutorial, chamfer the edges so it appears with soft edges.
Next, create another cylinder, and extrude it up to make the base of the pouch. Inset until the gap is correct and then Bridge. To Bridge, select Bridge under Edit Polygons. Next, select polygons on the back of the pouch and pull them up to form the folded section of the pouch. Finally, we will model the outer ring section supporting the main pouch. To start, create a plane and draw around the exterior of the pouch mesh created. Select Shell in the modifier list and pull the vertices until the ring matches the shape of the existing pouch. Next, apply a subdivision level to smoothen the edges slightly. Last but not least, using a plane, create the strap visible on the front.
09 ADD STRAPS TO THE BACK AREA OF THE POUCH
Create a plane and align it against the back of the pouch. Once you are happy with the initial vertical placement, duplicate the plane mesh and continue the process for the remaining vertical plane and horizontal planes. Next, under the modifier list, select Shell and give them slight thickness. I usually start with giving a mesh a thickness level of 1 and then tone it down to the level required. Next select all four shelled planes, right-click and click editable poly. Once this is complete, mesh select the shelled planes and apply a chamfer modifier to the meshes. This will allow you to soften up the edges slightly for ease of adjusting in Zbrush later in the process. To do this, click the Modifier List on the right side of the UI and select Chamfer. Make sure the Mitering is set to Uniform. This will allow you to uniformly chamfer the mesh. Next, we will start preparing our mesh for polishing in Zbrush.
10 PREPARE YOUR MILITARY POUCH FOR ZBRUSH
To start this process, select your mesh, click the modifier list and choose Turbosmooth.
In the Turbosmooth submenu, select an Iteration level of 3. Next, right-click and select editable poly. Next we want to make sure we are exporting the bottle too as reference for sculpting the military pouch. To do that, simply select both the high-poly bottle and pouch. Next, go to File and select Export Selected. Export as OBJ.
11 SET UP YOUR HIGH-POLY POUCH IN ZBRUSH
Once you have exported the highpoly from 3ds Max as an OBJ, open up Zbrush.
Once Zbrush is opened, select Import under the Tool submenu and choose the exported OBJ file. Once you see your high-poly appear in the Tool submenu, click and drag in the viewport for the mesh to appear. Once your mesh is in the scene, you should always make sure to click Edit so that you can work on the visible mesh. I always recommend setting your view axis limit to Y and enable Perspective view. By default, Zbrush displays in orthographic view, which can make it quite difficult to sculpt in detail.
12 SPLIT YOUR MODEL INTO SEPARATE GROUPS
Next, we will split our visible highpoly military pouch into separate groups. This means, when sculpting in Zbrush, if you are working with separate groups, you avoid the worry of accidentally sculpting details in areas that should not have said detail.
To do this, select the Subtool submenu, choose the Split submenu and click Groups Split. You will notice that your mesh now has multiple subtools in the Subtool menu bar.
13 A STANDARD BRUSH PASS ON YOUR MILITARY POUCH
Now we will begin the fun part of sculpting our military pouch in Zbrush. To start this process, it’s always good to run a Dynamesh on your subtools so that you have nice dense polymeshes to work with. The only downfall can be a huge increase in the polygon’s visibility on screen, which can sometimes slow down the performance in Zbrush.
To start the sculpting process, I always use the Standard brush to sculpt in some light folds. This quickly allows you to get some forms into your sculpt.
14 ADD STITCHING DETAIL TO YOUR POUCH IN ZBRUSH
Once we have done the first pass in Zbrush using the Standard brush, it’s time to add some nice stitching details to your high-poly sculpt. To do this, increase the Z Intensity of your brush. The Z Intensity controls the height of your applied clay, which allows you to add those
Combine Matcaps when rendering
visible bumps in the stitching. When I’m doing stitching, I always enable symmetry as this can help you hit both sides without doing one side after the other. To enable Symmetry, go to the Transform submenu at the top of the Zbrush UI and then select Activate Symmetry.
Depending on the angle that you’re sculpting, you will need to try the different axes until you get the correct one.
15 ADD CUSHION FABRIC TO THE BASE
Once you have added the stitching and are happy with how it appears on your high-poly pouch, next we will add cushion detail underneath the base. To do this, you require an Alpha which can be found on Zbrush’s site under Alphas. There are several really nice options for fabric detail which can be downloaded and imported into Zbrush for use. Once in, make sure to select Dragrect under the Strokes option in Zbrush. This will let
you increase the size of the Alpha on your high-poly along with the intensity of the Alpha. Once you have selected the fabric Alpha, adjust the Z Intensity to your liking and then drag it onto the base. It should give you a really nice soft fabric appearance now.
16 THICKEN THE EDGES OF THE POUCH STRAPS
Now that the high-poly is really taking shape and is starting to hit the quality bar required, let’s push it a little further. Selecting the Standard brush with Symmetry enabled, let’s start thickening up the edges of the straps visible on your military pouch. Don’t be afraid to swap between Zadd and Zsub while doing this part. This will allow you to have some variation in your sculpt along with some realistic details in the folds.
Once I do my first pass of this, I usually follow it with a slight softening to blend everything. To do this, hold Shift to enable your
smoothening brush and slightly run it over the thickened edges of the straps.
17 ADD DAMAGE TO THE MILITARY POUCH
In this step, we will add some damage and general wear/tear to the current high-poly military pouch. To do this, let’s start with selecting Clay Buildup in the Brushes section. Once you have selected the Clay Buildup brush, set the Z Intensity to around 25-30 along with enabling Zsub. Next, let’s start sculpting some realisticlooking rips in the fabric. I usually sculpt in the shapes while keeping the strands visible in the middle, as it helps to sell the appearances of the rips. Adding a soft smooth brush on top helps to blend it with the high-poly pouch and avoids any sharp seams between the rip and the pouch itself, especially when using Clay brushes.
18 CHANGE THE MATCAP FOR A NICE PORTFOLIO RENDER
Now that we have finished the highpoly pass on the military pouch, let’s select a nice Matcap to take some renders with for your portfolio.
To do this, select Matcap on the left side of the Zbrush UI. This will bring up a nice menu with different Matcaps. I like to use the Matcap_ Wetclay or Matcap_gray when creating renders for my portfolio. They really help to sell the overall appearance of the sculpt while lighting the rim areas of the mesh.
19 RENDER YOUR HIGH-POLY SCULPT
In this step, we will render our final high-poly military pouch sculpt for your portfolio. To start, on the top of the Zbrush UI, under Render you will find a lot of options that allow you to adjust parameters for your render. For this tutorial, let’s use the default settings. Select Render, followed by Best. Once you click Best, you will notice that Zbrush will automatically render your mesh with nice AO and shadows. Once happy with the final render, go to Document and select Export. This allows you to export the rendered image of your sculpt from the viewport. You can also export as different file types such as a PSD, JPEG or PNG image file. •