Introduction

This will be a brief explanation about making of the quad bike, I like quads but you won’t exactly see me riding one (too scary for me ) anyway it was needed for a small project for a presentation of a quad and motorcycles racing track, it needed to be animated as well.

Reference

As usually if you needed any decent realistic existing model you need reference, unfortunately I couldn’t find blueprints for the quad but I did manage to find a decent front side pictures, a tip is to not only look in the official sites and try google image search or anything similar, amateur images is sometimes more clear than good ones because they don’t do any effort to make it perfect they show it for how its really is

As you see its far from perfect reference, so when modeling you always have to be careful and look at reference images taken from a normal viewing angle and checking to see if it’s the same or not (simply use your eye), you can pretty much say that modeling without decent blueprints isn’t certainly your first choice, I can hear some one out there saying duh anyway.
A little trick also is to put the reference image as a background then use a camera to try to replicate the original one, and see if there are major proportional differences (camera match)

Modeling

I’ve had no problems with modeling, the only hard thing was the lack of good reference which makes modeling more time consuming, I made the all the basic objects using editable poly as following:

then I started adding details also using primitives, splines etc.. and adding simple modifiers to primitives taper, FFD etc
I did also make 4 or 5 types of screws and small objects so I can quickly start copying them and instancing them, that added good amount of details very quickly

Hey guys!
I did this image for the GNOMON Gallery Show: COGNOSCO. Feel free to find out more information about the gallery here:http://www.gnomongallery.com/current_show.php

So I used my old “Angel” model and just re-rendered it. Here is the final image:

I’ve also created a showcase tutorial article about how to create cool renders using ZBrush and Photoshop.
Let’s get started.

Preparing model and document.
Create new document with size twice as bigger as image you want in result. I do that every time I render any model in ZBrush because in the end I shrink the image at half size to get rid of “jagged” lines. I also press AAHalf button to see a preview for smooth-rendered antialiased image.

Set up your model on the canvas as you want to see it rendered. You will need masks for easier selections at further comp stage. So just go through all subtools one by one and export image with Flat render turned on.

As result you get bunch of images with masking for each separate subtools.

Information:

I created this piece as a tribute to Metal Gear Solid. Base modeling in Lightwave, detailing and texturing in ZBrush, and post work in Photoshop.

The process:

I used Grey Fox from Metal Gear Solid as my main reference (Konami): ->

I decided to start with a sporty body type (Lightwave). There were no ears in the base model since they wouldn’t be seen under the helmet, and I didn’t want the extra polys. Then I exported the base mesh into Zbrush, subdividing and refining the body.

Next I began modeling the helmet. In ZBrush, I squeezed a transparent sphere around the head using the move tool. I masked out the areas I wanted to indent, and then used the negative inflate:

WARNING! This Making of Contains Nudity.

Software Used :

ZBrush

The original idea for this image came out of the references I’d collected. Whenever I start a new artwork, I do a lot of research and then I start the modeling (Fig.01).

Fig.01

With these references, I blocked the model with a simple base and I did some primary tests with the composition of the model (Fig.02).

Fig.02

As the idea matured, I really needed some specific references for the towel on the head and how its drapery would work. So I took some pictures of a relative of mine doing the exact pose with a towel (Fig.03).

Fig.03

I used the same real-life reference for the towel in the model’s hand (Fig.04).

Fig.04