Axe Gun Tutorial

An axe with a gun mounted along its haft, modelled from a single piece of concept art in six hours. Short, self-contained and built around one specific technique — TurboSmooth used to raise a proxy into a detailed mesh — it suits an artist who wants a complete hard-surface exercise in an evening rather than over a fortnight.

What the download contains

• ✓Three video archives, Part 01 through Part 03
• ✓3 hours of modelling in 3ds Max with sculpting in ZBrush
• ✓2 hours of unwrapping and texturing
• ✓A rendering pass in Marmoset Toolbag
• ✓Built by Mirage3Dart with Milad Kambari

The modelling section starts from a 2D image and nothing else, which is worth saying because that is the situation most concept-to-asset work actually arrives in. A proxy is matched to the drawing, then TurboSmooth carries it up to a detailed version — a workflow that rewards clean control loops and punishes careless topology immediately, which is precisely why it is demonstrated here rather than described.

The wooden haft is the exception and goes to ZBrush, where a sculpted surface gives grain and wear that subdivision alone will not produce. Unwrapping runs through Rizom UV before anything is painted, and Substance Painter handles the texture set from there. The last chapter builds materials in Marmoset Toolbag, imports the maps, and sets lights and cameras for presentation.

Level is intermediate: the recording moves at working speed and expects you to know where the tools live in 3ds Max, ZBrush, Rizom UV, Substance Painter and Marmoset Toolbag. Neither the finished model nor the project files form part of the download. The videos are unnarrated, with no commentary track and no subtitles.