Week 3 | Fighting Blender

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Fighting Blender and (kind of??) Winning

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This week was hectic, as can probably be guessed from my late (ish) blog post. But I got a lot done that I'm proud of! I did have to restart progress halfway through the week, but I think it was for the best in the end.

I learned new tools like merge vertices, loop tools, and my most valuable lesson: the X,Y, and Z planes are my friends- and proportional editing is THE ENEMY when it comes to planar/low poly projects. As will be discussed below.

Here is the model I started with at the beginning of the week. I followed 'Creating Stylized Low Poly Characters in Blender' by Lacruzo. It was a really good tutorial, but I could tell it was more for people much more experienced with the program. I could follow along with lots of desperate googling though.

But my downfall was using proportional editing. This tool is really useful for moving multiple vertices at once, or sculpting a model. It's how I gave the donut in my last post some natural looking bumps and irregularities. HOWEVERRR I realized when I began extruding the arms and torso that proportional editing does not care about planes or straight edges. Which is bad when you are creating planar models, because you generally want things as neat and tidy as possible.

I thought I could ignore it, but the arms kept extruding twisted and I knew if I kept building on this the inconsistencies would bite me later on. So I used another tutorial to help me along- one that luckily showed me how to use hot keys to move vertices precisely on each plane.

RIP Model One. Gone, but not forgotten.

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For attempt two, I followed 'Blender Low Poly Character Modeling Tutorial' by Crashsune Academy. And it went so much more better! I really found a lot of value in how they went over hot keys and talked through the process. Also, the fact that each part is 15 minutes helps with how my brain works. It feels like I get a lot done even though it's only been half an hour.

I also found that this tutorial was a great jumping off point for customizing my model away from the tutorial model. Loop tools was a very valuable tool to learn, as well as the mirror tool.

First (badly pictured here) I took a pre-existing model and scaled my reference image to it's height. Just so that I had a solid basis to refer to keep things to scale. Also I took my turn arounds set my side one at one to one with the model, and then a front view as well.

This tutorial went from the ground up- so I started with the boots. There was some guess work here, as my reference has most of the shoe hidden by her pants. Also, looking at it now, I'll probably add another vertices at the toe box to round out the boot's look. Maybe even a loop cut down the center.

For the boots I started with a cube, then basically scaled down and shifted/added vertices until it lined up with my reference. I just made sure the height and width were approximate, and scale wise it was accurate.

Now in the tutorial the leg is just an extruded cylinder, and quite skinny and small. I knew this didn't suit my model at all so this is where I started going rogue.

I spawned in a funky little cylinder, and added in some loop cuts to start making the characters funky, puffy pant legs. I didn't go for perfection, just focused on getting a general shape - I'm going to go over everything again once the whole model comes together. I really like how it looks!

Then the hip section of the torso was added. It's generally this small wedge shape - I made mine a little bigger because of the shape of my character, and I know I'm going to be putting shapes on top of it soon. I built this from a cylinder as well.

Next was the stomach/ribs/chest shape. It was made from a cube, that was loop cut then extruded. The vertices were moved to match my model.

Just kept loop cutting and extruding, following the outline of my reference.

Also made arms! I used my reference as a measuring device and looked at how the tutorial shaped their arms. I changed mine so it was different, but also because I wanted that bend at the elbow and some more shaping than just a cube shape. I also did the chunky glove shape.

They went for a fist pose - but I wanted my characters hands open. So I looked at references of other 3D models and made little 'mitten' hands.

Here's how the body generally looks, and how the arms looking. Why is there only one leg? Well I'm going to duplicate and mirror it, but only after I'm 100% done with it. Why is there only one arm? This character has a robotic other arm, and I'm procrastinating making it. This is very exciting to see coming together and I love how it looks so far!!! Like wow I made that very cool.

In solid view with neck!! ᕕ (ᐛ) ᕗ

Here is the face, made from a flat plane then extruded. I used the knife tool to cut out the nose and cheeks. I have to say, having knowledge about planes of the body/anatomy is super super useful when it comes to modeling. It also helps with keeping things proportional (relatively, since this character is exaggerated.)

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This is where I left off for now. She kind of looks like Megatron but that's okay. She will be beautiful one day. I was just beginning hair- which is apparently the hardest part. YAYYYY (•̩̥̀‿•̩̥̀✿)

Next on my little mission is:

- Model clothing (the parts that won't just be textured on)

- Learn wrapping/whatever it's called when you paint a 3D model 

- Do the robot arm

I also want to start imagining her as a physical object. So that means (AAAAHH) looking up how to explode her model and add tabs/make it so you can put it together. Either way I'm very excited with how she's coming out! I think I've made great progress and I've gotten a good rhythm and confidence with Blender.

Yippeeeeee (´⊙ω⊙`)！

☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°☆