#3d modeling process

[papiliomame]

Road to 3D- Sam Manson (Part 2):

Character Modeling

Part 1: Model Sheet

Welcome to the second and final part of this project. Since people have asked how I do my models, I decided to make a write-up on how I approach these things using the example of a model of Sam Manson. The first part focused on how I make a model sheet fo a 3d model the second part focus just on the modeling. There are many more things about how to create a fully realized 3d character that I could make whole other chapters for, like UV unwrapping, texturing, shading and rigging, but I don't have enough knowledge past the fundamentals on these topics that could warrant their own seperate posts.

Additional stuff before I continue:

I use Blender for all my model

This not a beginners guide or something similar, it would be helpful to already know the general workflow of a modeling, how to use Blender and know different terminology like edgeflow, retopology etc.

If you are a beginner and want to learn more about character modeling I recommend the videoseries "Modeling for Animation" by Dikko on Youtube

Maybe I make some reference some tricks from this videoseries

That's it, let's go!

My first step is always the block-out phase. The block-out phase is what the construction lines and the first sketch in a drawing are. I align the frontview and sideview from the model sheet I made in part 1 with the z-axis (the blue line in the images above) and roughly shape out the forms with primitive forms. For this I mostly use a cube with a subdivide modifier.

Having a modelsheet without the clothes obscuring the body makes it much easier the get the form right. The block-out phase is one of the most important steps, if it looks good than I have practically half the work done. This is also a good opportunity to practice anatomy.

After this stage I continue with the head. First of all, don't forget to add the mirror modifier so I just need to model half of the model. There are different methods to approach modeling the head, like sculpt the head first, retopologize and than bake all the deatails onto the retopologized head. I actually prefer to polymodel the head especially when I have a good model sheet. I practially trace the lineart from the model sheet by extruding vertices, once from the frontview and once from the sideview. The most important points are the form of the eyes, the mouth, the form of the face and the jawline. The head block-out is used as an anchor point for the shrinkwrap modifier so that the traced forms actually look like they belong to a 3d form and not 2d lines floating space. From this point on it's just connecting everything, pull and push vertices so it looks like a 3d head and make sure the edgeflow is good. (It's also helpful to know how the planes of the head look like) After that I add the eyelashes, eyebrow, eyes and the ears, now it looks like something!

Now comes the hair. For the hair I used the "curve trick" like mentioned in the video series I recommended. Here is a tip to save time: I choose some edges from the head, duplicate and seperate it from the mesh. I convert this seperated line into a curve and choose a beziercircle as a bevel geometry. This is now the perfect foundation to model the hair further. One thing I needed a long time to notice: To get the beziercircle to a perfect square or in this case a triangle lower the Resolution U to 1 in the shape options. Now I just convert the curves into a mesh and add details and the head is done!

With the head finished I continue with the body. Remember how I wrote with a good block-out half of the work ist finished? Well, for this step I practically just use the smooth brush in sculpt mode and smooth everything out so everything looks connected. Then I retopologize the body and that's it. Well, ok there is a little bit more to it: Before smoothing things out I join the block-out part to a single mesh and remesh it with the remash modifier expept for the hands. I prefer to polymodel the hands seperatly without worrying about the rest of the body because they are difficult to model. I reattach them later. Speaking of reattaching, I make sure that the connection points have the same number of vertices while I retopologize/polymodel. To ensure that, I often use the following trick visualized with a simple example ( which is also described in the video series):

I want to reduce the amount of edges at the bottom of this plane, for this I merge 3 vertices from the middle into 1 vertice seen in the left image. After that I can select the blue marked edges from the center image and dissolve them. The result, which you can see on the right, is a nice clean edgeflow with a reduction in the number of edges.

After modeling every part I attach them together and I have a finished bodymesh the work with.

Now onto the clothes, for this I use the model sheet with clothes as reference. Having a retopologized body makes it easier to model simple stuff like e.g. Sam's shirt. On the left image the marked faces of the the bodymesh already looks like a shirt. I just need to duplicate and seperate this area, clean it up a little and the shirt is basically finished. The more complex stuff like the boots I need to polymodel around the bodymesh.

With that the modeling part is done! Now comes the things I said above: uv unwrapping, texture painting, rigging and shading. These are whole other topics I cannot go deeper because I'm still learning how to do these things but I hope my little write-up about how I appoach character modeling was enough to learn one thing or two.

Thank you for your time and thank for reading!

[vampiresex69]

[ashrimpyshrimp]

So I've made it an VRchat avatar...

cause why not... Character by @wolfertinger666

[nova-lz]

Full body sculpt and pose test for Minos prime from Ultrakill. Inspired by and referenced JDGreed's artwork of Minos.

EDIT: THANKS FOR OVER A 100 NOTES EVERYONE!! Next time i'm gonna do my best to do better.

[a-dream-seeking-light]

blame! (2021) by yann souetre (yann-s on artstation)

wip - pipe assets from ian hubert’s patreon

based off this manga panel from BLAME! by tsutomu nihei

[prongedmenace]

No way!!! It's Kinito!!! No way!!!

(Wips/Model proof under the cut)

Silly guy, silly board!

[fickes]

stylized fingernails in ZBrush for my current 3D character project

[xylo-art]

Back at it again on my 3d modeling shit

I wanted to try something a little more complex with the shapes I use in my model; and who better than to do that with than Astro....

He's likely not proportionate to my other toon models, but I plan to remake them once I've improved anyway.

He's not completely done; I'd like to add some stuff extra to his model to give him more expressions, and a blanket he can swap between.

Tpose progress shot

[papiliomame]

Road to 3D- Sam Manson (Part 1):

Model sheet

Part 2: Character Modeling

Hi! On my recent posts of my 3d models I got many asking questions about how I made them. I'm currently working on a 3d Sam model from scratch and so I thought I can document my process here and add some thoughts through my process.

Before I can model anything in 3d I need a reference and a plan. For characters this means I need to create a model sheet, so here we are.

Some disclaimer first before I continue:

I'm just a self-taught hobby artist not a professional or proper art student. The infos I write here down are just the things I do and can be completly wrong or different in a professional setting.

This is not a tutorial or a step-by-step-guide for character design or how to make character sheets in general. Just additional things that I pay attention to when I make a model sheet for my 3d models.

As someone who just does 3d modeling in my freetime for 2 1/2 years I see myself still as a beginner. I'm still in a experimenting with different techniques and artstyle. This and the following posts describes just stuff I do for this model, it could be some other method next if I feel this didn't work out that well. Nothing is set in stone.

I do the 3d models just for myself for practice and for fun, you cannot download them anywhere. I just post screenshots and do sometime animations to archive my progress.

Under the cut are my thoughts of how I approach a model sheet for a 3d character:

First things first I search for references and make some rough sketches to decide how I want the character to look like. I found this image of a character on pinterest ( anyone knows who the artist is? I cannot find the original source) and use this as a reference for my Sam model.

After the inital phase I first draw the front side of the character. For a 3d model I need a symmetrical neutral character in a T-pose, an A-pose or a standing pose in which the arms doesn't obscure the body. This makes it easier to model and rig them late on.

Speaking of obscuring the body it's also better to have a character without their clothes on and in multiple angles. It is easier to model the character's full body first and then model the clothes around it as an anchor point.

The most import angles for me are the front and side view. The other angles are more for the details to get the likeness right. I try to model the front view most accurately and the sideview is more for the proportions. I don't often see people only from the side view so whatever I draw from the side cannot 100% be accurately be modeled like that. I also made a different side view on the right with the arm seperated from the body, this makes it easier block in the form of the body and it's easier to model the arm and hand seperatly because hands are not only difficult to draw but also difficult to model.

For the different angles I use a mannequin model in blender as a guide and reference. Clip studio paint (the painting program I use) has also 3d mannequins but I personally find them difficult to move around so I prefer to use blender for this.

When I'm finished with the model sheet I also make a quick turnaround animation to see if anything looks consistent enough.

Yeah that's it. Now onto the modelling process!

[sturgeonz]

baby;s first crappy blockbench thing idk

[yame0340]

New art in process

Yes, initially I made this heart to draw art with it xD By the way, arcane makes me learn how to render well..

[1oddboi1]

Chos 3d model!!!

What's this? The coolest thing I've made???

So, I've been working on this for a while now. It started as just a "that'd be neat" and turned into an entire project spanning MONTHS! I started in October last year

I have A LOT of progress screenshots and stuff, and I'm not sure if I can really do it justice in a post but I'll try. Forgive me if this is kinda bad lol

We got expressions, woah :0 They're kinda jank but so is the entire thing lmao

Here it is in vrchat! I just think the physbone thing vrchat has is super cool with this model :)

Anyway, progress stuff time!

Like I mentioned before, this started out as me just making his head for perspective stuff but then spiraled from there.

Of course this didn't come without... issues

Eventually I got it figured out... kinda. I ended up downloading a base body model off sketchfab and building off of that

Skipping forward a bit for the sake of brevity, it's looking pretty good! created textures in illustrator using a SUPER jank process that's definitely not how you're supposed to do it lol

Now is when I started having fun with it, put it through mixamo for a quick and easy rig and started making him do funny dances because of course

Skipping the hell that was learning how to make a vrchat avatar and here we are! Very happy with this project and am looking forward to whatever I do next. I have no clue what it'll be lmao.

[a-dream-seeking-light]

brandon gobey - debt collectors (2020)

a regional hub for government activity, one of the first buildings to experiment with anti-gravity manipulation.

process stages: 

[alyss-erulisse]

Millennium Ring from YuGiOh

A Realistic Render

Before I created the Millennium Necklace, I created this realistic version of the Millennium Ring.

The ring is positioned on a basic male model from the Sims 4 using soft body and rigid body simulations and rendered in Blender Cycles.

I redesigned the ring with material construction in mind, soldering joints and using rivets and screw eye pins.

In Ancient Egypt, gold was alloyed with silver and copper in a combination known as electrum. This means the item is likely to tarnish over time.

I created a texture brush to paint tarnished material in the crevasses not easily accessed by polishing implements.

For the rope, I chose a reference of 5mm macrame twisted cotton and developed a procedural texture.

My goal was to create a unit of rope which I could seamlessly duplicate around the neck.

I started by modeling each strand of rope, which was a great exercise in Blender Geometry Nodes, but the twisting of the strands caused a problem with seamless duplication which I could only solve by simplifying the geometry.

Eventually, I developed a seamless procedural texture for this simplified, repeatable geometry.

Tying knots is much easier in real life than it is in Blender where objects can move through each other.

This is a nice level of detail for a close up image, but at a distance, how much of our attention is really going to be on the rope?

By baking the texture and normals to even simpler geometry, I sped up the movement simulations.

I used Rigid Body Physics to produce the secondary motion of the pointers on the ring. Compound Parent was useful in keeping the pointers from clipping through and flying off the ring during quick motions.

This project was much more challenging to animate because of the way the item is suspended from a knotted rope.

I used Soft Body Physics to produce the primary motion of the rope and ring.

As I transform the world of my fanfiction into one that is more original, I end up redesigning ideas from the YuGiOh universe.

The violet gemstone set within the iris of the Eye of Anubis is a flourish of my own. Crystals play an important role in the magic system of my story where the Millennium Items were forged as instruments to wield the magic of a crystal that was so dangerous it was split into fragments.

See more of my work: Check out my archive.

Join me on my journey: Follow me on tumblr.

Keep me creating: Support me on KoFi.

[fickes]

Process video for the Dune storybook 3D model 🪱

Made in Maya, Zbrush, Substance Painter, and UE5