Your first character design in Blender

1. 0 ) Intro: Hello everyone and welcome to this class. My name is Yesh and in this class I'm going to teach you how to create this cartoon character. We'll look at modeling particle systems, texturing, rigging, posing, look, development, and rendering our character. This class is meant to be simple enough for a beginner to understand whilst also showing you ways to model a character you probably didn't know before. Now this could be your first character design project if you're a beginner, or it could be just another piece of work to add to your portfolio. I also want to see your renders of this character at the end of this class. Let's end. 2. 1 ) Creating our bench: Hello everyone and welcome to this class. My name is Josh, and today we'll be starting out creating our own cartoon character. The character I've chosen for this class is Sean the Sheep from the famous cartoon show. And this is what a result will look like. So let's jump into blender and start creating the first part of the scene, the bench. First of all, delete the default blender scene by pressing A. And then then we can start off by adding our own cube. We will first be creating the legs of the bench. Scale down the cube on the Y axis and then scale it up a bit on the X axis. This is to specify the thickness of the legs. Now use control plus R and scroll with your mouse wheel to add two edge loops. Now scale them along the X axis to move them further towards the edge of the cube. Now we can select the bottom middle face and go Alt plus E and extrude manifold. Now as we move our mouse, you can see that it cuts into the cube. We can scale the resulting face down on the x axis to create a tapering shape for the legs. Now extrude the top edge face, also pull it backwards as we want the back rest to be a bit slanted. Let's also polish it above bit by adding a bevel to a few of the faces. Now since that's done, we can create the second leg by duplicating the first one. But instead of that, I want to use a modifier to do this. Go to the modifier tab Select Array, and then set the X factor to zero and increase the Y factor to move the copy along the Y axis. This is because now if I make changes to one of the legs, it will be reflected in both of them. Next, let's create the base. This is the easy part. Create another cube. Now we can adjust the scaling and position of the cube to create one plank for the seat of the bench. Next, add another array modifier. Adjust the x factor. Now, duplicate this for the back rest. Now go into the side view and rotate it to align it to the chair leg. And that's for this tutorial. We'll learn how to texture our bench later in the post. I really hope you learn something new in this lesson and see you in the next one. 3. 2 ) Modelling the body: Now that we have our bench, the next thing we want to start making is the body of our character. Now we can create the body in many different ways. Let's explore a few of them. The first way is by using a simple sphere primitive. To do this, let's move a red cursor a little to the side right here. Next we can hit shift A, add mesh UV sphere. Now we can go into edit mode. Next we can scale the character up a little bit. Remember to turn on proportional editing by using this button right here or by using the shortcut key O. Now slit the edge at the top by Alt. Clicking on an edge, then hit. Now as you can see as I drag my mouse, it's not just scaling the edge we are working on, but also all the surrounding edges. Now let's also adjust the top and bottom vertices to create a shape that doesn't taper off that much. It doesn't have to be a high poly shape because later on we'll add fur to the body which will cover most of this up. The other way is to use a cube primitive. Create a cube. Now we can use extrude and scale operations we used previously to map out the basic shape of our characters body. Once that's done, we can use control plus two to add a subdivision surface modifier. If you do this right, you should get a pretty similar looking shape with both the methods. Lastly, let's finish off by adding a tail. Move the cursor to the back of the character, then add a sphere. Scale it down to your desired size. You could also taper it off a little bit. Remember, we are not really trying to get into the posing of the character just yet because we'll do that in the ring section of this course. That's it. We now have a basic body shape of our character. In the next necture, we can start modeling our head. See you in the next video. 4. 3 ) Creating the head: In the previous lecture, we made this basic shape for a character's body. The next thing we want to do is model the head of our three D character. Now I want to preface this by saying that it's going to be a bit more involved than the body modeling we just did. But you don't need to worry because I'm going to guide you through every step of the way. As we can see, our character has a pebble shaped head. Think about how we can achieve this shape. We can start with a cube. The reason why I'm doing this is because a cube only has a small number of faces and edges. Which makes it easier to shape out our head. Because we have a lot less things to manage, We can start off by just selecting our top face and scaling it down a little bit, then moving it backwards along our x axis. Then maybe we also bring this bottom face backwards a little bit as well. And we can also move this back face slightly forwards. What we're doing here is that we are basically trying to roughly match the shape of the character's head. We could now exit Edit mode and press control plus three to subdivide the. The reason why we are using a high subdivision level is because the head isn't going to be covered by fur. Unlike the body, it is important that it is as smooth and detailed as possible. This can still use a few minor improvements for this part. You can either follow me along or you could use your own creativity to create a shape you're satisfied with. I'm going to use an edge loop and bevel the bottom phase just to make the shape a bit more accurate. But you're free to do whatever you see fit here. In the end, apply modifier to create the nose. We can create two spheres where we want our nostrils to be. Just join the two spheres with control J, select your face mesh. Go to modifiers, add modifier, and select bullion. Select your sphere as the bullion object. Make sure the difference operation is selected. If you get any problems due to the bullion not working properly, you can try changing the solver from exact to fast. Now we can apply the modifier as you can see. Now if I delete my nostril sphere, we have our nostril shape right here. The eyes are pretty straightforward. Just create two spheres and align them at the correct place. We will texture them later in the course. Let's move on to the ears. Just create a cube scale up the outer face, then extrude it, scale it up on the y axis, and make other adjustments to your liking. To make the ears look like ears. Then select the interface right here, the head to insert it. Now press and drag it inwards, create the ear cavity. Press control three to make the shape smooth and apply the subdivision surface modifier. Align the ear to the head. Duplicate it for the other ear. Now select both ears, as well as the head and press control J to join them. Now we have our head ready. In the next lecture, we'll create the limbs of our character. See you there. 5. 4 ) Modelling the limbs: In the last lecture, we created the head of our character. And now we want to start making the limbs. This is going to be a really simple part. Just create a small cube. Now, slid the top face, insert it and then extrude the resulting face upwards to create the leg. Now press Cade to activate the knife tool. Then holding down shift Clair cut right down the middle of the front face. Then we can select one of these two faces and extrude it out outwards. Now scale it down just a little bit. I also want to select this outer edge and bring it inwards a little bit. We are trying to get the basic shape of the Fogs with this method. Do the same with the other face. Now add a subdivision surface modifier with control three. We also need to add some edge loops to tighten up this mesh. Now you can make some quick adjustments to shape the legs to your liking. For example, I'm adjusting the shape of the fors right here. Now just duplicate this limb four times and put it in the correct places. And that's it. We now have our limbs. See you in the next lecture. 6. 5 ) Adding the fur: With a basic model ready. We can now add fur to a model. This is a really straightforward process. Just create a sphere, This is going to be our fur particle. Next, slip the character's body. Go over to this tab, which is the particle system tab. And click the plus icon right here. Change the particle type from Emeter to hair, but we really don't want regular hair here. We want to use our first sphere as the hair. Scroll down to Render and select Render as Object. Select your first sphere as the instance object. Now we can adjust the scale and scale randomness to our liking. I know this looks laggy right now because I'm recording at the same time as doing this, but for most people it's going to be super smooth. Anyway, scroll up to the particle number and decrease it and play with the hair length till you are satisfied. I'm also going to scale down the body right here, because it's currently clipping into the head. We also need some fur on the head, create a sphere on the head. Then repeat the same process as earlier, and that's it. In the next lecture, we'll start texturing our model. See you there. 7. 6 ) Texturing our model: All right, so with our modeling work basically done, I think it's a good time to start texturing our model because it looks a bit blend. For now, for texturing, I'll be using two methods in different scenarios. One is the classic method that's built into blender, and the other one is Blender Kit. Now Blenderkit, if you don't know, is a great blender add on, which gives you a ton of models, textures, HDRIs, among other stuff. Right inside of Blender, you can get most of its assets for free. So if you haven't already, just go over to Blenderkit.com and download the add on and install it. Now that we have Blend of It, you should see this bar right here. I'm going to click on this second icon right here, which is the material stab, then search for black rubber because that's what Shawn's skin mostly looks like. Now I like this first material right here. All I have to do is click and rag it over to Shawn's face. And as you can see, the material is applied to his face. I can use the same texture on his limbs right here. Now for I, I've created a very simple image right here to use it. Come down over to material, stab and click on new material. Then click on the base color and set it to image texture. Now select your image texture right here, and you're done. Now I'm going to leave this other sphere and duplicate this current one. Moving onto the bench, I can just search blender kit for wood textures and pick my favorite one if the texture isn't applied properly. The easiest way to fix it is to tap into edit mode. Press to slip all W Ss and then press U and Smart U Project. Now finally for the fur, I can search blender kit for fur. And drag my favorite pick over to the main sphere. And that's it. In the next lecture, we'll rig and pose a character on the chair. See you there. 8. 7 ) Rigging and posing: At this point, most of our work is done. In this lecture, we are going to be rigging and posing a model on the bench. To start off, make sure the cursor is right below the character model. And press shift A and select Armature. Single bone. Also click on the stab and in Viewport display select in Front, now in edit mode, select the top of the bone and bring it up on the Z axis. Now to extrude it and take that extruded bone up to head height. Now again, select the tip of the previous bone and extrude it to the shoulder. Now repeat the same process for the elbow and the forearm. Actually, we don't have any need for this bone, so we can delete it. Repeat the same process for all the other limbs. Next you want to bind our model to the bones. Go back to normal mode. Then select the body shift. Select the mature and press control tab to go back to pose mode. Now select the backbone right here, and press control and press bone. This is going to bind the entire mesh to the single bone. Repeat the same process for the head. Now let's talk about the limbs. For this slect the limb shift sect, the mature and then pose mode. Select both the bones corresponding to the limb press control parent with automatic weights. Now I can grab the armature and move it over to the bench. Now I can go into pose more and start moving the limbs around. This process may take a while, but it's very rewarding. Once that's done, we're almost done with the project. The only thing that's left is the look development, and we'll do it in the next and final lecture. See you there. 9. 8 ) Look development and rendering: We are at the final stage of our project. Now in this part we'll set up a scene lights and render out a scene. First up, I'm going to press Shift S and select the cursor to World Origin to place our cursor in the center of the scene. Next, let's add a plane for a ground and scale it up to a large size. Now go into the side view. Duplicate your plane, rotate it 90 degrees, and bring it back. I'm also going to show you how to add the HDRI. Let me remove the existing HDRI for now. To add the HDRI, click on the color icon in the World Property Spanel and select Sky Texture. Next up, we can color the planes with a simple yellow color or any color of your choice. Now I'm going to add a point light and move it into place. Then you can go into the light property spanel and ramp up the intensity of the light to about 10,000 You can also try duplicating the lights and setting the up in places you want until you get your desired result. Now add a camera frame your Viewpod to where you want the camera to look and press control Alt Numpad zero to frame your camera in that place. Once that's done, go over to the Render menu and select Render Image. And that's it. I really hope you enjoyed this class and learned something new for it, and I really look forward to seeing your versions of this character. Thanks for watching and see you later.