Character Modeling in Blender
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Character Modeling in Blender

on Nov 17th 2011 with 319 comments
Tutorial Details
  • Software: Blender
  • Difficulty: Beginner
  • Estimated Completion Time: 1 Hour

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

This entry is part 7 of 9 in the Best of Blender Session
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Character modeling can be a daunting field to get into. Developing a solid character with good design and proper topology takes a lot of work. This tutorial provides an introduction to the many aspects involved with modeling a character in Blender for beginner artists.

Republished Tutorial

Every few weeks, we revisit some of our reader's favorite posts from throughout the history of the site. This tutorial was first published in March of 2010.

Topics covered in this tutorial include:

  • Transform basics
  • Extruding
  • Mirror modifiers
  • Setting background images
  • Dividing the workspace
  • Topology
    • Additional Files/ Plugins:

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    By

    Rollover to read this author's bio or click through to see a full list of posts by this author.

    Jonathan has been very active in the blender community over the years, and his main focus is character modeling and design. He has helped to organize and present two blender conferences in Montreal, one blender conference in New York, and returned two consecutive years to North Carolina, to teach alongside fellow Blender-artists at a Summer camp for junior-high students hosted by Red Hat Linux. He has also been featured in two publications on Blender, and worked to pass on the skills he has learned by producing training materials on his own as well. You can see some samples of his Blender art on his site at: www.montagestudio.org.  

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    • Ezra

      Hello everyone,

      I’m having a bit of a problem.
      I’m using version 2.57b.

      When a grab vertices and move them, other vertices that aren’t selected move a little bit, kind of like they are being dragged along. Kind of hard to explain.

      Also, when I go to scale at the 16:12 mark, other vertices that aren’t selected move with it just a tiny bit but also messing up my model. Is there a setting that I have checked somewhere that is causing this?

      Thank you in advance :)

      • LostIn3DSpace

        You probably have Proportional editing turned on. Press ‘O’ (the letter, not the number) and see if that solves the problem.

        Happy blending!

    • http://z13.invisionfree.com/DragonAge_Absolution Zeke

      If only this tutorial was in Blender 2.57 but, it’s still real good.

      • Maia

        Anything that isn’t the same in Blender 2.5 can be looked up on google in a couple seconds. I followed along this tutorial in 2.5 and with a little help from google and clicking around had no problems.

    • David

      wow that really helped me to the next level of using blender.

      thank you very much for this hyper awesome tutorial.

    • Jonjomate

      I dont really get the face part done… Could someone please post a downloadlink for the finished model? Would be awesome! :D

    • Houston

      would someone please explain or post a link to a video explaining how to get my ui to look like his? mine is rather different and I don’t have the same tool bars as him and did figure out how to import the bg img but it would be nice to not have to go searching google anytime he uses something on that first toolbar on the bottom. any help is appreciated ty.

    • Kareem Simms

      how do have to fix the world in specifc way cause i have the newer blender but it views the world diagonal

    • sharif

      many many thanks for tips

    • http://aboutscript.com/blog Frankie

      I’ve just started watching it, but so far, this is the best tutorial I have EVER seen. I watch a lot of tutorials, and make my own as well. Still none of the beat this.

      Amazing job, and thanks.

    • robeomega

      Oh great when I try and play it. It has a quicktime logo over it which means its not working for some reason then ive downloaded the file twice and still cant find where it is saving it :(

    • zuleca

      what type of blender do you use? i have 2.62 and tryed it but it doesnt work?

    • http://www.ig.com.br Saulo Augusto Duarte

      Is there any simple tutorial for character clothing?

    • http://www.philrogersonline.com Phil Rogers

      I’m using 2.61 and the UI is completely different. I’m a beginner and I’m not familiar with all the tools. After watching this video I was hoping that I’d be able to run through it again and follow along.
      It’s not possible though because I can’t find most of the controls that are used.
      I guess I’ll have to come back when I’ve learned where everything is.

    • andri redfield

      how about merging 4 vertises simultaneusly, somewhat i only just merg 1 by 1… (like, merging finger part that has 4 vertises.) . anyway its the best technics modeling i ever found.

    • http://terrymorgan.net/sitemap.html Terry Morgan

      Thank you for the tutorial, it’s working well but at the 32:58 you select faces-Extrude-(region? I guess),
      right click and WKEY, I’m not getting any specials menu in Blender 2.49. But I can scale the faces z and x
      to get the same effect. Wonder why I don’t get any specials menu.

    • Terry Morgan

      Not getting the FKEY ‘skin faces/edges shown at 59:52. looks like it should be ‘mesh_bridge.py,

      https://sites.google.com/site/bartiuscrouch/py/mesh_bridge.py
      for 2.49 anyway getting a syntax error.
      This would be handy! Did it the hard way with FKEY make face

    • Carmen

      Why doesn’t any God damn thing in these tutorials match what’s on my computer? The menus are different, the icons for the editors are different. Is this some kind of f*cking joke?

      • http://www.bentateonline.com Ben Tate
        Staff

        Hey Carmen,

        Sorry to hear you’re having a problem following the tutorial. Blender has pretty frequent updates, and the interface seems to change rapidly (at least to my knowledge.)

        With this tutorial being almost two and a half years old, most likely newer versions of Blender will no longer match the version used to create this particular tut (as far as menus, button locations, etc..)

        Unfortunately there’s not much we can do to update posts to reflect software changes (as they are far too frequent to keep on top of.) But maybe a tutorial we’ve published more recently would fit with what you’re looking for. Here’s a few links to newer Blender posts that contain similar workflows to the “Character Modeling In Blender” tutorial ;)

        Low Poly Ninja:
        http://cg.tutsplus.com/series/low-poly-ninja/
        ——————————————————————-
        Modeling, UVmapping And Texturing A Low Poly T-Rex
        http://cg.tutsplus.com/series/low-poly-t-rex-in-blender/

        Hope this helps
        Cheers,
        Ben

    • james

      this tutorial video doesn’t match up with Blender 263. When I open Blender, it looks nothing like in the video, and using the mouse the grab onto the colored arrows only moves the object instead of resizing it. Hotkeys don’t seem to work either. is there a more recent tutorial that covers the latest version of Blender? Also, if these are made for beginners, you might consider using a fresh install with all of the defaults, because that is what most beginners are using.

      • George

        You might want to look into the Blender Foundation’s Blenderella modeling tutorial series. It was made with
        Blender 2.5, which is pretty much the same as 2.63 except for a couple buttons in the last video. That said, tutorials on modeling anatomically correct male figures appear to be rather scarce unless you plan to do sculpting for details.

    • iRaMbO

      Guys where can i find a background picture like the one in the video?

      • Dan

        Just above the video under the reference image link

    • Alex

      need some help please, i’m on blender 2.63 and I’m having some trouble in the modeling part. 20 minutes in and i realize that something is wrong when I’m moving the vertices. every time I try moving something it moves only along the axis’s. it moves block-like and when i try to move something it skips distance. i think i might have locked something but im not sure what. help please?

      • Isaac

        If you use the keyboard shortcut “g” key after selecting the vertices, does it still lock to the axis of the view?

      • Dan

        Hold down ctrl when you drag it

    • OmarKH

      If anyone is reading this, If you had problem with sliding the edge using (Edge Slide), it’s probably because you clicked on Edge Split by accident

      • teenbat

        This obviously happened to you, lol

    • i like men

      YOOOOOOOO I ADD MIRROR MODIFIER TO MY CHARACTER AND IT WON’T WORK IN BLENDER GAME!!! SO I HAVE TO TAKE OUT THE MIRROR THEN IT LOOKS STUPID AS **** SOMEBODY HELP ME

      • coolguy

        APPLY the mirror modifier.

    • amethyst

      hey at 10:04 how do you make it so that the cube on the right controls the side of the cube on both angles? everytime i mive the cube, the background image goes away, i know thats knormal, but how else will i get the cube turned to the side so that it affects the side and not just the front on both sides?
      thanks!!

      • Random

        To change your view to the side you press 3 on the num pad, if you don’t have one click view down at the bottom on side. Front view is 1. If you still can’t see the image press 5 to go into orthographic.

    • None ya

      Blender is really getting on my nerves how it blatantly REFUSES to cooperate with anything I’m trying to do with it. I’m an animation major and this is really irritating. Tutorials are crap, screw it, I’m just going to have to learn this stuff at school.

    • Django

      Hello, I have trouble moving these 4 vertices at 0:20:20. To be more specific, it’s like I’m moving just face and other vertices won’t move along that face, it just move inside the body…what seems to be a problem?? I’m stuck here for hours :/ pls help (you can see on image what happens when I try to move the face)

    • Loben Maishen

      Hello. Could you possibly remake the tutorial to fit nicely with Blender 2.63? I’m having a hard time stitching the keyboard shortcuts and commands.

    • dave

      omg me too :O

    • Kenny

      Think I found the problem ;)

      Hold ‘B’-button until you see the selection lines. Then select the part you want to select, but you have to be for instance on the front side (press 1) or left side (press 3). Normally you should be able to grab everything at once, without parts that are left behind. =]

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