Tutorial Details
- Program: Blender
- Difficulty: Intermediate
- Completion Time: 40 minutes
- Reference Image: Download Here
Final Product What You'll Be Creating
Twice a month we revisit some of our reader’s favorite posts from throughout the history of Cgtuts+. Today we’re taking a look back at Karan Shah’s three part tutorial series on Modeling, UVMapping, and Texturing a complete manga character in Blender. Originally published back in October of 2009, this tutorial has proved to be one of the most popular Cgtuts+ has ever published. So if you missed it the first time, why not check it out now.
Creating a 3d character that is equipped to be animated is one of the most challenging things you can do in CG, and to make matters worse, it has always been equally challenging to find any comprehensive tutorials on the entire workflow. Well not any more! In this 7 video long, intermediate to advanced level tutorial series, professional Blender artist, Karan Shah, will walk you through the complete creation process of a ready to animate video game character. From modeling, to UVs and texturing, to adding the final mesh topology for deformation, this series is a must see for any Blender character artist!
This tutorial is Day 1 in a series – Go to Day 2, Day 3
Video 1: The Body
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Note: click the ‘Monitor’ icon to view tutorial in full-screen HD.
Video 2: The Head
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Note: click the ‘Monitor’ icon to view tutorial in full-screen HD.
Video 3: The Hands
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Note: click the ‘Monitor’ icon to view tutorial in full-screen HD.
This tutorial is Day 1 in a series – Go to Day 2, Day 3
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Looks great =D
Yes!!! This is amazing! You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for a tutorial on this. What about rigging and animation?
wheres the refernce image for this?
awesome
Thanks for the tutorial.Unable to find ref image to follow the part1.
Please provide link to download ref image.
Same, I’ve waited so long for a tut like this. Awesome!!!!
awesome
great tutorial Mr. Shah,
i realy like the look of the character and it’s coloring!
followed both videos here so I’m excited to see the rest of the process:)
Thx for your tutorias and the effort that you put into blenducation!!
Best regards!
Looks nice, I’m gonna try it out.
Thank you all for appreciating my work.
Here is the download link for the reference – http://www.files-cashout.com/download.php?file=3934
Mr.Shah,
Thanks for providing Ref image link.
I already modeled and blocked character body part1 after downloading ref image.
Wow! Thanks so much! ^^
I realy like to draaw manga!
And now i want to improve my skil to 3D modeling! ^^
Thanks so much for the tutorial!
Hello,
this Video-Tutorials is very Good
I cannot download the ref images, it says my IP has been logged for anti-fraud…
here is the link – http://img2.imageshack.us/img2/5551/reference.jpg
it is broken
Thank you Karan!
Karan, thanks for this tutorial! Can you tell a place where we can to get more reference images such like yours?
Best regards!
it cool,but is difficult for first time,
great tuts Mr. Shah but i look your final preview image, the eyes not use sphere how i can animate the eyes? or I just animate texture for wink the eyes.
Best regards!
where is the video for day2???
Follow the link that says “Go to day 2″…
Wait, wait!! How did you sphereize the (head) cube after subdividing?
Ctrl + Shift + S, and just move the mouse
thanx a lot
WOW!!! THANKS FOR THE TUT!!!
what do you press in head film 45 sec please tell me
right, i dont understand how could you move the mouth in headvideo at 45 sec
ps: im using cinema4D so can you tell me the name of the command?i use extrude command but i can only move the selected area!
Please help :p
Great job man ;D
Nice. Thank you.
In video 2 to shape the head spherical it is control-shift s
This is something i’ve been looking fro, thanks for the graet work!
As a beginning animator, (and someone almost totally new to Blender) I can actually understand this! Let’s hope I end up with a model that’s useful.
Cheers – can’t wait for days 3-7.
how can you get the cylinders not to follow each other.
woohoo! just found this! can’t wait to watch and follow ur tutorials Mr. Shah!! THANK YOU VERY MUCH! keep up the good work!
damn i got lost on adding the torso to the body from the 2 legs, and edge looping. good tutorial though, its a nice anime character
THANKS! been waitin for a tutorial on this for a LONG time!
Great set of tuts Karan, been looking for detailed ones since a long time :)
My question is the same as Arn Sweatman’s above, how did you turn the cube into a sphere after having subdivided it? The SHIFT+S key-combo doesn’t appear to have the same affect on my copy of Blender as it does in Karan’s video. I’m not sure what the problem is, but I just don’t see how to make the flipping cube spherical like that, save for pressing the smooth button a bunch of times.
But, that’s the biggest problem I have with following Karan’s tutorial, it appears that there’s alot that he assumes that the audience already knows. So, some of us – such as myself – end up getting lost while trying to follow his videos.
I see that no one answered arn’s message since October 31 so I’m not entirely sure anyone will answer mine, but in case someone does I’d appreciate it.
I’m not a Blender user myself, so I’m afraid I won’t be able to answer your question, but Karan did do an introduction to Blender tut that preceded this one…which is also to the reason he assumes that the audience already knows certain things. Perhaps that tutorial might be of some assistance:) http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/3d-art/a-detailed-overview-of-the-blender-interface/
Shift+S Key Combo in my version of Blender 2.54 Beta only brings up the menu for cursor location.
I’ll try making the head with a UV sphere wish me luck lol!
Karen if you read this ….Might be nice to see this Tut done in blender 2.54.
Thanks for you Tut
Cheers
Harley
Congatulations, for the tutorial!!! :D
hi superb. great tuts. thank u very much.
I’m french and i’m so happy. Blender is so difficult to understand.
MMMMMMMerci (TTTTTTThank you very very very much!)
Very good tutoriel guy.. I wish you to continue making tuto like this..
Thanks but couldn’t follow you. You missed to many steps so moving on
Lost you at add modifier DO CLIPPING somehow you made the screen on the left of your character go to some 3d mode and you decided not to tell your students, HOW FRUSTRATING…there are very very few good tutorials to teach step by step 3D modeling…The biggest mistake that people do when they post a tutorial is ASSUME that their students know all the steps. If this was the case, why would we try and follow a tutorial. No matter how many times I went back to try and duplicate what you did, I couldn’t so I rate your tutorial 2/10. Sorry you failed at this. Someday I will learn this Blender Stuff and I will do a tutorial, I will SPEAK CLEARLY,SPEAK SLOW, and most important NEVER EVER LEAVE OUT A STEP…EVER
Not all tutorials can be geared towards absolute beginners. The reason that it is assumed that anyone watching this tutorial knows the basics of the Blender interface is because this is and Intermediate/ Advanced level tutorial (as it says in the tutorial description). If you are a beginner, then I recommend you watch the tutorial titled “Introduction to Blender: a Detailed Overview of the Blender Interface”, also by Karan (the author of this tut), and then perhaps you might not find this tutorial to be so frustrating.
Hi. I’m really glad that there is a tutorial for this. Thank you. ^^
I haven’t got far into the tutorial yet but I’m a little lost as what to do in the first tutorial: body at 1:27. (As you can tell I’m a beginner)
I can’t find out how you have moved the cylinder (and the center thing) on the right but the one on the left hasn’t moved.
Also, when you moved the cylinder on the right screen to the other part of the image (2:16 – still first tutorial) without the other one moving. :s
Please help.
You can create also create the head this way: (if shift-S doesn’t work for you)
1- Add Cube
2- In the Buttons Panel, Go to Editing (F9).
3- In the Multires Tab, Press Add Multires
4- Press on Add Level twice
awesome – simply awesome – 10/10 – all done with open source software – a modelled this character using the ref images a screeshot in the vid, rigged and animated some basic movements and then appended the model into a game a was working on – AWesoME – dude – you rock
Gee thanks man. the best character tutorial I’ve seen ever. I mean it, the BEST.
Firstly, thanks for posting this! It really helped me out A LOT, but I’m having a big problem in doing the head: After I subdivide the cube, I can’t make it into a sphere, I press Shift+S as you say, but a “Snap” menu appears instead. Do you know what am I doing wrong? or is it because of my version (2.49b)?
How do you make your image the master, when you are working on the head, every time I create the cube it mirrors it.
I can’t find the the reference image :(
Hi Paul,
The reference image can be found at this link : http://img2.imageshack.us/img2/5551/reference.jpg
Good luck with the tutorial!
Matt
Thank you very much :D
Man, I can’t do it T_T
Triangles! Please tell me you get rid of the triangles in the mouth and hands before anything else!
It’s common knowledge to have no triangles in a mesh such as this. Why do you leave them in? I was waiting for half of this ‘day’ for you to sort them out, yet you never.
I’m very surprised that no one else has caught on to this!
Also, might be somewhat easier to extrude the arms and head from the torso/body mesh instead of creating seperate objects and then linking them =]
Muchas gracias!!! , thank you very much!!! , Maraming salamat sa inyo!!!, Arigato gozai masu.
thank you very much!!!
How did you make the body smooth right before you added the feet? Right around 16:42 in the first video?
I have a problem after using loop cut to add more vertices it adds and duplicate the vertices each time I
extrude, so it ends creating multiple faces at the same place and I had to erase them manually
why is that?