Im new here. Excited to be starting using blender and creating amazing stuff.
I was wondering about the best way to create animation. Is that through scultping or modeling? I have modeled a basic character so far and Im stuck on the hair area. I want to create moving hair so the animation looks natural. I came across a lot of tutorials but they were all about sculpting. Also when it comes to the clothing. Can someone please explain what will give me the most realistic effect when it comes to creating the hair and the clothes ?
…well… years of experience… and no i’m making no fun of you… you have to follow multiple tutorials about different topics to achieve “realism”… that’s the reason why artist do have to learn so long and are not cheap (and are not replaceable… ).
So for a start you may have to elaborate this to get a more suited answer… because the next answer would be : it depends…
And so maybe you just have to start a bit less AAA class ??
For animation, you’ll want to end up with a mesh with good topology - that is, you want the edges of your mesh arranged in such away that the mesh will bend nicely when you animate it. Getting good at this takes time and practice.
Sculpting does not produce good topology, but it is a very good method for getting detailed, organic-looking shapes. The way people usually do it is that they’ll make a sculpt (with bad topology but good shapes), and then do retopology: creating a simper mesh with better topology on top of the sculpt. This is a time-consuming process, but other than knowing what the topology should look like, it’s not difficult as such.
Alternatively, you can simply model your character from scratch without sculpting. This is a perfectly fine workflow for less realistic characters, and if you’re going for a lowpoly style, it’s the way it’s done. So it all depends on what end result you’re going for.
Once you have your mesh, with good topology and all that, you’ll need to rig and skin it. This is the process of creating an armature - essentially a skeleton - for the mesh, and then telling each vertex which bones it should follow - so for example, the vertices in the arms only follow the arm bones, and ignore the leg bones. If you search for tutorials on rigging in Blender, they usually include skinning as well.
I’d say use modeling for character bodies. You can add extra sculpted details later using Multires modifier and Sculpt mode. Multires can function afer deformation modifiers (such as Armature) in the stack, and can be turned off in viewport to keep editor performance high
When it comes to realistic clothing and hair specifically, I’d say look into physical cloth simulation and hair generators (such as Blender’s particle hair and fur). You can make clothing and hair purely by modeling, but it’ll be hard to make them look realistic, and almost impossible - to make them move in realistic way
(About the very last video, I am not sure if the new hair system already supports physics. Old particle hair did)
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