I’m fairly new to blender. While I kind of start getting the hang of the software I’ve been struggling with fingers, toes, and the head. Is there a trick to learning to model these body parts?
Is it okay to use premade model hand, feet, and heads as model references?
In order to make body parts such as hands, head, faces etc. you need to start to learn about a “Sculpting” in Blender. There’s a various video tutorials about that on YouTube. You can start by watching very simple ones like “how to make a low poly character” or “how to make a simple bunny”.
Sculpting, if in a few words, is a very huge topic to discuss about. There’s a lot of tricks, ways to how to do this or that. So all I can say is be patient and don’t give up.
There’s come official documentation about sculpting:
Sure - thats ok. You can also just attach them on your model and use them… Just like the professionals do.
A question - how will you know its a good model you are referencing ???
Install DAZ and use those body parts. Or models from some other app. Do not grab freebies and expect them to be good.
Is there a trick? Practice, practice, practice. Study, study, study. Loops and quads.
Google topology reference. Or search those 2 words in this sites search tool.
There are many reference images on the web. Many of the good ones are probably here already.
Watch some retopology videos at 1/4 speed.
Hi again Josh.
You mean attach them to your model?
Import the parts of a model to dissect. Or append from another .blend file.Trim to what is needed. Join the part to the mesh you are working on - select both and Ctrl-J (Object Menu > Join).
Once they are a single mesh move the part into place - rotate, scale etc… Then fill or bridge loops the gap, or merge the points if they overlap. Remember that r,r -press rotate twice, gives you a trackball motion so you can rotate in all directions. Great for lining up things.
If you never appended before. You can use append - click on a .blend file in the file browser window and go INTO the other blend file to grab the collection / mesh / materials…
Ears are horrible to make. Lots of folk just copy the ones they already have.
It makes zero sense to keep making the same things over and over again.
Whats hard? Depends on the artist.
It is the same things you are having a hard time with - head, hands, feet.
I can do hands and feet easy but my faces are terrible. lol.
Places like the shoulder seem easy until you start animating. Then you find where you need to add a loop or two to stop the stretching. You have to learn to model for the stretching, not just for the shape.
It takes years to learn.
To be honest… I prefer to use one male and one female model that are rigged and use shapekeys (and altering the armature) to change it to different characters. I have seen movies use a similar method as me - one model is used for all their characters.
You can use sculpting as a base then do a retopology, but it’s also possible to model the hand right away.
As for reusing models, my advice is to learn a bit how to model those unless it’s really a fraction of what you’re trying to do and learning how to model these get’s a lots in your way.
Once you know the basics of modeling it’s ok to reuse parts, and you’ll probably be much more comfortable with adapting them to your needs.
Say, you’re modeling a character it might be good to know at least a bit how it’s done before starting to reuse stuff , but that’s just my POV
For the hands :
And this one covers a whole character, it’s a bit outdated but quite indepth :
modeling the human body is quite difficult and take some time to master, it’s ok to struggle a bit on these.
Be less new. Or to put it another way, right now they look bad because you’re new. They’re supposed to, and everyone who does characters experiences this. With practice you’ll get better, but expect it to take some time. Until then, it’s a struggle. It’s frustrating. you’re not doing something wrong, you’re just not experienced yet. We’ve all been there.
But since that’s not helpful for improving: here are some character modeling tutorial suggestions that could potentially help you improve on those areas: Ponder Studios, the Blenderella course creator, has uploaded the Blenderella tutorial on her own channel (I’d put it on x0.25 speed during the timelapses because they’re FAST and it’s hard to follow). CGCookie’s female character modeling series isn’t in a neat little playlist but I think it might be easier to follow, there’s also a face topology breakdown here. You can find both of Dikko’s tutorial series here, and there’s also this series by Tomcat , which I’ve seen people get good results doing.