Do you work from scratch or can you somehow use a picture as a basis for the model? I began learning the basics of blender several months ago, gave up due to its immense complexity, but I am again trying to learn the program. I guess I’m basically a n00b all over again. I really want to learn how to model people though.
Both. You can put a background image in each of three 3D windows (front side and top views) of the object you want to trace (‘rotoscope’ if you feel like searching) by going to View >> View Background Image.
The 3D mesh you basically start from scratch using a plane and extruding or a plane, then delete 3 verts and extrude edges and fill them in later with faces.
Look in the first link in my sig in the Modelling section for Torq’s “Better Face Tutorial” to see how.
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It’s all coming back to me now…
Thanks for the help! I’m gonna bookmark that thread.
Hey ipodrules.
Hope I’m not letting you down by responding without any advice… I know in topics like these I constantly watch them for some expert who can answer my question. That won’t be me though, as I’m struggling with similar problems.
Blender appears to be a very powerful program, and I’ve been browsing these forums in awe at what some people have made. But whenever I try to work in the program myself, I end up with things like this:
Granted, that was the very first thing I ever even attempted in the program, after learning only the first basic functions (Extrude, Add Objects, Grab, Scale, and… Render %| ).
But as to your question, I would say that there are at least several people here who draw their designs before modeling them. An example is shadowman99’s Female Sith project (nudity):
https://blenderartists.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=55073
Real life pictures could be used as well, of course.
For learning the problem, I suggest the following:
Blender Documentation:
http://download.blender.org/documentation/htmlI/
–> I’m still going through the majority of this, but I’ve followed the “Gus” tutorial, and it is very helpful so far. I’ve had no problems following it, and it has helped me understand several new techniques (like textures!). It’s rather long, but it has a ton of useful information, and is a good thing to have.
Blender Hotkeys:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_HotKeys/All
–> I don’t know whether or not this is the complete list, but I find it very helpful when watching video tutorials. Simply pause the video if you don’t recognize a term, the do a search on this page to find it. It became very helpful to me when I tried a tutorial that used the Knife tool.
Blender Wikibook:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro
–> This is a mixed bag, because what it has is very helpful, but not everything is complete… It has several tutorials within it, but not all of them are completed, which makes it difficult for a new user to follow. Still, there is valuable information for the very beginner, and (I assume), helpful information for the advanced user as well.
Blender Video Tutorials:
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Video_Tutorials.396.0.html
–> There are many videos available through the main Blender homepage, and alot of them are really helpful. I also find it helpful to watch other people as they model, though I haven’t found quite as many videos like that.
----> Greybeard’s Video tutorials (http://www.ibiblio.org/bvidtute/) has been pretty helpful, and I enjoyed watching the different videos of a person actually modeling, rather than explaining the interface.
Massive Wikipedia Tutorial List:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Tutorial_Links_List
–> Of course, if you want a massive amount of links, then this has you covered. It’s nicely organized as well, so no worries about not finding what you’re looking for. I have yet to check out any of these, so I don’t know what kind of quality they are, but I’m sure there is something to learn from each one.
Hope that you find these resources helpful, and I hope that you continue in your efforts! I know it can be discouraging because of the complexity of such images, but I think that it is obviously worth it. When you get good though, don’t forget to help out others who are in the situation you are now! That’s what makes communities work, after all. 8)
Best of luck to ya; enjoy yourself!
ive been in the position of trying to learn blender real hard but giving up(twice!)… till i started watching video tutorials , reading these forums, and actually started to learn about blender.
https://blenderartists.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=31669 has tons of video tutorials also.
But, try to play with hotkeys like ‘s’ for scaling, etc… and dont feel scared to click the buttons to see what they do.
Any questions at all, ask here in the blender general section. If you ask the question correctly, theres about a 98% chance youl get a response… assuming its related to blender. lol