[ENDED] BC1-1801 – January Class Homepage – Getting Started with 3D Modeling & Blender

[Grady Pruitt]

BC1-1801 Week 3 Homework Submission (pt 2)

For whatever reason, I don’t think I’ve ever done this exercise, but it was still fun to do.  I could probably spend another couple of hours working on him, but he’s starting to take shape (though I just realized I forgot the hands 😀 )

As I was working on this, I noticed something that you may have run into and wondered what to do about it.  There were times when I was rotating around a part and it seemed to “disappear”, but when I would pull back a little, it was there again.  This is actually not a bug, but rather what you’re experiencing is called “clipping”.  Blender clips very close and very far because if we were to truly have an “infinite” world, render times would be WAY longer than they are. So to keep things manageable, it “clips” the extremes.  However, if you happen to be finding that a given extreme is happening to “quickly” for you, you can adjust this. It’s in the “n” properties panel (the one that comes up on the right when you press the N key) under View. By default, blender clips anything closer than 1/10th of a blender unit or further than 1000. This is fine for most projects, but changing either of these will adjust at what point blender starts clipping. So if you need more when you’re close in, just change it to 0.01 for example, and you can then zoom in that much closer before it starts clipping.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that while you can use the skin modifier to create a basemesh, you can also use the techniques from the last couple of weeks and sometimes get even closer. Or better yet, combine the skin modifier with the basic primitives and/or mesh modeling we did last week.  There’s an add-on called “Bool Tool” that will add another tool set to the Tools tab that will allow you to “Boolean” your objects together. It works just like the Boolean modifier, but instead of having to do it on one object at a time, it can work on multiple objects at once.  

Before using it, I’d recommend applying at least your scale and make sure your normals are facing the right way, but I find it helpful to create a basemesh just as fast and/or slightly closer than just the skin modifier can get you.  (And if you ever watch any ZBrush sculpting, this is pretty close to how they can join shapes as well.) Once you have joined your objects, a little inflate and smoothing can help the transitions between pieces.

(This is also a function that is in another tool I like called Sculpt Tools UI, which Kent talks about in some of his other course.  Some of the other functions of that particular tool aren’t in Blender that I’m aware of, though.)

My point in sharing this, though, is that there are several ways to come up with a basemesh, whether it be from the skin modifier, mesh modeling the base, or mesh modeling/primitive/basemesh joining.  Find the workflow that works for you!

[Jere Haapaharju]

Lovely scene you got there. What king of creature lives in that acorn-house? 😀 Also good job with the primitives, very pure shapes

[Jere Haapaharju]

Maybe try to smooth out some of that rugged area in the right eye and get some shape in the root of the horns with crease brush. Overall it seems successful sculpt for me with just a small amount of finishing touch needed

[Grady Pruitt]

BC1-1801 Week 3 Homework Submission (Part 3)

One final piece to round out week 3 for me.. .This is one I did as a “30 minute” exercise to help show that it doesn’t take a lot of detail to start seeing the shape come together. There’s still a lot of work for this to be a “completed” piece to get the anatomy right and to get it to look more like a fox, but considering this is only about 30 minutes of sculpting starting from an icosphere,  (And about 15-20 minutes coloring it after) I think this turned out pretty well.  The coloring definitely helps in this particular case, because without the coloring, you might thing it closer to a wolf or dog. I think I might work some more on this one later.  (This also does help to show why you want to retopolize.. If you look, you can see how messy the coloring is. With a proper mesh that can be UV unwrapped, you can get much better results.)

[Katerina Novakova]

One thing to add to the clipping issue that @gradyp mentioned: if you make any changes in the N panel, you also want to update the values in your Camera settings (select the Camera object, go to Object Data tab and you’ll see it in the “Lens” section). Otherwise you might end up with Viewport looking OK and nothing being displayed in the render. Happened to a friend of mine. Ahem, cough :-).

[Kent Trammell]

Thanks for sharing this @gradyp. Very motivational! Makes me want to dig back into all the projects I gave up on over the years.

Which artists do you watch on twitch?

[Kent Trammell]

This looks really good @deadly_cicada! You seemed to get the hang of sculpting pretty quick. The one note I have is that Melvin’s left leg is half the thickness of the right. But overall, great stuff!

It’s an A for quality and effort but a C for completeness.

Thanks for the encouragement at the end! That’s gold. 

[Kent Trammell]

Excellent work @paulhaynes1955. Is this your first head sculpt? If so, it’s a great first time 👍

Your primitives are really strong too. Only crit is that the sides of the cube are a little messy when they could be smooth and flat. But the shapes of all 3 are spot on!

Feels like you could have spent a little more time with Melvin. It’s pretty good overall, but it’s a little lumpy and the arm is unfinished.

Still this week you’ve earned an A no doubt 👏

[motsu]

BC1-1801 Week 3 Homework Submission

 3: Primitive-2

Again !

The left small one is that I noticed it would be very small and gave up.

But I never give up to improve of my Blender skill… and surprised the lead of Wacom-Pen by its speedy shortening 🙂

[Kent Trammell]

I agree that the unified theme is a great touch. You primitives are good but a little mush/bumpy. The spider is a cool idea! Spiders give me the creeps as does your sculpt, so good job there 😅 The legs are bit lumpy and inconsistent in thickness.

Melvin is your strongest imo. Feels the most polished. It maybe suffers a little from single-angle-favor, meaning it looks great from the front and ok from other angles.

Still those are minor notes. Definitely an A this week!

[Kent Trammell]

Good advice from @gradyp. You did awesome this week @ljsstudio! It looks like you picked up sculpting quite well. Might be the best Melvin I’ve seen so far 👍

Solid work on your primitives as well. I forget how cumbersome it can be to get used to dyntopo settings. I’m a broken record, but practice will develop the familiarity till it’s second nature.

I hate to do it: This is an easy A for quality but B for completeness 😕 #feelsbadman

[Kent Trammell]

“only 2 sculpts…” with textures and lighting! Lol great work @shiennar. Your Melvin is fantastic. One of the best I’ve seen period. Your primitives are super polished. Top 3 I’ve seen this week. And what’s not to love about your acorn house and mushroom? You’ve got skillz 😎 And you’re patient with polishing.

A+ work for sure 👏

[Kent Trammell]

I agree with @swikni – Good sculpt overall, just in need of a little TLC. There’s a big lump under his left arm-pit area, the eyes could use more definition (small detail size [more polygons] and subdivide edges method for details/creasing).

Overall though, the shape of the character is good aside from the backside being too flat. Plump it out to secure a the general roundness.

I’ve recorded your primitive submission and this guy, which means an A for effort/quality but a B for completeness.

[Kent Trammell]

What @arkesh and @gradyp said 👌

[Kent Trammell]

Oops, already gave you a B for incompleteness. Updating that to an A – nice job!

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