BLENDER
SCULPT FAN ART IN BLENDER
Practical tips and tutorials from pro artists to improve your CG skills
Follow these steps and learn techniques for sculpting characters in Blender with polygon modelling
There are many ways to model and sculpt in 3D, and often an artist will just start sculpting and have no regard for the underlying topology. At the end of the session it is fairly routine now to retopologise those models and then move onto UV and texturing. You can approach this in a different way, and that is to use polygon modelling tools at the start but use the sculpting tools inside Blender alongside them.
You can use basic sculpting tools like Grab, Move, Flatten, Smooth and Inflate while you are working on a very detailed, fairly low-polygon model. This can be quite useful when you’re doing character work and you know the character you are going to make. Switching back and forth between modelling and sculpting is very simple and after a while you don’t notice that you’re doing it – it all becomes part of one seamless creation process and Blender has got this down to a fine art.
Add to that the amazing realtime render engine Eevee and speciality sculpting tools like the Pose tool, and you have a very powerful set of features that make Blender a must-have creation program. Let’s take a look at making some fan art.
DOWNLOAD YOUR RESOURCES
For all the assets you need go to
https://bit.ly/3D-world-luca
AUTHOR
Glen Southern Glen runs SouthernGFX, a small Cheshire-based studio specialising in character and creature design. He has been using and training ZBrush in the UK for over 15 years.
www.southerngfx.co.uk
01 S
TART WITH A CUBE
AND MIRROR IT
The plan for this project is to block out an entire character with basic polygon modelling, and then continue on with the full range of sculpting tools available in Blender.
To start, switch to Edit mode (top left) and make sure you are in the Edge mode. Look for the Loop Cut tool down the left-hand side and split the default cube in half down the centre. Now select all the faces on the left-hand side of the cube and use X to delete them.