3D modeling experimentation

 In this blog post I will show my software experimentation for the 3D model. I decided to experiment by simply creating a low poly human structure. Low poly means that there are not many vertices used for the structure.  I decided to make it as simple as possible and it still took me a lot of time. That kind of gave me an idea, how much time I will need to spend on the actual model. 

For this experimentation, I have followed some instructions from this youtube tutorial. I have done this 3D modeling in Blender. 

I started working on the default cube and started with the character's head. For that I needed to create a grid on this cube, so I could shape it the way I wanted. To create cuts I had to click ctrl+R. In the image above, it is shown how a cut works. It cuts through all the surfaces. After cutting it in half, I have deleted half of the cube. I have deleted it, so I could have used a modifier to mirror everything I am doing on the other side of the cube, to make it symmetrical. 

These are all the different modifiers available in Blender. I only know a few of them. I used Mirror in this case, to mirror the side I was working on. Modifiers can really help with the work but they can be confusing at first. I find youtube tutorials very helpful in understanding what each of them does. 

After choosing the modifier, I could have gotten to work. 

I have started by shaping the head. I was shaping, not by sculpting but by simply editing the mesh. I was grabbing and moving vertices to kind of create a design I wanted to work with. To grab a vertex I needed to press G and then I could move it. If I wanted to move it along one of the axises, I needed to for example click: G + Y. That let me move the vertex along Y axis. As I mentioned in my previous posts, in a 3D plane, there are 3 axises. Each one of them has a name. In this software, they all also have a color. Blue is the Z axis, green is the Y axis and red is the X axis. When doing something in spacial geometry, that spacial imagination is very important to understand how moving vertices along axises works. 

Next, I was learning how to extrude surfaces in Blender. To extrude surfaces means pretty much to pull out. In the image above, I have extruded the neck along the Z axis. This created another set of vertices for me to work on. As seen above, I do not have to work simply just on vertices, but I can work on surfaces or edges. To extrude I needed to click E and drag the surface I wanted to pull out. 

I continued extruding elements and creating more and more vertices for me to work on. I have been scaling up and down edges by clicking S and I have been grabbing and moving vertices to create what I had in mind. 

I have created really long arms so I could later on form an elbow on them and a hand. I was forming it all by simply cutting the volumes using ctrl+R and choosing which way I want the cut to go through. Then the edges I have created I was scaling and manipulating so it was looking just like I planned. 

When I was happy with the arms, I have extruded the legs and started creating calves and knees. I also created a waist and hips of the character. It was all created in the edit mode rather than in sculpting. If I started sculpting, the character would no longer be low poly, because sculpting immediately adds a lot of vertices. The more vertices the heavier the file is and my computer likes to shut down blender if the file is too heavy. It it why I am working on low poly characters right now. Lastly I have extruded the feet from the legs and the low poly character was done. 

Lastly, I have created a blue material to color my entire human-like structure in blue so it would contrast the background more. 

This is the finished piece. It has taken a few hours of my time but now I know how the software really works and how I should approach creating my character.