How to create your own custom character in Blender 3.0

What is Blender ?

Blender is a popular program because it’s free but also robust, making its 3D modeling tools accessible to anyone who wants to learn.

That said, the sheer amount of options and functions available in Blender can overwhelm you if you’re just starting to learn character modeling. But the Blender learning community is extensive, supportive, and just as curious about teasing out the program’s best features as you are. That means there’s a huge wealth of tutorials that you can go through at your own pace. It’s the perfect starting point for becoming an expert in 3D character modeling without breaking the bank or going insane.

In the following, we’ve put together a basic tutorial on Blender 3.0 character modeling so that you can jump right in, either as a total beginner or as a more experienced user who wants to compare their own process.

There are several steps to creating a 3D character in Blender 3.0. These take you from constructing a basic framework that will be the foundation for everything else to adding texture and color shading for that final touch of realism. Keep reading to find out how to go from a cube to your own creation!

Step 1 : Find a reference image or make one

For the purpose of this tutorial, I will be using a reference image from google, feel free to choose your own or follow with me

Step 2 : Start with an empty project

Once you have loaded up a blender project, select the camera object and light that are loaded up when the project, So select all of them by clicking and dragging with the mouse and press X on the keyboard to delete.

Step 3 : Add the image to the blender project

Press Shift A to add our reference image as shown below

Once the image is imported into the project, select the image then press the N key on the keyboard, and the Transform panel will pop up on the right hand side of the screen next to the scene collection.

Make Sure that all the rotations are set to 0 degrees, and the orientation of the viewport is pointing down on the image [simply click on the blue z button] as shown below.

Step 4 : Modeling the body

Here is where this gets interesting, and probably where it will take you the most amount of time in this tutorial, the modeling of the body.

There is no need to do anything the hard way, perfection is not the goal here, we just need to get something that looks as almost 80-90% similar in shape.

And if you know blender, you probably know that this software is an open source one meaning that developers and artists are continously building tools to facilitate the process of modeling and 3D creation in general.

Thus for these reasons we will use the following modifiers that are built in with blender to do so.

First we will begin by adding a plane simply left mouse click and add the plane as shown below

Then we have to go to the edit mode by selecting the plane and hitting the tab key on the keyboard, Once we are in the edit mode we have to make sure that all the vertices are selected, by pressing the A key, then lastly the M key to merge all the vertices into one at the center [as shown below].

Once you have completed the steps above you should see a dot on top of our reference image.

Next exit edit mode by pressing the tab key again which should return you to the object mode again.

Then go over to the wrench looking tab on the right had side and select it, which should take you to the modifiers tab, click the add modifier dropdown and select the Skin and Sub-surface division modifiers.

You should now see a sphere appear, click on the image and press the G key to move the image followed by the X key, to lock the movement of the image to the x-axis and move it to the rigth to position the image under the sphere like so :

Next we will start extruding the verticies to fit the shape.

its hard to explain, the next step because there is not a defined set of of specific step that will result in the following result however I will try my best.

Select the shape and go hit the tab key and enter edit mode then start extruding the vertix by pressing E key and Y key to lock the extrution to the y-axis.

Please watch the following tutorials to get a sense, of how to navigate around blender and use the skin modifier if I am not making sense right now.

• How to use the Skin Modifier
• How to navigate in blender environment

To summerize, using extuding by pushing and pulling the vertices along different axises we get the following:

Close enough!

Step 5 : Add armature to pose our character and refine our model

Select the body and go over to the modifier tab, and click on the create armature button under the skin modifer then apply the skin and sub-surface division modifiers [DONT APPLY THE ARMATURE MODIFIER]

Now you can select the armature and go to the top left to enter pose mode, you will notice that you can move your character now.

Step 6 : Sculpting the character to fit the image

Click the Sculpting mode that is present on the top of the screen, where it will allow us to manipulate the mesh to fit our needs.

This part is also advanced and if you are just starting out then the following link should be helpful

• How to Scult in Blender

basically I use the follwing tools inside the sculpting mode:

They work like so the Smooth tool, as the name represent smoothes edge to make the model more round and less all over the place

The Inflate tool adds volume to the areas selected.

The Elastic Deform tool allows you to move selected parts of the mesh around.

So after we do our modification we end up with the following:

There you go, You just made your first in blender!

Final thoughts: This tutorial is meant for advanced blender users, However if you take the time, to learn this with patience its possible to complete it as a begginer, I will be creating a youtube video to clarify all the steps that couldn't be explained with simply pictures and words.