Blender 3d Character Models
Hi allthis is a general question about modeling and posing miniature characters which I would like to then have 3D printed using a commercial service.For example check out this slideshow on BBC website:Anybody doing something like this? Is it like normal character modeling or is the process somehow different? Is it low poly modeling or are extra steps required.I am assuming that it can be quite basic because the models will be quite small so i won’t need to do intricate details. Is this right?I am just getting started with Blender (did two basic courses on ) and character modeling is next.Also, any tips on 3D printing Blender models? I know a bit about doing it from Photoshop CC but can I do this some other way.I’m still a beginner so sorry if this is all sounding a bit vague.Any help would be much appreciatedthanksDavid. I’m a professional character artist/product designer in the hobby wargaming industry, so I’ll try to answer your questions and give you a few pointers. To do this on a production scale, I find ZBrush to be essential for my work, and use Blender as my main supplementary poly modeling tool.
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As a beginner, though, I think Blender could definitely be used to create a 3d-print ready miniature from start-to-finish, but you might have to translate some of my ZBrush steps into Blender.A primary reason I do not bother creating fully-detailed print models in Blender is that VBOs are not yet implented in Edit Mode, so Blender is too slow to properly edit/boolean very heavy (multi-million poly) models. It can manage a couple million polys at a time in Sculpt mode, but that doesn’t always cover my needs. You may find that you do not need to create insanely detailed models, though, in which case Blender may be enough. One very important difference between video game/film character modeling and 3d-print character modeling is that a 3d-print character model cannot benefit from visual tricks like smooth shading, baking normal maps to a low-poly retopologised model, subdividing only during renders, etc. All the detail that you wish to be present in your printed 3d model, MUST be present in the geometry itself, and that means a very detailed, organic 3d-print model is likely to be far, far heavier, geometrically, than other kinds of model. A high-resolution character in a video game might be 10-15k polys after retopology.
A very detailed 3d print character might be 20-30million polys prior to decimation, and 500k-1M polys when sent to the printer.To answer your question about process, there are a lot of parallels between character modelling for video games and 3d print in the early stages, but they diverge later in the process in ways that I find can give video game character artists a lot of grief in their first attempts at modeling for 3d print. I’m a total amateur with Blender and I’m working on a tabletop miniature for a DnD character. This is my very first character model. I’ve modeled the various elements of the mini as separate objects and I’m at the point where I now need to combine them into a single mesh. The boolean operations available in blender are not giving me the results I want and I’m wondering if there is any way to salvage the work I’ve done and ultimately print this character. Do I need another program to run these booleans or do I need to start over completely?
Any advice would be much appreciated. I can’t upload the file because I’m a new user but I would love it if you could take a look at it.
If you want to upload your model to Dropbox (etc), you can pm a link and I’ll have a look if you like. So far, your workflow of modelling individual objects for your miniature separately is definitely what I would recommend, however, as you’ve seen, Blender isn’t necessarily going to be happy when you go to boolean hundreds of thousands of polys. There are various 3rd party addons for Blender now that have different boolean code to what is available in stock Blender, but to be honest, I’ve never attempted to use any these different solutions for boolean operations with such dense meshes. In short, I’m not aware of a “Blender Only” solution to this issue at the present time. If you’ve got access to ZBrush, that is the very best solution as versions 2.8 and 2018 introduced proper booleans to Blender that are absolutely the most capable boolean features I’ve ever encountered it can boolean meshes with tens-of-millions of polygons without batting an eyelid, and do it in seconds.
This was a total game-changer for my industry. But there are other solutions. STL editing software such as Autodesk Netfabb (requires subscription) allows you to perform boolean operations on multi-“shell” objects (“shell” is just the STL term for isolated geometric body), which will make everything nice and 3d-print-ready. But, if you’re not looking to create a miniature of a professional-grade standard, and are just looking to 3d Print the object for your own use, this entire process may be unneccessary. Many/most 3d printers today can print multi-shelled objects, as can most slicing software (the tools the 3d printers use to “slice” STL objects into printable layers to send to the printer) for your purposes, this may be “good enough”.To quickly answer your other question - I do not have a workflow for creating miniatures that relies solely on Blender. However, I do use it for almost every miniature I make in concert with ZBrush.
ZBrush is my main tool, and I use the “GoB” plugin to bounce meshes back and forth from Blender. Anything that requires traditional box modeling, subD modeling, mesh repairs, or retopology, I usually do in Blender. Fantom yase 2 serial ports. Anything that requires CAD precision, I do in a CAD software like Fusion 360. For STL work, I use Netfabb. Everything else (about 60-70% of any given model) I do in ZBrush.
I could probably accomplish most of these things in Blender if put to the test, but I do this for a living and time is money, so I use the most efficient tools available to me for various tasks.Best, Jonny.