Character Modeling: Creating a Cartoon-Style Groundhog – Part 03

by David Ward

Hello and welcome to part 3 of the this character modeling tutorial series for Blender 2.6!

This character modeling tutorial series is on modeling a cartoon, ground hog character in Blender 2.6. In this tutorial David Ward takes you through the complete process of creating a cartoon character model, including all the steps, hotkeys, tools and more. A few topics and tools covered include: box modeling, mesh editing, proportional editing tool, mirror modifier, extrude, particle fur, and much more.

What is covered

In part 03 of this character modeling tutorial for Blender 2.61, tweak a few parts of the model and then procede to UV unwrap our character, create a particle system for the fur, comb the particles for the style we want, and then set up the lighting and rendering in order to render the particles nicely as fur.

Here is a preview of the final result from this section of our cartoon, groundhog character modeling tutorial series:

Character Modeling a Cartoon Ground Hog

 

Up Next

The fourth part of this character modeling tutorial series will cover setting up a animation rig for the ground hog by using the Rigify add-on

Creating a Ground Hog<

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Discussion

48 Responses to “Character Modeling: Creating a Cartoon-Style Groundhog – Part 03”
  1. Ivan Bukhantsov
    Posts: 3

    first….

    #
    1
     Jan 27, 2012 at 2:12 pm
    • Ivan Bukhantsov
      Posts: 3

      Nice tutorial! I was wondering if you could rig this, make a scene, animate and render out a short clip explaining everything along the way. It may be fun to include that monkey you posted on Youtube.

      Thanks for all of the awesome work!

      #
      1.1
       Jan 27, 2012 at 2:18 pm
  2. alexsandro carvalho
    Posts: 7

    second

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    2
     Jan 27, 2012 at 2:14 pm
  3. bob chickenmcnuggets
    Posts: 21

    third…
    :3

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    3
     Jan 27, 2012 at 2:16 pm
  4. alexsandro carvalho
    Posts: 7

    another awesome tutorial!!!

    #
    4
     Jan 27, 2012 at 2:33 pm
  5. bob chickenmcnuggets
    Posts: 21

    nice tutorial though :L

    #
    5
     Jan 27, 2012 at 2:58 pm
  6. drxms
    Posts: 27

    It looks like it could star in any pixar movie.

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    6
     Jan 27, 2012 at 3:33 pm
  7. Nicholas Tindall
    Posts: 96

    Great to watch.

    I always have issues with organic, well more issues with organic /nod

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    7
     Jan 27, 2012 at 4:14 pm
  8. rangan raman
    Posts: 2

    We are eagerly waiting for rigify add on tut as there is no clear tut on rigify as on today.

    Thanks David.

    #
    8
     Jan 27, 2012 at 4:41 pm
  9. David de Best
    Posts: 31

    what software do you guys use to film your screen?
    and how do you record the sound?

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    9
     Jan 28, 2012 at 7:38 am
  10. Vicens Juan Tomas Montserrat
    Posts: 16

    Fantastic series of tutorials David. I can not wait for the 4 part!!

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    10
     Jan 28, 2012 at 7:44 am
  11. Jake Veal
    Posts: 3

    Really enjoyed this one. Hope you make him move so he can be posed next.

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    11
     Jan 28, 2012 at 2:16 pm
  12. Alexander Rush
    Posts: 17

    I absolutely love this tutorial, so amazing, especially for a beginner like me.
    There is mine: http://cgcookie.com/blender/images/groundhog-part-3/

    Next lesson: rigging it for animation ? Woh, it’s like Chrismas Day every week.

    #
    12
     Jan 28, 2012 at 2:22 pm
  13. Ricardo Diaz
    Posts: 95

    thanks David your are an excelent teacher, I’ve learning blender around 5 months and you are one of my favorites teachers.. thanks so much for share your knownledge

    #
    13
     Jan 28, 2012 at 4:22 pm
  14. William McDonald
    Posts: 254

    Dave,

    I was wondering if you’ve figured out how to combine the fur and rendering in cycles?

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    14
     Jan 28, 2012 at 5:26 pm
    • drxms
      Posts: 27

      You can´t use fur in cycles unfourtantley but its on the list i heard.

      #
      14.1
       Jan 28, 2012 at 7:07 pm
      • William McDonald
        Posts: 254

        Yeah, I know. But is there a practical method for say rendering hair with the BI and then rendering the rest with cycles and combining them with the compositor somehow?

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        14.1.1
         Jan 28, 2012 at 10:43 pm
  15. alexds
    Posts: 39

    please convert to cycles

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    15
     Jan 28, 2012 at 6:29 pm
    • David Hattori
      Posts: 6

      Cycles doesn’t support hair particles yet. So this wouldn’t make sense for these tutorials.

      Great as always Dave. It is really entertaining to watch your tutorial. I’ve learned a ton.

      #
      15.1
       Jan 29, 2012 at 12:06 am
  16. drxms
    Posts: 27

    About the nose couldent you use some texture on it to add those pore´s on it. Just a suggestion.

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    16
     Jan 28, 2012 at 7:11 pm
  17. Adrienne RAHARIMAHERY
    Posts: 2

    ^,^

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    17
     Jan 30, 2012 at 6:54 am
  18. Mike Bennewitz
    Posts: 3

    I was just marking seems on a mesh with mirror modifier last night, wondering if I was wasting my time, wondering if they would be copied by applying the mirror modifier. Nice to see that it behaves as you would want it. thanks.

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    18
     Feb 2, 2012 at 2:15 pm
  19. furlow
    Posts: 18

    It looks so awsome! I love how furs turn out on here. SOme reason mine gets a odd clumpy and squared look on it, how do you avoid that? I even tried adding random to try clean up and still gets this squarish apearance.

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    19
     Feb 3, 2012 at 1:22 pm
    • Jeremy Deighan
      Posts: 263

      Furlow,

      not sure if this has anything to do with it, but is your mesh set to Hard(is that right) shaded or smooth shaded?

      Jeremy

      #
      19.1
       Feb 3, 2012 at 2:33 pm
      • furlow
        Posts: 18

        Mine’s shaded smooth. Didn’t know that could affect it

        #
        19.1.1
         Feb 8, 2012 at 1:30 am
  20. thomas speed
    Posts: 300

    those user submit images are Spectacular,
    salute.

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    20
     Feb 4, 2012 at 11:07 am
  21. Lollito Larkham
    Posts: 82

    Cool tutorial ; Thanks !
    I have a question . My perticles settings trn grey after passing in particle mode and i can’t edit the anymore. Is it normal ? How can i reveal get the settings again?
    I made a screenschot here : http://www.flickr.com/photos/lollito/6819110323/in/photostream/lightbox/

    Thanks for your help )

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    21
     Feb 4, 2012 at 3:50 pm
  22. Franck Gramont
    Posts: 1

    Hi, thanks you for that amazing tut !!!

    I’m having a problem with the eyelid when it comes to UV unwrap the groundhog… The texture paint doesn’t apply to them.

    Do you have a trick for that ?

    Well by the way, thanks again it’s a really huge job you did there ( as usual ).

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    22
     Feb 5, 2012 at 3:59 am
  23. imagineer
    Posts: 2

    Dave, you’re a gem mate! Not only are these tutorials models of clarity, but they are inspiring because they make the whole thing appear do-able. Ten minutes in and I’ve already learned 5 new things.

    #
    23
     Feb 11, 2012 at 2:19 pm
  24. Pawel Krawczak
    Posts: 3

    Great tutorial. I’m actually doing stuff in Blender now. “Things worth doing are worth doing!” will be my motto now ;)

    #
    24
     Feb 12, 2012 at 4:57 pm
  25. Castel Cliff
    Posts: 1

    Very good tuto thanks

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    25
     Feb 14, 2012 at 11:09 am
  26. Bradley Guichelaar
    Posts: 10

    Thanks a lot for this whole groundhog series. It really helps me to understand blender.
    Thanks David!

    Bradley

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    26
     Feb 16, 2012 at 1:46 pm
  27. bluespirit
    Posts: 2

    One trouble I had was when I save it then load it back up later and the uv map and color is gone. so I saved the uv map as imagine but im not sure if im applying it right when I bring the uv map back up bc it still renders without color. idk if there is a tutorial on how to save uv map and load them back up or if someone can help?

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    27
     Mar 3, 2012 at 12:37 pm
  28. Jhonnatan Gonzalez Rodriguez
    Posts: 1

    I just loved your tutorial, im looking forward to learn 3d modeling!

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    28
     Mar 4, 2012 at 10:52 am
  29. Constantin S
    Posts: 4

    Hi,
    great tutorials and great work. I really love it.
    But I have a question. As I “paint” the groundhog and the UV Blender crashed. And after I restarted it, the painting was gone, but I do have save the .blend file. So I have tried to find a way to save the UV and the painting, but every time I restart it is gone the groundhog lost all his colours). Please help me. How can I save the UV and close Blender and restart it and everything is at the right place? I’m looking forward to hear from you.

    Yours sincerely Constantin

    P.S.
    Keep up the great work :) . Your make learing blender fun. So good job.

    #
    29
     Apr 2, 2012 at 12:52 pm
  30. Gordan Krstevski
    Posts: 1

    Thanks for the awesome tutorial, it helped me a lot. This is the first model that I have done in Blender or any other 3D program. :D :D

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    30
     Jun 13, 2012 at 7:21 am
  31. flamander
    Posts: 1

    Is this real? does blender have that amazing fur and modeling quality? I tryied long ago first versions of blender and leave it cuz never managed to get nice results, but this looks very impresive. thanks for tutorials guys!

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    31
     Jun 13, 2012 at 1:41 pm
  32. Julius Hernandez
    Posts: 8

    Love this tutorial. Can’t wait to continue to the 4th =)

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    32
     Jul 8, 2012 at 6:47 pm
  33. MARK PICONE
    Posts: 37

    Will this method work in Cycles 2.63?

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    33
     Jul 12, 2012 at 2:43 pm
  34. MARK PICONE
    Posts: 37

    Love this vid on how to add fur to your character. It would be cool to have a check list or a linear sequence of steps to create the particle system starting from the UV map and forward since you bounce around a bit. This way we could have all the steps to print out and use for our own models.

    Thanks for an awesome tut, can’t wait to view no.4!

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    34
     Jul 13, 2012 at 9:48 am
  35. MARK PICONE
    Posts: 37

    You may want to verify this,David, but I think you need to ‘Save As Image’ after you’re done or before you close the file, otherwise you could lose a lot of texture painting.

    #
    35
     Jul 17, 2012 at 2:36 pm
  36. zero_custom
    Posts: 3

    David, thanks so much for this tutorial. Lately, I’ve been trying to render fur in BI and the fur seems to render brighter on some spots under a shadowed area. I wonder if you have any experience with this.
    Thanks.

    #
    36
     Jul 24, 2012 at 12:05 pm
  37. warren bahler
    Posts: 10

    Hello,
    I ran into a problem while adding the fur.
    the child particles on the mirrored side do not distribute correctly
    even though the mirrored parent particles behave correctly.

    the left side child hairs behave normally while on the right (mirrored side),
    they clump oddly around, and seem displaced by something, for instance; the clump in the right armpit is child to the hairs on the chest.

    I followed all the steps to the detail and built the particle system twice with the same results.

    any help appreciated!

    ( check the uploaded photo named “fur problem” to see what I mean)

    thanks for the great tutorial, I’m learning a lot.

    #
    37
     Jan 23, 2013 at 11:56 am
  38. Mika Suvanto
    Posts: 4

    Some part number links seems to have bit wrong address… No big harm but anyways… Example part 1 goes to part 4 and part 3 goes part 1…

    Awe tut…

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    38
     Mar 5, 2013 at 12:45 am

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