Hello and welcome to this character modeling tutorial on creating the female body in Blender!
This character modeling tutorial series for Blender 2.6, Jonathan Williamson takes you through the entire process of modeling a detailed, female body with clean topology that will deform and animate well. This tutorial puts a strong emphasis on topology and anatomy, making use of photo references from 3d.sk
What you’ll learn
Throughout this tutorial series Jonathan will walk you through all the steps necessary to construct the entire model, piece by piece with clean topology using the Edge by Edge modeling method. This method gives you very good control over your topology by laying down the topology first and then filling in the surfaces.
Part 11 of this character modeling series takes you through modeling the arms and legs with a very simple extrusion technique, then followed by adding edgeloops and tweaking the shapes.
Up next
Once the modeling is complete in this series we will move onto texturing the final model.
Reference Images were purchased and licensed from 3D.sk. To learn more about 3D.Sk please visit them today.
Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you very much for this one and this series. This is part of what makes my subscription to CGCookie worth it!
Great series! I learned a lot about typology after following this series, thanks Johnathan!
Got a little Off-topic question: For the Blendswap contest, can i use your exclusive female model as a base, that you made for us citizens?
Thanks Jonathan,
Was beginning to think this series had been put on the back burner. Just kidding, I know you have been pretty swamped as of late.
Question: What are the ss01 & ss02 files in the download? I was thinking they should have been a jpg, like in part 10, but that’s not the case.
-OldMan44
THank you Jonathan, this series helps me a lot!
Thanks Jonathan, I haven’t been practicing my modelling much lately (to busy playing with the tracker and te compositor) so this is a good motivation to start again.
Just get started! I am at second video yet
I can’t help wondering how this model is going to behave if you were to rig and animate it after… Could you perhaps say a few words about that? And preferably what, if anything, needs to be changed to get good deformations?
Well you can use shapekeys and drivers if needed. If it has good topology it will look good when you animate it.
Thanks Jonathan, great series. This is somewhat off topic, I know, but I wasn’t sure where else to post this:
Given that you have a Max Cookie and now a Modo Cookie, it’d be nice to see some interoperability tutorials. By that I mean, showing a model being interchanged with Max and/or Modo, what are the pitfalls etc.
I believe there’s a Blender version of GoZ out there for Zbrush, that allows the interactive exchange of objects between Zbrush and Blender. It’d be great to see some tuts showing the two working together.
Zbrush does do some hard surface modelling but as far as I can see, it’s nowhere in the league of Blender’s precision and control for this kind of thing. I think the two would make an awesome combo, so it’d be great to see a ‘real world’ workflow between the two, the gotchas, warts and all.
Ah, Christmas in March! Most models really lack believable surface topology in arms and upper legs.
Thanks again for sticking with this most important series.
As allways a pleasure to watch how a pro works.
question why do people take the time to do so much human modeling whereas you can do it in something like makehuman?
Because when you use a model from MakeHuman or Daz, anyone that is familiar with these tools in the industry will immediately recognize it as exactly that, a MakeHuman or Daz model. That is not to say that you shouldn’t use these, or that the models are bad necessarily, but in many cases it can lower the value of your work because it’s less original. You should always make smart use of pre-made, readily available assets and such, but when it comes to the primary aspects of your scene (namely the characters) it is generally best to make these characters more original. By making them more original you will also make the scene more memorable, and thus more effective.
-Jonathan
Could not agree more. Detailed models based on actual figures is what its at.
Also by learning how you improve your modeling skills even if you never make another human model. You know how it is done and can properly design other models. After all the people who made MakeHuman and the daz models had to learn how. When those people retire who will make our models? We will.
when doing the mirror modifier it put a space between the object and the mirror. how do u get rid of the space so it is one object and not look like 2
You need to move the origin of your object to the center line of your model; this is what the mirror modifier mirrors across. You can change the position of the origin point with CTRL + ALT + SHIFT + C.
Hello Jonathan, Excellent work on your seres
, I have a question tho, I noticed that you used edge to edge modeling for the face and Head Earlier in the series instead of box modeling it. My question is Does it matter if someone uses box modeling over edge to edge or visversa?
Hi Jonathan,I am learning all I need to know from your videos on cgcookie, keep up the great work!
I have a request, can you do a video on poles and loops? I get lost when you start tidying up edge flows, I haven’t quite grasped it!
P.S. There is an interesting thread on on blenderartist.org forum: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?93651-Poles-and-Loops
but some of the images have disapeared, it is ageing a bit and hard to follow.
Hi Jonathan,
I’ve been wondering if there was some sort of tool that allows a mode to be built from the ground up. I mean rather than building a model based on reference photos, it would start with bome structure, then layer on musculature including flexion and the resulting bulging, and lay skin on top. Such a model could be tweaked to match the photos and then it would more accurately deform when placed in different poses, and perhaps respond to gravity and motion.
Have you heard of such a thing? If it doesn’t exist, it should.
Warren Davis
You should look in to MakeHuman.
great series.
I’ve learnt so much so far
can’t wait for the next part!
great! great! great! very good tutorial, thanks jonathan!