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Box Modeling an Alien Character in Blender 2.5 alpha 0
December 1, 2009  |  by David Ward  |  David Ward, Intermediate, Modeling


In this tutorial, I show you a few basics of Blender 2.5, and cover how to use the box-modeling technique to create a full character. The box-modeling technique is a good way to quickly visualize the shape of your character, rather than creating the detail from the beginning.


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  • 43 Comments


    1. An excellent tutorial! Thanks a bunch for this!

      One thing though.. the view transition thing.. yeah its in 2.49, you can set it in your user preferences at the top of the screen. It is on the first tab “View & Controls”.. look for “smooth view” and set the amount. I have mine set to 700.

      As per your tut, I like how you used the sculpt tool to fix the mouth and such.. great tip!

      • yeah i love the sculpt tool :) i’ve also recently gotten into doing really detail modeling for terrains, then using the tangent normal mapping to apply it to a much lower-rez model :) keep an eye out for that in this little series ;)

    2. Wow, I just commented the other day on your YouTube profile. I said you should do some tuts for Blender Cookie. I guess you already had that in the works!.

      Cool stuff man, thanks for sharing.

    3. dude its a great tutorial , and mumblin ait that bad . Greatwork on the lips though .

    4. Very good! Muito bom!

      Animandré from Paulista-PE/Brasil

      Thank´s!

    5. Glad to see you joined the Blender Cookie team Ward. I been thinking of box modeling humans for my War of the Worlds project, you’ve just made it 10x easier, thanks

    6. OK! It will be really great to see this project.

      Success, friend!

    7. Cool! I’ve been box modeling some stuff for a music video I’m making. Really works good on more cartoonish characters

      • i agree. box modeling is a quick way to get a nice cartoonish/roundish look without having to get really detailed. for more realistic characters, i’d recommend the plane-modeling technique (ala my johnny blender series)

    8. Nice one!
      Hoping to see a tut on rigging him next :D

    9. Thanks for the tutorial!
      Great new tutor has joined BlenderCookie!

    10. Thanks a lot… I love my new Alien. Please post an armature/animation video for it. I cant wait to make a short movie with a character like him.

    11. To get the add menu just use Shift+A, t will bring it up to the mouse as before.

    12. Great tutorial! I loved the new interface of 2.5 but one thing that was really annoying me in 2.5 was that when I’m rotating, grabbing or doing anything like this, if I hit the edge of the 3D view, the cursor jumps to the opposite side. The way to disable that is going to the user preferences (ctrl+alt+u) in the input tab there is a check box called “Continuous Grab”, just uncheck the box, and now your mouse moves perfectly when grabbing or rotating…

    13. As a modeler, I didn’t need this so much. But I do like that you took the time to show some Blender tips and tricks to those of us who would like to migrate from other packages.

      I do hope that you do the rigging and such. I animate in Maya and would really like to take advantage of the tools in Blender but I have no clue where to start.

      Good job and thanks for sharing.

    14. as ALPHASITE said, you can have your meny with SHIFT A, but the nice thing about the spacebar is that it is a tool search, like spotlight on the mac or something like that, so if you want to add a cube, then type CUBE, and it’ll appear the add cube and just hit enter :D !

      CHeers!!

    15. Great tutorial! Thanks!

    16. When adding a sphere (or any type of object) you can check “view align” to make it orientate to your current viewport. By default everything is oriented by the global x, y, z axis, where x is width, y is depth and z is height. So if you press 1 to turn to frontview and then check “view align” then it will result in a sphere that’s rotated 90 degrees along the x axis.
      Just my 2c ;)

    17. PROTUGUESE BRAZIL ~

      Belo tutorial cara, gostei bastante, isso que eu tava precisando de verdade *–*
      10/10 *

    18. Great tutorial, are you planning to do more of this…maybe other subjects (lighting, materials, animation…)?

      regards

    19. hey david, do you still have blender 2.49

    20. Is it possible to maximize the tutorial ?

    21. “wish we had the UNDO command in real life”

      aint that the truth…lol

      Very inspiring stuff Dave from a C4D to Blender switcher.

    22. Can you make a mouth and eye tutorial ?

    23. thank’s for the great tutorial. that showed me a bunch of stuff on box modeling and the sculpt tool. And now I know what my butt’s for…

    24. Um, yeah, I was a little confused when you extruded the top of the wrist then it “magically” became a single finger.

    25. I love your tutorials! You can teach absolutely great! No blackout about what you just did, I can learn really fast! Thank you!

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