Easy Low Poly Character Modeling in Blender 2.9x

in this video you're going to learn how to use blender to model a low poly character like this one [Music] but why would you want a low poly character anyway well first of all they look pretty cool it's like the 3d equivalent of pixel art they're also very quick and easy to make and if you're making a prototype of a game or even if you want that low poly look in your final game then this is going to be the video for you make sure you stay to the end of the video because then i also show you how to turn this character into a different character but keep that same look and feel make it consistent in your games i've started blender 2.90 here and the first thing we do is we end up in this default scene let's just click on this camera here with the left mouse button if you've got that configured and then press delete to delete it and same for the light here we don't need that one for this model so delete and then we're going to set up a little add-on called automirror that will save you a lot of a hassle in the future so i recommend that you go to edit preferences and make sure you're in add-ons here and in the search field type auto and then make sure you've got this auto mirror enabled if i press one on the keypad or the numpad i get the front view here and then i use the middle mouse button to rotate around there i want to create a mirror now along this green y axis and to do this we can press n to get this little properties or numbers tab out we go to edit and then expand this little auto mirror here and we actually have to select the mesh here for this to work and then we click on auto mirror and make sure x is selected here when you press tab to go into edit mode you can see now that anything that we do to this mesh now is going to be mirrored on the other side so that's what we want all right we're going to make a little bit of a cartoon character so we're going to make it this the body is going to be the same height as the head so it's pretty much similar to style to a super mario for example if you play that game back in the day i'll press one on the numpad to get the front view and make sure we've got vertices selected up here which is one same if you press one at the top row of your numbers here press a to select all the verts s to scale them and i move the mouse down and we want to make the character about 1.8 units high here in blender that's going to be a pretty good game size so it'll fit in just short of two meters is good for games so we've scaled this down it's going to be the pelvis now i'll press g to move it and as i do this since we're in mirror mode i can slide this up now and it'll compress it into a more narrow object so i'm going to put the head is going to be about one like eight eight of these units and the body is going to be about eight to ten so let's put the pelvis down here scale it down even more then i can use the mouse wheel to zoom in and then on middle mouse now to rotate and we can see that we've got a little cube here that's pretty good then i can press three which is the same as going up here to select face selector now instead we can click on these faces and then we can also enable if i press shift space and g which is this move tool we get a nice little axis tool here as well we can slide this up i'll go into front view again we slide it up this is going to be the torso now we're converting the pelvis into a torso next press ctrl r which is a loop tool and use the mouse wheel to scroll up i will put two of these yellow lines here and i click on the left mouse button and then i can right click and that snaps it back and what this has done is added some geometry now to this mesh that we can work with so we can shape the body a little bit better but we also want to add one more loop cut so i'll press ctrl r again and then make sure you put it at the lower part here click with the left mouse button but then slide it down and then click with the left mouse button here again and snap it into place and the reason why we do this is because we want to create something for the leg here so now i'm going to go to edge select which is 2 on the keyboard not the numpad but at the top of the keyboard i'll press this edge here and then i'll slide this in not all the way but a little bit in like this so this is going to be the groin area there then i press 3 again now to go into face select same as clicking up here and then i'll select this face here and then here's another useful command that you should learn it's e to extrude so that's the e hotkey and then i press s to scale it and then use the mouse just to scale that one down press one on the keypad to get the front view and then here's another useful hotkey it's r to rotate and then you can see that you can rotate in this view here so we're going to make legs come down here so i'm just going to put it like this and then we can press g one more time which is the move tool and we can place them anywhere but i'm going to put them under the body right here now we can press e again to extrude and we're going to go down to the kneecap roughly g to move it if you want to tweak it a little bit and if you want to make sure that this is absolutely flat now which it's probably not if i look 3 on the keypad well it looks pretty flat but if you want to make sure that it's flat it's going to be easier to model the feet then press s to scale it and then press z which is the blue axis and then press 0 on the keyboard it doesn't show up on the left here i nearly pointed but and then press enter what we did now is we scale this face to zero in the up and down z direction which is the blue axis and that totally flattened that face now we know that it's a really perpendicular face going straight down here we're going to make a little knee here so we can do e to extrude once just a little bit like this e to extrude again and that's our knee the reason why we want this with some extra geometry here is because then it'll bend nicely if we only had one line here it would not bend as nicely so i press one again on the numpad and we press e to extrude one more time down to where the ankle is going to be and then e one more time all the way down to the floor and that's going to be the leg pretty much and then i'm going to click on this front face here we're still in face select even though we selected a foot and then i press e to extrude it and here you can decide i'll do two steps i'll do to there left click e to extrude left click again press two to go into edge select select this top edge here and then if you don't have this one remember it's shift space and g to get this move tool or you can click on the left here as well and then we slide this down to get a little foot and then you can start just clicking on faces and selecting the shape that you want i'm going to keep it really basic like this if you wanted to change the pants a little bit we can do ctrl r for another loop cut here this yellow line click with the left mouse button slide it down to here and then press s to scale it and then suddenly we've got some flarey pants going 70s style okay now it's come time to do some arms so press 3 or click this face select and then we're going to select this face up here it's going to be where our arm is coming out so i'll do e to extrude it just a little bit like this for the shoulder s to scale it down and then move it up make sure you've got this move tool and then move it up to there roughly and then i press one again to go to front view i'll press e to extrude and that that's going to be the arm coming out we go to the elbow now similar as we did with the legs and for the arms maybe we press s to scale them down e to extrude once click with the left e to extrude again for the elbow and then e to extrude to here and then s to scale this down and for the hands we're going to keep it really simple as well this is low poly remember so i'm going to do e to extrude one more time s to scale it up and e to extrude and that's going to be our hand simple as that because with low poly characters usually you have them quite small in your game if you're making a platformer or a little shooter game then you're going to see the characters from this distance you're going to save yourself a lot of time and hassle by not modeling hands with thumbs and everything like that that could be later on okay before we shape the body a little bit better i'm gonna press three again to get face select and now we're actually gonna model the head here so i'll press e to extrude s to scale it down and then i'll just slide this in you can just compress it into here and that's gonna be where our neck is going to be so e to extrude but then now we're going to make a big cartoony head so i'll press 1 to get into the front view on the numpad and then let's go for this cartoon head now e to extrude s to scale and you'll find that it scales more in the y direction here see since we're in mirror mode here and we've got this this is really important if it's creating a gap here make sure that this default thing is enabled called clipping if clipping is not enabled and you start sliding this it'll create gaps you don't want that so make sure that clipping is enabled here now we can just slide this head out to make a more of a square head to begin with and we're going to make a really simple body here let's go into one front view again s to scale even more we're going to make a cartoon big head here e to extrude it let's refine the head a little bit further i'll press ctrl r and then use the mouse wheel to scroll up to two loop cuts right click to snap them back like this and we can actually make this a little bit smaller smaller again what i'll do now is i'll shift and left click on these edges we can do the same up here shift and left click on those that multi-select s to scale them down make it a little bit rounder and then maybe slide it in so that's going to be our very simple uh low poly head for this character we can work a little bit more on the body i'll go into make sure i've got edge select here which is number two if you're on your keyboard at the top i'll select a few of these lines here in the front maybe we'll slide them out make a little belly here it will bring this part out make it a little bit rounder we can arch the back so we'll select this face or this edge slide that one out slide it out maybe a tiny bit there as well bring the shoulders up and if we wanted to put a belt here we can press ctrl r put a loop cut here scale that one ctrl r again another loop cut click it maybe there scale it scale it down a bit so here could be our belt we can select this one bring it in this one we should probably bring in as well make it a little bit rounder i pressed one now to go into point or vertex select as well maybe we'll bring the belly out even further that's a lot of christmas food coming up now if you need to change something for example the knees came a little bit far down here if i press one on the numpad and then you press alt z that brings through this x-ray vision click on one or select this vertex select and then just click and drag here to box select these since we've got alt zed and x-ray vision then it'll actually select all the ways to the back there as well usually if you don't enable x-ray you don't really see those or it won't grab those and then i can slide these up just to get the knee a little bit better positioned here alt z again takes off the x-ray if we wanted to create this belt here another useful trick here is press three again to go into face select and then you can deselect everything here by either pressing alt a that deselects everything you can also press double a to deselect hold the alt key down now and click on this little edge here which is this is going to be the belt so we click on this edge here that does what's called a loop select so and we're in mirror mode so it doesn't show that it's selected all the way around here but now it's selected all the way around here and then instead of pressing e to extrude now we want to make sure that this belt extrudes in every direction not just in in one direction so press alt e and select extrude faces along normals and then when we slide up now you can see that it's actually sliding out the face in its own normal which is the direction that it's facing outwards from this face and that's a quick way to extrude a ring like this to create this belt and now we're going to colorize this character before we put some ears and eyes on them and maybe a hat as well you can of course make the head a lot smaller if we go into all same as we did before press one on the keypad alt z for x-ray just click and drag to select this press s to scale this down and g to move it if you want to have a small head that's one way to do it but i'm going to keep this this is going to be that cartoon character so i'll control z out of that one and we'll keep it big like this okay we're going to colorize this now and here's a trick that i've learned and i use a lot for pretty much all my low poly work instead of texture mapping this which requires a lot of unwrapping and painting and texture we're going to use a much simpler method here you can go to this link here and download this little palette file that i'm going to be using this texture looks really blurry now and it's because it's actually only eight by eight pixels small so it doesn't look like this it just fades it like this when it enlarges it i'll tell you what i mean in just a minute so click on download link here and then you just do a direct download this is actually how small it is eight by eight pixels and that's why it goes blurry when you zoom it in i can't even zoom in more like than this but it's really useful for games because it's going to keep this palette file really really small and take up basically no space at all if you're a mobile game or something like that and we're going to be able to color all of our low poly objects this way with that downloaded go to this shading tab up here and then navigate to the file that you downloaded the palette file and then just click on the downloaded file and the png file which is the image file drag it and drop it to the left here in the materials grid and that should just import this thing and then click and drag from this output color and connect it to base color here and you see that it's still blurry now here so we need to do one more thing we change from linear to closest very important and see how it just went from blurry to still some issues here but it's uh we can fix that in just a minute but the important thing is that that blurriness went away and instead of going back to the modeling tab now we're going to switch to this uv editing tab and we can make some room here as well by just sliding this one down make sure i enable screencast keys again so you can see what i'm doing go up to this little drop down in the top right and then switch to texture here and now we get some colors here it still looks wrong but we'll fix that move your mouse to the left side here and zoom in with the mouse wheel and now you can see this palette file that's the one that you just downloaded you could even draw your own palette files in any drawing software i used photoshop for this one but you could use or whatever and there's also lowspec.com for example you can download palettes so you could use those instead but the important thing is that you want to have this tab now on your left and you want to have your character here on your right i'll go into face select again which is this one up here three on the top menu of the numbers and then i press a while i'm in this view now make sure you have the mouse cursor somewhere here around the character and press a and that selects all the faces and you can see those represented unfolded here like an origami shape onto your left here but we've damaged this mesh quite a lot so it looks a little bit strange maybe can make this a little bit bigger so you can see and then zoom in so same controller here i hold the shift and use the middle mouse button to pan around in a scene that works on both viewports and now on the left side make sure you have the mouse over here now press a to select all the vertices here and then we press s to scale these down and then you can even hit zero and that compresses it down to just a little dot like this and it looks a bit blurry and that's because we're right in the middle here between colors but now comes the beautiful thing press g on the left side here and move this dot with all the vertices and then we can colorize this object now into let's put just some sort of a neutral skin tone there we can continue to colorize this now by using the same method but we can pick which faces we want remember you could hold the alt key and click on an edge here in face select and that selects all the way around and then we also learned that you can press ctrl and the plus on the numpad to grow this selection let's make sure we grow all the way maybe out to the top of the sleeve here we selected even the part of the pants so we can deselect things just hold the shift key down now and deselect with the left mouse button use the middle mouse button to rotate deselect hold the shift key down up here as well for the face we need to hold the shift key down and deselect a few more and the neck as well so here we go now on the left side just move the mouse now to the left press g and colorize it why should we do an orange top maybe no green blue i love blue pants so let's make let's make a little police guy shall we so i'll put him in a blue costume here so we'll do a light blue top here but then we want to change his belt here can't be blue so hold the alt key and click on this edge with face select remember there ctrl plus on the numpad to grow that selection on the left side with the mouse g while you're over here somewhere grab those and move it to black and for another method here we could try something else one on the keypad on the numpad to go to front view alt z to see through double click a to deselect and here just click up here drag it down and we'll select all the way down to here and see these little dots that represents the middle of a face so as long as you're including that little dot that'll grab whatever face that represents there so that pretty much covers the pants it actually covers the pants so alt z to go back into non x-ray mode on the left here now let's make some darker pants g and move it to this darker blue so there we go there's this pants and we don't want him barefoot so we can do any method that we've learned here for this one i'll just shift select those control plus and then shift select these as well put the black shoes on them same method hands will be the same color there and the head is going to be like this as well if you wanted to add some features to the head we could if you want an ear here you could uh press shift d is another useful see how i just move this face away from the face i right click to snap it back into place here but it's actually a separate phase here so it could tricky a little bit sometimes press s to scale this one down now and then we can press s again and press y to lock it to this green axis and scale it down to here and this is going to be our ear now we've got a separate face here press e to extrude this one and we're going to keep a really simple ear like that just a little thing popping out and that's automated on the other side here as well same thing for the eye we're going to keep it super simple so i'm going to do shift d to duplicate this and that moves it away but right click to snap it back and now if i press s to scale this see how it goes into like a cyclop we don't really want that one so i'll right click to cancel that and here we need to go to to the modifiers tab here and disable clipping now it doesn't clip to the center here anymore so when we press s again to scale it scales it down and we'll make a big eye like this and what i did in my 10 minute modeling video before i'm gonna keep a similar style to there so i press g on the left here and make that white and then i did control r to loop cut put a little line in the middle here and right click press three to go back into face select and click on this one here and then g on the left side and move that to black and see that it's faded now here like this and that's because this i face is right exactly in the same spot as this face here and we can fix that by selecting the pupil there and the other part of the eye with the shift key selected and do e to extrude and that just creates that makes it into like a little separate box there finally we're going to put a little hat on this guy as well and i'm going to model that into a separate object we can press f2 to rename this character now we'll change it from cube to police and then we're going to model the hat separately but i usually actually use the same mesh to start with so i'll go tab back into edit mode and i press the top of his head here and maybe we can even hold the shift key and select these faces and then i do shift d to duplicate this now and right click to snap it back and i noticed now when i moved it if i press g to move it see that it's actually not clipping to the center again so i'll right click and make sure i enable clipping again now because now when we press g and move it you can see that it stays as one hat still and i press s to scale this up a little bit press shift space and g to get this move tool or click on the left here move that one up up to here and now we're going to break this out into a separate object because in a game maybe if this police guy gets knocked over you want to have this hat fall off his head so we're going to change this to a separate object now i press p to separate this into a new selection or i'll separate the selection into a new object and see that it created a new little object up here now we press f2 and then rename it to police hut we're going to change this color now to blue and we can press tab to go into edit mode a to select all the faces and on the left side here now press g when that's selected and move it up to here for the hat geometry in games especially always want to be solid you don't really want to just have a thin face like this that doesn't have any volume to it and we can go to this drop down and enable backface culling that's pretty good to model with us because then you know if something doesn't have a another side see how it goes not the same color here and on this side it even disappears in the front of the face here and that's because we only see this side and that's usually what a game engine would see as well there's many ways to fix it but i'll go into press two to go into edge select i'll select these faces here and i'm just going to do this very simple now and press f and f fills this hole with a new polygon and now it's suddenly turned into a solid hat i wouldn't really worry too much about it keeping it hollow because unless you wanted to of course then you can make it hollow but we're just gonna make a solid hat for now but we need to change the shape of it a little bit into a police set you can go into two make sure you got edge select and then we can just start sliding these around a little bit maybe we'll make it press one to get these verts if you want to move them individually looks like a pirate hat nearly we'll make it a little bit narrower again bring this tip up even further we have to put a little like a cap thing select this middle face move that one up a bit ctrl r to get a loop cut if you remember that bring it down to here press three to go into face select select this space here e to extrude that one out control plus to grow the selection on the left side with the mouse now over the uvs here press g and move it to black and that's our police cap and final touch press three to go into face select select this face here we can press i to inset and press b if you want to connect that little center thing b is stands for boundary and we switch that off if you have boundary on it'll create a little connecting phase in the center there if you want to remove that one make sure you press b and if b doesn't work it might be because you've accidentally pressed or you've intentionally pressed i which does individual faces and now b doesn't work so that tricks you a little bit so if that doesn't work press i again and then b will work so we want to have it like this press two to go into edge select i'll press select this one and now when you press g you can move this one but if you press g again it'll slide it really neatly along those and it won't really change the shape too much then and then we can select three to get the face select click on this face and maybe we'll just color g on the left side here and move that into orange so orange color in another video i'm going to rig this character ready for game and in another video i'll animate some walk cycles and maybe some idle stuff like this so make sure that you subscribe if you haven't already and you can catch those videos so i'm glad you stayed to the end because now i can show you a trick how to turn this guy into a separate guide i'll press tab out of edit mode and then we can hide the police hat here just click on this little eye icon or you can press h to hide it i'll select this police guy press shift d in the scene here and that copies him right click to snap him back and then hide the original police and now we can change the color of or the size of the face so let's turn this guy into a firefighter or something i press tab in edit mode here press l to select linked that's another useful one and that selects the whole character now profiting the eyes because they're not linked to the body even though it's the same object and here's a nifty thing click this little expansion down here and change this to uv and now is suddenly when you click l it'll select whichever is this blue color very useful on the right here press g move that to black it's going to be a swedish styled firefighting suit they have black clothes with yellow trims i think same thing for the pants here i'll press l and then actually we'll do alt a first to deselect everything or double a and then l to select the pants press g on the left move that up to black as well so we want to have some baggier clothes here and to do this we can there's many ways to do it alt z23 see through click to select these press s to scale it out and you can select two to get edge select double click a b or just drag to select these as to scale it out alt z to disable that one ctrl r loop cut s to scale this one out maybe we want here ctrl r s to scale that one ctrl r flare that out as well some thicker pants there same for the arm here ctrl r set it there s to scale on out flare it out control r s to scale that one double click a to deselect and then you can click alt and click if you're in edge selecting click alt then it selects instead of a loop face it selects a loop of edges here also very useful as to scale that out fault z double click a to deselect drag to select these as the scalar modes so alt set to disable so now we've created a bit thicker clothing here we can put the yellow stripes on as well tab in edit mode again ctrl r select to there three to go to face select alt and click on this little edge between here now that selects the loop around remember on the left here g move it to an orange put the trim down here as well ctrl r down here double click a to deselect everything alt and click ok it selected this now because i need to change the phase select and then alt and click on this edge that selects the loop around on the left side with the mouse g and slide that into here and we'll put one trim down here as well double click a alt click there on the edge g and move that onto orange select these lines as well shift select and s to scale these out if you wanted that to come out a little bit and now if we enable the police again we'll rename this one f2 fire fighter slide him to the side and enable the hat again and now we've taken the police officer and turned him into a firefighter we'd need to model a cap as well but you get the point you could use the same way for the firefighter helmet on my patreon page on the tutorial tier you can download this blend file and also many other blend files that i've created especially this last year i've got a lot of low poly models that you can download and learn a lot from until next time take care and i'll see you then bye for now [Music] you

Channel: Imphenzia

Views: 285,139

Keywords: blender, low poly, low poly character, blender 2.9, blender tutorial, blender character modeling tutorial, how to model a low poly character

Id: eBOcbYHexAM

Length: 28min 28sec (1708 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 05 2021