Today, I'm going to show you
how you can use Blender and Grease Pencil to make awesome 2.5D creations. This isn't exactly a beginner
tutorial, but I'll cover the basic operations and then speed through
the parts where I'm tweaking things. Before I got into modeling in
Blender, I just went into Clip Studio Paint and did a quick concept
using the shape carving method. I have a video on the subject here. I then imported that image
into Blender using the Reference option in the Add --> Image --> Options. Having a concept to reference
is completely optional. It's also just fun to fiddle
around and find interesting shapes. But now that I have a rough concept that
I can reference, I can start modeling. Modeling! The first thing I want to
do is build out the arms. I want to build them in such a way
that I make each new part of the arm a child of the previous part. This will let me easily pose my
robot without having to fiddle with each piece individually, and
I also won't have to add any bones. I know from my reference that the joints
on my robot will be extremely simple, just spheres and cylinders,
so I'll add those. I'll adjust the scale of the cylinder
on the Z-axis to make it a bit longer. Then to make the cylinder a child
of the sphere, I'll select the cylinder first, then the sphere,
so it's the active object. You can spot the active object because
its outline is yellow, not orange. I'll hit Ctrl+P to bring up
the parenting options, and I'll select Object (Keep Transform). And now my cylinder will move based
on changes made to the sphere. Like this. Next, I'll duplicate the sphere,
scale it, and parent it, and repeat the same process for the cylinder,
checking each time to make sure that the joints are working as intended. I'll continue this exact
process using primitives to block out the shape of the arm. [Music by eveneyes] Next, I'm going to do a rough pose
on the arms, then I'll duplicate them and position them symmetrically. I didn't use a mirror modifier for
this part because I ran into a lot of trouble with the parenting, and
it turned out that just duplicating and mirroring it solved the issue. So all I'm doing is selecting all of the
arm pieces, hitting Shift+D to duplicate, moving them over, and then right-clicking
and selecting Mirror on the x-axis. Next, I'll give my angry little
chef da body by bringing in a cylinder, then scaling and moving
it to where I think it looks right. And so next, I'll repeat the same process
I used for the arms to create the legs. And actually, I forgot the
heel sphere initially, so you'll see me go back and add that shortly. [Music] I want to give my little chef a lid, so
I'll go into Edit Mode, make sure I'm using the Face Selection option, and
select the top face of the cylinder. I'll hit Shift+D to duplicate it,
and then hit Esc to have it go back to its initial position. Then, I'll hit P to bring up the
Separation options, which will let me make a duplicated face into a separate object. I'll choose to separate by
Selection, as this will separate the face I have selected. Then I'll go into Object Mode and position
the perfectly sized lid where I want it. I'll use a Solidify modifier to make it
roughly the right thickness, and then extrude and scale it to the right shape. To add the handle, I'll
add a bezier curve. Then I'll go into Edit Mode and tweak
it until it's roughly symmetrical. I want my handle to have some thickness,
so I'll go to the Data Panel, then the Geometry options, and I'll extrude
it until it has the thickness I want. Once I'm happy, I'll go to the
Object options, up here, then go to Convert, and select Mesh. Now that this is a mesh, I can
use the Solidify Modifier on it to get the thickness I want. Once I'm finished, I'll select both
the lid and the handle, and hit Ctrl+J to join them into a single object. I'll just quickly double check
that all my parenting is working as intended, and then I'll get to posing. I'll hop into my camera, lock it to my
view and find a good starting angle, then pull out another smaller 3D
viewport on the side that I'll keep on the camera view so that I can always
see what my camera sees even when I'm working from a different angle. Now I'll get to posing, trying
all the while to maintain a sense of weight, motion, and balance. And all I'm doing to pose this
is just rotating those parented objects to where I want them. Nice and easy. [Music] Oh, and here I've spotted that I've missed
the heel spheres, so I'm adding those in. I'm also adding a base to
ground my model and to help me with the balance of the pose. Next I'm going to add in the pan, and
to do that I'll add in a cylinder, scale it down on the z-axis, and
give it some shape using E to extrude, S to scale, and I to inset. I'll add another cylinder for the handle,
scale it, and position it where I want it, and join the handle to the pan. [Music] I'll move the pan to the hand
and pose the hand as though it's holding it, and then make the pan a
child of the main part of the hand. Next, I'll add a sphere for the
onion above my robot's head. I'll go into Sculpt Mode and use
the grab brush to make it a little more lumpy and asymmetrical. Then, following the exact same steps
as before, I'll model the pot for his other lower hand, and then pose
the hand to hold it, once again I'll parent it to the main part of the
hand so that they move together if I need to tweak the pose later on. And now he needs a knife, so I'm
going to add a plane, then use a simple edge extrusion to get the
shape I want, then use a solidify modifier to get the thickness right. Once it is, I'll pose it and parent it. Finally, he needs the mid-air sliced
onion, and to make this I'm just going to add another sphere, then
go into Edit Mode, turn on X-ray Mode to see through the object, and
select a row of quads at a time. Like this. I'll then separate each of these
rows by hitting P to access the separation menu, and choosing Selection. This way they all become
their own objects. Once this is done, I'll need to fill
in the open faces, so I select each slice, go into Edit Mode, hit A to
select all, and then hit F to fill. Now I want my slices to be drifting
apart as if they were just sliced, so I'll move them apart a bit. In order to make it easy to move
the collection of slices as a whole though, I'll hit Shift and right-click
to place the 3D cursor on my sliced onion, and then I'll add an Empty. I'll select all of my onion slices,
and then the empty, and hit Ctrl+P to parent the empty to my onion
slices, keeping the transform. Now if I want to move all of the slices
together, I can just move the empty, but I can also still move each slice
individually, which will help with the composition later on when I render. Now I'll just do some very simple
tweaking, and it'll be on to materials! I'm gonna use the same method
I did for the knife to create some bacon to go in this pan. So I'm just adding in a plane and
then extruding the edges, moving them up and down and scaling them a bit
to get a little bacon-looking thing. [Music] Alright, now that I'm happy with the pose,
it's time for the Toon Shader! To start, I'll select the body of my
robot and assign it a new material. I'll only need to make this toon shader
once because I can make an editable duplicate of it when I want different
colors, as you'll see in a minute. To make the shader, I'll drag up
a new window at the bottom here, then switch to the shader editor. Then I'll add a Shader to
RGB node to the BSDF output. And then I'll add a color ramp. Make sure to set the interpolation
on your color ramp to Constant, right here. This is what'll give us those solid bands
of color between the light and the shadow. This'll let us tweak the colors that
appear on our object, and we can add stops using this Plus (+) button to add
another color, giving us options for a highlight, a mid-tone, and a shadow color. Sliding the stops around will change how
thick the bands of color are relative to the strength and distance of your
light source, so if it's not looking right, try changing the strength or
position of your light source and see if that helps to get the desired effect. To save time, I'm going to select all
of the parts of my robot that will share the same material as the body. In this case, everything
except the joints. Last, I'll select the body of my
robot, so it's the active object. When they're all selected, I'll hit
Ctrl+L to bring up the linking options, and then select Link Materials. Now all of my arms have the
correct material applied, I'll do the same for the fingies. Then, I'm just going to tweak the lighting
a bit until I'm more or less happy. Now that the main toon shader
has been made, I want to add a solid background for my robot. To do that, I'll go into the shader editor
and change the graph from Object to World, here. To get a solid color no matter
where we look, we need to duplicate the background node... then add in a mix shader,
plug the top node into the top shader slot, and the bottom
node into the bottom shader slot, then add a light path node, and take
the Is Camera Ray output, and plug it into the factor of the mix shader. Now we'll have a uniform color for our
background no matter where we look. You can change the color of your
background by changing the color on the bottom background node. And as you'll see, I was very indecisive
about the background color as I changed it a lot before settling on a dark color. I also fiddled with the grass color for
the base, but I didn't end up keeping it. To make a distinct material for the pot
and pan, I just select the pot, then go to the Material tab, and select the body
toon shader from the drop-down menu. Then, I make a unique duplicate
by hitting this button right here. I can edit this unique duplicate
without affecting the original. So I'll make my pot and pan a bit darker. I'll use this duplication process
for each new toon-shaded material. Process is identical for the
joints, the bacon, and the onions. And here you can see I
changed the background again. Using all of the same processes
we've covered, I just made some tweaks to the colors and the pose. But now I want to add
an outline to my robot. For that, we need grease pencil. But first, for this to work, I'll want
to make sure that all of my meshes for my robot are all in one collection. That way I can use Grease Pencil's
Line Art Modifier to make my outlines automatically. So I'll select all of my
pieces, hit M, and create a new collection and call it "meshes". Then, I'll add a new Grease Pencil
object by hitting Shift+A, going to Grease Pencil, and selecting Blank. Next, I'll go to the Modifiers
tab, and choose Line Art. I'll set the collection to meshes, because
it houses all of my robot's pieces. Set the layer to GP_Layer, and set the
material to black, which is the default. I'll adjust the line
thickness to my liking. It's important to note here that the
Line Art Modifier draws its outline based on the view from the camera. Okay, I changed the
background color again. (lol) So don't be surprised if it looks
funky in the normal 3D viewport. You'll notice me constantly
referencing my camera from here onward. Now I want to start drawing on the robot
itself, and to do that, I'll need to add another blank Grease Pencil object. If you want a complete tutorial on
how to use Grease Pencil, you can check out this video right here. It covers everything you need to know. With my new Grease Pencil object
selected, I'll go into draw mode and set the stroke placement to surface. You'll almost always need to adjust
the offset when using surface for your stroke placement, and it's a bit fiddly, so make a little test mark and
see where the stroke ends up. A little bit of tweaking later
and you'll be good to go. By default, Grease Pencil strokes are
set to 60% opaque, so if you want a solid black line, just go up to the
Strength setting here and slide it to 1. I'm adjusting the offset
until it looks right. Then I'll go into the Object Data
Properties tab, which contains the layer information for my Grease Pencil object,
and rename my first layer to Eyes. Then I'll go to the Materials tab
and add a new material and make it an off-white fill for the eyes. I'll use this same process for each
different material moving forward. And because my stroke placement is set to
Surface, I can draw anywhere on my robot, as long as the stroke is touching what
I'm drawing on, like with this bacon. I want the inside of this pot to
have a soup-like substance in it, so I'll go into Edit Mode, select
the top face of the soup, and then duplicate the toon shader, tweak
the colors, and click Assign. Now I have soup! I'll tweak a little bit more and
add some dots in a different color so that it looks like bubbles. Now I want to add some interesting
details in 3D, starting with some steam. I'll switch the stroke placement to
3D Cursor, then hit Shift and right-click on the pan with the bacon
to position the 3D cursor there. Next, I'll create a new blue-white
material for the steam and start drawing on the pan before deciding on what to
steam coming from the soup. I'm also using the Stabilize Stroke option
in the Stroke menu for a nice smooth line. One of the benefits of Grease Pencil
is that it's based on geometry, so you can hop into Edit Mode, then select
and scale different parts of strokes, like I'm doing here with the steam. You can hit Alt+S to scale vertices. If the change isn't smooth enough,
you can select the entire stroke by hovering over it and clicking L... then right-clicking
and choosing Subdivide. Then you'll get a nice
gradual change in scale. You can also adjust the proportional
editing falloff with this menu if you want to try something different. Using Surface or 3D cursor
placements, I'll draw in details. I'll add materials for different colors as
needed and flesh out my angry little chef. I'll also add some tiny spheres to
look like popping oil above the bacon, toss in some floor tiles so it
seems vaguely like a kitchen, and add some grease to the bacon pan. I spent the next little while just
tweaking colors, really, so I'll spare you the endless back and forth. And here's the final result! After some simple modeling and
material creation, we have a cute, angry little robot chef. If you found this video helpful,
I think you know what to do. If you'd like to support me further,
head over to my Patreon, where you'll get access to the real time footage of
this video, as well as the .blend file. All my love goes to my Patrons,
without whom I could not make these videos, and special thanks to
the Deuces Club, who always stick around to the end of my videos. If you weren't in the
Deuces Club, you are now. If you want to join the
Deuces Club members list, just comment "Deuces" down below. And feel free to come hang out on
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soon with another video. Deuces!
