Lately, I’ve been playing with Unity and I ended up exploring the world of 3D modeling in Blender. Blender is intimidating and has one of the least user-friendly interfaces I have ever encountered. It’s enough to say that it’s almost impossible to use without learning keyboard shortcuts for even the most basic tasks. However, it’s also such a fantastic tool that I decided to push myself a bit and use it.
The learning curve was quite steep, but it became rewarding very quickly. This post is about my journey during the last 4-5 weeks following tutorials.
My first attempt was supposed to be an aggressive monster in front of an old man. Let’s just say that it’s not fully polished and move on. 😅
Next, I completed this masterpiece: an island at night with a lighthouse. The lack of light in the picture is definitely helpful!
By my third attempt, I was finally confident enough to create something coherent, and I enjoyed the process. I made some assets, including a few walls, columns, a gate, a barrel, a crate, a torch, and tiles for the floor. Then I combined them to assemble what looks like a dungeon for a board game. I suppose I may even reuse those assets to create something in Unity.
A dinosaur was my first “organic” subject. No more regular geometric shapes this time. I tackled a low-poly animal based on reference images. The most surprising thing is that I would not be able to draw this with pen and paper!
The Spitfire was my first model with textures. I also managed to animate the propeller, spending more time than I’d like to admit. However, animations are key to unlocking many possibilities in Unity, so I decided to give it a try.
I spent more time learning animations and created a TV-man complete with rigging. I made him walk, and then I started adding other silly animations just for fun. This little figure could be now easily animated into any pose by bending the skeleton I created, which is fantastic.
Sculpting was the final piece of the puzzle for gaining a complete view of Blender. This work took me a bit of time. I started with a sphere, and by molding, squeezing, and stretching it, I eventually made a devil with a silly face. It doesn’t look like my reference image (which was much more devilish and cool), but that’s okay.
It looks like now I have an artistic hobby, and I can create terrible pieces of art that make people roll their eyes!