Today, our Blender trainer Jonathan Lampel breathes fresh life into Pothead and makes him shine... all in Blender.
Pothead is your guide for creating characters in Blender, step by step
In 40 lessons, you'll go from the default Blender scene... to a complete character ready for a rusty adventure.
"Pothead makes for a great learning project because he is made up of mostly simple shapes - but with a few complex pieces thrown in."
Chapter 1: Hard Surface and Subdivision Surface Modeling
Because Pothead comprises several hard surface pieces, we'll get the opportunity to talk about booleans, bevels, and creases in Chapter 1.
But, because he's also round and smooth, you'll learn how to incorporate those techniques into a subdivision surface modeling workflow.
For the first time in my Blender learning journey, I was able to put a lot of what I had learnt over the prior few months of doing the fundamental courses into actualised practice – and what an incredible way to do so. Over the duration of the course, I quickly became very attached to Pothead – I was making it my Pothead.
This is a brilliant course that covers all aspects of hard surface modelling while making it easy to understand why I was doing the things I was doing. From starting out with a rough blockout 'draft' version to refining it into a high-poly version, unwrapping it from pot to toe, texture painting the entire model, and then creating material shaders that with one look you could say, "Oh wow, that really looks like rusted metal!" The final part is to bake everything into a single texture set, and the level of satisfaction when getting the bakes just right and plugging them all in felt like a profound pat on the back.
The last entry is all about rendering and submitting your Pothead. However, there is also a challenge, wherein you, if you choose to, put everything you've learnt to the test and create a companion for Pothead. It ultimately solidifies all the learnt information – and I can't express how good it felt when I finally completed my companion, put the two of them side by side, and was able to say, "...I did that."
Cheers again, and onto the next one!