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Help with human modelling

A topic by thebigmoose created Oct 31, 2022 Views: 463 Replies: 6

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Hey there! I've been picking up a lot of blender lately to help make assets for my games, i'm pretty proficient at making inorganic objects and such and i've become pretty familiar with the overall modeling process. HOWEVER I have this road block with making anything alive, like humans, dogs, etc.

I was wondering if anyone has any particularly good resources for learning how to do this? Also any free human assets someone happens to know about would be appreciated. I wouldn't be using them in the end product, but i was hoping to have something to use during development until I manage to make my own human models.

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Eldwood2 years ago

I'm not convinced that this is possible. That is, I'm not convinced that there's a way to create a 3D model of a human that doesn't look completely creepy. I'm trouble thinking of even a single 3D game or movie with human characters that didn't creep me out at least a little bit.

Anyway, there are a ton of learning resources available. If you can't find anything for free on youtube, you can look at paid content on udemy.com (but wait for a sale, because courses priced over $100 regularly go on sale for less than $15). But even with those resources, this is a hard problem.

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thebigmoose2 years ago

Oh yeah i've def found a few, but they usually go through like step by step instructions which doesn't help a whole lot when it comes time to make my own model haha. I was hoping maybe there'd be some deep cut resources people that sort of go more over technique that people might know about. udemy is def a good resource that i've forgotten to check though, so i might have to do that.

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NSFP2 years ago (2 edits) (+1)

Modeling humans requires human anatomy study. It's extremely unlikely that you will ever model a believably proportioned human unless you have fully learned the skeletal and muscular structure of the human body. Once you have made yourself an expert on human anatomy, modeling a human body will feel no different from modeling a chair or a coffee cup.

I know that may sound like a lot of work that you won't feel like doing! But trust me on this one, if you try to start modeling humans (or anything else) without doing the proper anatomy study first, you will always feel lost and confused like you have no idea what you are doing and everything you make looks wrong and you won't know why.

Youtube channels "Sam Webster" and "Viren Kariya" have a lot of excellent anatomy videos. Kariya has real human bones that he holds in his hands and moves around and explains every tiny detail, and Webster has muscular models, as well as videos about organs, blood vessels, all sorts of anatomy-related material. But, these things will only get you started. You'll also want to take advantage of the information in encyclopedias, wikipedia, other youtube channels, etc.

Once you know the anatomy of the thing you want to model, you'll feel like, 'wow, I can't believe this was ever a challenge for me.' This is the solution to the roadblock you are experiencing, don't try to skip it. It is the answer, even if it is not the answer you want.

Note that the current standard of photorealism is scanned models. No manner of modeling technique will reproduce the same graphic impression of a scanned model. If you're modeling humans yourself, don't let yourself get wound up in the trap of comparing your best work to scanned models. That will only ever make you feel inadequate when your work may be perfectly fine.

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thebigmoose2 years ago

huh, that's definitely not the answer i expected, but that actually does make a lot of sense! i guess like, you really need to understand the proportions and the way things fit together for it to really make sense.

I'll definitely check those channels out! Looking at them, it def seems like a long journey but I'm dedicated as hell to my project so I'll make it work. Thanks for the advice!

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NSFP2 years ago

I forgot to mention this in my first response, but actually model the anatomy you are studying as you go. You don't need to make highly detailed or precise models, but building a 3D human piece by piece will go a long way for your comprehension of the whole structure, and also it will be practice modelling organic forms. I suggest starting with the axial skeleton, then move on to the appendicular skeleton, then the skull (which is waaaaaay complicated), then the muscle groups from inner-most to outer-most. If you really want to top-out, you can study sub-cutaneous blood vessels, but that's not essential.

Also bare in mind that males and females are skeletally distinct, especially in the skull and pelvic gurdle. After studying anatomy, you'll want to learn about the sexed distinctions. In addition to sex, human from different regions of the world have skeletal distinctions. For example, African people commonly have jaws, chins, and nasal bones that protrude almost a whole centimeter more forward than the rest of the world, and many Chinese people have nasal bones that turn inward instead of outward, compared to the rest of the world. Research into details of this kind will become essential in the future, when you want to design an original human character. You'll want to know what are the skeletal distinctions that might by found in that character by sex and region, so you can make a mock-up to model your mesh around.

You're absolutely right that it is a long journey, but, consider these things:
It's no different from studying a coffee cup, except a human is far more complex than a cup. For anything you want to model, you will need to study it, no matter how simple or complex it may be.
Whenever you see 3D humans that look not-quite right and compare them to some that look just fine, the difference is often that one of those artists has not put the proper time into studying human anatomy, and the other artist did. That knowledge is the difference between them.

I wish you luck!

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NOIR2 years ago

I spent a while attempting to model humans on Blender but now I just use Mixamo. It automatically rigs models and you can export a bunch of animations. It's really easy. You can find a free anatomically-correct model on Turbosquid, rig via Mixamo and export the animations as FBX and that covers all my needs, really.

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