In this chapter, we will be using the character concepts from the previous chapter to walk you through the process of constructing a 3D game character from scratch. Once you have learned how to do that, you can then try to draw your own concepts and turn it into a 3D model!

You may ask why we start constructing the monster first, and not the player character. The reason for this is because the body shape of the monster is much simpler compared to the player character. Constructing a humanoid 3D model is not the best way for a newbie to learn the basics of 3D modeling. We will come back to the player character once you have mastered the basic skills.

The first thing we need to do is to refer back to our monster concept art and try to imagine its body shape using just the combination of primitive geometries. This will help you see through the complexity of details such as texture, color, facial expression, and so on, and focus solely on the shape. This will...

UV mapping is the process of converting the texture space of the 3D mesh into a 2D representation so that a texture can later be applied correctly.

To unwrap our monster's UV map in Blender, we need to first open up the UV editor window. Click and drag the split-window widget located in the top-right corner of your 3D view to split open a new window. Choose UV/Image Editor from the editor type drop-down menu and now you will see the UV editor alongside your 3D view.

The first step to UV unwrapping is to find out where to cut out the seams. First, select the edges that connect the ears and legs to the body.

Then, press Ctrl + E to open up the menu containing all operators related to edges. Click on Mark Seam to tell Blender to cut these edges when we unwrap the UV map. The edges will then be marked with thick red lines.

After that, mark all the other seam lines with the same method. Try to mark the edges that are hard to notice from the player's...

Once you're happy with the UV map, you can now remove the checker texture and replace it with a blank texture by clicking on the + New button and pick Blank as the Generated Type. What I'm trying to do now is to bake the soft shadow that we usually call the ambient occlusion onto the blank texture. This AO map not only serves as a guideline for texture painting but also makes the final texture look more realistic. This step is not necessary depending on what style you're trying to do.

On the Properties window, switch over to the World tab and check Ambient Occlusion. Then, scroll down a little bit and you will see the Gather category. Change the Samples value from 5 to 15.

Next, go to the Render tab and open up the Bake category. Change Bake mode to Ambient Occlusion and check Normalized. The normalized setting will make the AO map look brighter and clean.

Once you're done with the settings, click on the Bake button and watch the magic...

Now that you are equipped with all the basic modeling skills, let's move on to create the player character. Phew, we have come such a long way!

Although a humanoid character tends to look very complicated, if we take away the details and just look at its simplified form, what we will see is a bunch of cylindrical shapes stuck together with a spherical head on top.

That is exactly what we are going to do next—create a bunch of cylinders and a sphere at a low segments count; I usually go for 6-8 segments so it's easier to edit. Then, arrange the cylinders and sphere nicely so that it look like a stickman.

Next, join all the shapes together into one single object by pressing Ctrl + J. Then, delete the other half of the model (only the body part, not the head) and apply the mirror modifier to make our lives easier. Do note that if your object's pivot point is not in the middle, your model will look extremely wrong when the mirror...