Creating a Game Character - The Rogue - Blender 3

#nvidia #blender3d #lowpoly
I’ll show you the process I use to make this fully animated, game ready, low poly rogue character from scratch. I’ll give you an overview of the techniques and processes involved, so you can apply them to your own projects. Plus, I've got lots of tips, tricks, and workflow shortcuts to make the process even smoother.
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Chapters
0:00 - start
0:39 - The Face
2:11 - The Body
5:12 - The hands
6:24 - Tidy Up
7:23 - The Cloak
9:39 - The Clothing
10:20 - Face Tidy Up
10:40 - Weapons
11:09 - The Hair
11:31 - Nvidia & PC Specialist
13:00 - Texturing
15:13 - Animation
16:15 - Rigging the cape
17:34 - Adjusting the Mixamo Animations
18:55 - The NLA

[@KevinNijmeijer]

My gosh this is the exact art style I've been trying to find a good tut on. Not too low but still pretty low poly but also with nice details but not too complex texturing my golly thank you!

[@turtlelearns3d]

It was really cool to see your process for this, thanks for sharing! I got your anime course, very excited to start!

[@grabbitt]

Hope you enjoy it!

[@DanJohnsonArt]

A course on Blender to Unity workflow would be amazing. Modeling a scene and character in Blender then getting them working in a Unity game.

[@fallingwallgames6680]

Seconding this. It would be so useful.

[@Koranlord]

Awesome work! Thank for such tutorials. The best teacher so far!

[@semi-pacifist]

I'm definitely interested in seeing a process for taking models from Blender into Unreal so they work well in the game. Hope you do that sometime in the future!

[@psotos]

I second this!!

[@rios7744]

i third this!

[@Alriightyman]

Unreal has a blender plugin that exports models from Blender to Unreal.

[@mongrelgames]

I have been wondering about this as well. As well as the settings I wonder things like when making modular pieces if it's better to put them together before or after we move them to Unreal. I am assuming its best in unreal but not actually sure.

[@todd-tl9tr]

4th this.

[@mikeshepherd7557]

Thanks! It really helps with the frustration and burnout when you try to start modeling more complex shapes. Thank you!

[@NotTheHeroStudios]

damn dude, you've been banging these out lately. I took a bit of a blender break to focus on my Coding, and you're giving me the itch

[@CgPlane123]

Awesomely done

[@mikedolan03]

When you initially added too many fingers I was thinking 'Oh no! Grant's a super advanced 3D modelling AI!'😅

[@grabbitt]

🤣

[@awaydays8935]

I try this again and again and never get a satisfying result. this makes me literally angry 😁 Modeling head and face is something above my understanding damn it!

[@Flembro]

Yes, like many have requested, would be fantastic to see a video on how to import this to unreal :)

[@TacoBear_Studios]

Grant are you reading my mind these days? Great video my man, I'll be checking out the anime course as well. getting inspired again, videos like these really help.

[@RDD87z]

i love these character creation videos!

[@lukasurbanek2501]

This video Is my drug watching IT over n over perfect 🔥

[@MattBlend]

Thanks for all your great videos! I picked up the anime and game ready courses and they were well worth the money!

[@grabbitt]

Great to hear!

[@felfurion8624]

Really cool. Thank you.

[@perkele1989]

That character isn’t gameready with that many materials. Should be baked down to a single texture! Every material in a mesh becomes it’s own drawcall, along with extra overhead to prepare the gpu for the drawcall itself. You want few drawcalls as possible and it really matters, especially for mobile.

[@grabbitt]

Yep true. I would bake out the final colours

[@perkele1989]

@@grabbitt no worries thanks for a great video! Came with great timing too since I’m making a character with a similar style very soon :)

[@erichbauer3991]

creating the topology in areas that are important first and then filling the gaps is such a nice way to work, thanks for introducing me to it. After a while its super satisfying, especially since you get clean topology pretty much for free.

[@unitynocode]

You're still the best in many years ^ ^. Love to show the rig with Mixamo ... was headache with it in many days :D

[@benniewanders4388]

Re: low-poly breast modelling on a model you're going to animate: On real people, the skin that holds the breast is anchored onto the lower tissue layers right about where the pec muscles end and linearly down the midline of the chest, with the bulk of breast concentrating in a cone whose tip is the areola. You may end up with an easier time animating if you start the geometry by outlining the pec (and picking a vertex to track the "tip of the cone"), beveling its lower edge out, and then chopping off corners along the lower side - or for someone whose chest is large enough it would be folding over the anchor line, dragging the lowest faces downwards - because that geometry will reflect the edges along which the breast is pulled or compressed when the shoulders aren't in their neutral position.

[@GameDevAraz]

Berry nice. When animating, remember, always use reference, ALWAYS!

[@salutcava1578]

Thank you!

[@HuynhLuong227]

so cool, really thanks

[@keelanbowker-obrien2222]

+1 for the Animation Graph + Import into Game Engine tutorials

[@potionofknowledge]

Wow this is so interesting!

[@SanzoArts]

Thank you ♥can you do more videos about the graph editors and animation curves, pretty please?

[@violettracey]

Thanks!

[@romutongart3980]

Amazing

[@grayter]

GREAT stuff as usual..I have something particular with my own project that this has assisted with..that being rigging/animating "cloth"..I've been avoiding it for awhile now..

[@SZMIDEL]

NLA is a tricky troll but is great once its mastered. I believe your actions where the arms were distorted are adding from the layers below. If you move the action along where the time line only goes through the one action it should play right. Then you need to figure out the blending options and create a fade in and fade out so each action smoothly goes from on to the other...

[@nic-ori]

Thanks.

[@Rozlan31]

Blender Unity project would be great Grant!

[@userunfriendly9304]

I think the arm distortion might come from the armature having a different origin from the character mesh.

[@domin6168]

Thx Master ;D

[@spielville8742]

Really nice video. Currently going through your tuts on axe and low poly items. I was wondering if you could make your iteration of animated arms/legs for first person games?

[@grabbitt]

I guess it's fairly straightforward to cut them out

[@facusandoval4074]

I love you bro!

[@tgoehlert]

Hi Grant, so i'm a beginner when it comes to Blender, but i do think the strange positions after stashing the animations are happening because they get kinda mixed, this happened also to me recently. When i loaded up the animations one by one, everything was fine. hope that helps (and if you find out how to prevent this, pls share ^^)

[@AlvaroDevLabs]

Hey Grant, big fan of your tutorials here!. I have always wondered, how 3D artist deal with checkpoints or versioning. I normally duplicate and move to a Backup collection the state of my model so I have backups of it, but, there is a better way of doing this? How is done in production-style workflows?

[@grabbitt]

I don't really have much of a system myself

[@jaminvanderberg5300]

I know its a year later, but if you havent figured out the mixamo issue, i ran into it recently. If you download the file from mixamo without skin, it exports it in T pose. You have to download with the skin. Then it will export in the proper pose.

[@gertjohansen4849]

The problem with all the bones pointing up and twisting the arms can be solved by clicking “Automatic bone orientation” under “Armature” when you import the Mixamo FBX. … well, sometimes at least 😉

[@grabbitt]

Cool

[@hello.4693]

Whats best practice for games, should i put the cloths above the body or replace the body with the jacket for example. And if i need to replace it how do i connect the verticies together without glichting the mesh? :S and i want to create multiply clothes so i can change the outfit.

[@bryansailer5927]

Great walk through. I have watched most of your videos on KZbin as well a your courses. You have used different blocking out methods. How do you decide which method to use?

[@grabbitt]

I like to use a variety and it depends in the detail of the character

[@hope4884]

Hi Grant, first of all, i want to thank you because i used your tutorials so much for improving myself. My question is that how do you create new vertices on wherever you want?

[@grabbitt]

K for knife tool

[@sir_justinius]

Maybe it is time for me to move on to character design. I'm not sure if I have the prerequisite Blender experience for this level of detail, though.

[@jamesatzberger7303]

Hey this was really helpful Grant but I was wanting to make my own version of this and was wondering how to find those background images to start modelig.

[@grabbitt]

i cant share those because the character is meant for an asset pack

[@coreys2686]

The cape/clothing rigs I've seen use a bone string for each side and one for the middle

[@grabbitt]

Yep should have done it like that sounds much better

[@michaelmurray2595]

Hi Grant, really appreciate your courses. Have you made one on Blender's new grease pencil?

[@grabbitt]

Not yet!

[@grabbitt]

Hopefully one day

[@byronlewis7154]

1:20 When you mentioned pulling the shape around 3D to be tricky, are there any tips you can offer on that point? I struggle with that part the most if I'm unable to find an edgeflow reference

[@grabbitt]

It's just a case of practice but search face topology might help

[@NevRS32]

Amazing tutorial Grant! Thank you! Just one question. Maybe I missed something but do we need to animate the transitions in Blender? Wouldn't a blend tree in Unity resolve this? Thanks again!

[@grabbitt]

Yes unity solves that it was just for the final animation for youtube 😀

[@NevRS32]

@@grabbitt Thank you! Your content is amazing!

[@samuelhugo3387]

Ive never made a charcter's face using planes before, ive always only modeled ery low poly characters starting with a cube and at the waste, but I wondered how do people make the nicer looking higher poly models, and omg that makes so much sense, seems like alot of work, how do you hae enought time to make hundreds of chracters and then worry about animations and also actaully writing the code for your game mechanics in wich ever eninge your using? Makes me wonder how the indie devs that make amazing games do it? I couldn't make a game in this style given 5 years but I geus I work slow due to inexperience. Anyways GREAT tutorial thanks alot, I'm considering buying those courses at some point

[@ValeGoG]

10/10

[@HumanOddity69]

I want to make a character with swappable equipment including outfits so would it work to do something like this and then swap just the whole model or should I start with a basic body and then make attachable items for it? I'm working with UE5 if that matters at all to the question.

[@grabbitt]

Yes as I understand it

[@robthegnat9697]

Just a heads up, this way you have here to make the fingers is a lot easier than what you had in your anime class. I happened across this when doing the other and I'll have to keep the loop tools in mind. Also, I wonder, do you always create your characters from scratch? If you were going to make a game would you just have a base mesh and update for that?

[@grabbitt]

Yes I would. I don't like to use too many addons in my courses

[@robthegnat9697]

@@grabbitt Cool. Thanks for sharing. :)

[@ianmacnaughton3636]

What was the tri count you ended up with this character? Also is there a reason you didn't shade smooth the character, I'm making a low poly game and just came accross these questions when I watched your video

[@grabbitt]

I like the flat shaded look. About 1000 faces

[@XonixDerps]

is it possible to use this as a guide for 3d print mini making? Or would I need to start with solid forms rather than planes

[@grabbitt]

This would work

[@lauralei7069]

love your tutorials! Is it possible to get a reference drawing like the one you use in this video, but without cape and hood? Not the best at drawing myself unfortunately! :) (Maybe even also a male version?)

[@grabbitt]

You'll find some on Google called character turnarounds. I'll see about making some available in future

[@lauralei7069]

@@grabbitt Thank you so much!

[@jbdh6510]

Can you alternatively use a cloth modifier instead of rigging the cape or will this not match the lowpoly-look?

[@grabbitt]

It can work yes

[@MartKart8]

This feels like a rule, when designing a complexed character, always have a drawn front and side view reference. I should probably draw a character on paper then use the scanner in this printer at home.

[@divalea]

I can tell you from years of experience as a sculptor, sketches help so much. Sketches help you clarify what you want, improve your design, and decide what’s necessary. Sketches are your map in the Blender environment.

Great video, as always. I think Mixamo does not like A pose characters very much, maybe that was the origin of the problems with the animations.

[@grabbitt]

Yes good point I forgotten put it into a t pose

[@Kamenest21]

👍👍👍👍

[@zachmaready5272]

Anyone know how he keeps all the points of each quad on the same plane? Always my stumbling point with low-poly…

[@grabbitt]

Scale in that plane 0

[@myvisualnovelquest822]

I am still working on my character drawing. Originally, he is wearing a mask, and his armor is covered. However, there are going to be situations where his clothing will expose his armor or his mask will be off exposing his entire face. What do you recommend?

[@grabbitt]

Build a new mesh for the armour

[@myvisualnovelquest822]

​@@grabbitt do it separately?

[@udit.roshan]

Its just what i needed. But i need to see how to properly import this character to unity.

[@grabbitt]

I'm working on a video for this

[@jamesraphaelibay6664]

A pose mesh in mixamo causes the problem in my experience

[@remusveritas739]

hello sir, is it viable to texture paint low poly game assets/charakters to get a nice stylised look or is there a reason to not do that?

[@grabbitt]

Yes, absolutely. It can work very well

[@remusveritas739]

@@grabbitt wow cool thank you

[@MeltyVampire]

Is the reference an exclusive character? If not, are we allowed to use it?

[@grabbitt]

It's exclusive I'm afraid

[@MeltyVampire]

@@grabbitt fair enough thx tho!

[@andrewwoodward5274]

Hi Grant. Is the Character course MEGA bundle only $30 offer still available? Many thanks

[@grabbitt]

I believe so. Follow the link to double check

[@andrewwoodward5274]

Great thank you. Just purchased. Looking forward to getting started. Love your teaching style

[@okamichamploo]

Wait so you can add Miximo without setting up your bones first? I thought you would need to make a rig compatable with Miximo and then download the animations. Did I miss something?

[@grabbitt]

no mixamo will rig it

[@okamichamploo]

@@grabbitt Great! That makes things quite a bit easier

[@inkofthedragon]

I'm a complete beginner and am overwhelmed as to where to start. I have no experience. My goal is to create characters to be used in Unity. Do you have a suggested playlist or a course for learning blender, character creation, rigging and importing into Unity that is not sped up? Thanks!

[@grabbitt]

I have an anime character course and a sculpting course that covers character creation. The process is quite long, so producing a course on youtbe can be unrewarding, which is why you won't see that many

[@inkofthedragon]

@@grabbitt ok I found the anime course. Is the sculpting course the dragon one? In addition to these 2 courses, what do you recommend for a beginner course to learn Blender? And lastly, what do you recommend for learning to import into Unity? Thanks so much, looking forward to purchasing and diving into your courses!

[@grabbitt]

beginner courses i would say the complete blender creator. If characters are your thing then the character creator, the dragon or the low poly characters would be my suggestion. buy today and they are super cheap because of a may the 4th (be with you) promotion

[@generic_stiles]

the reason the arms are distorted is because there is another keyframe from the begining, essentially every animation starts from the A or Star pose, so when theres another keyframe it tries to add a keyframe following that movement and then you end up with monstrous movements, we ran into a similar issue over at TME Studios when we were trying to compare some mixamo movements for our characters for our short film kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z5i5i5Kge9SfsNUsi=ddGqhorVwQKf5c5y. So the solution is simple, always ensure that you have a T-pose at the beggining of every action

[@grabbitt]

Thanks

[@ILLRICARDO]

How do people watch and do the course especially when they are around 16 hrs +? 1) Do you watch the video pause and then do what was shown in the video? 2)do you watch the video, pause take notes and screen grabs and then do what is shown in the video? 3) do you watch the entire video then do what was shown in the tutorial? What's the best way to learn and progress through these tutorials? i use number 2, but it takes me forever to get through any course, i and end up getting burned out and quitting

[@grabbitt]

In my courses I will say pause the video and have a go at specific times. I think that's very important to include personally

[@ILLRICARDO]

@@grabbitt thank you grant, i will try i, i have purchased your anime modeling course which i was going to start, but was hesitant to start as it is lengthy.

[@grabbitt]

@@ILLRICARDO I hope you like it🙂

[@zeldrias]

it helps if you have two monitors imo

[@yeahitsoffader]

Any chance we could get this rig? I would love to animate it!

[@grabbitt]

I can't give this one out as it's for an asset pack

[@dibaterman]

I ran this at .25 and stuff was still happening in less than 3 frames. X_X Not sure if this was something I can follow along with.

[@grabbitt]

This one is less of a follow along more of an overview of the process

[@SolearGnG]

Why not use "shade smooth"? Color slots are nice but if you want to go PBR they are kinda cumbersome aren't they?

[@grabbitt]

I would actually bake the textures in the end

[@zerghector]

where could i get the character blueprint?

[@grabbitt]

i drew it myself and used it commercially so its not available

[@zerghector]

@@grabbitt thank for the answer

[@mr.jotarokujo4859]

Where can I find video references?

[@grabbitt]

For what?

[@mr.jotarokujo4859]

@@grabbitt I would like to do something similar, but without the reference from the video, I'm not good at it

[@RobCardIV]

so close and yet so far.

[@grabbitt]

?

[@indianastilts]

Really like this video, however you used material colour to add to the character...Don't you Have to UVMap it. You can't just put colour on and that is it, then export to a game. Don't you have to, as in it is a Must that you have to UVMap the model and bake the colours to a texture, as if you simply export the model from a model engine (maya/blender etc) then in the game engine it will read every single mesh face material instead of One simple texture png or file which all AAA and all creators do?? (This is a question only from me not an answer so please if anyone knows this to be a fact or if amazingly you don't have to do this, then I would love to know...)

[@perkele1989]

You are correct it would trash the GPU in a real project. It comes down to drawcalls, each unique color here would make one drawcall each.

[@grabbitt]

Yes I forgot I would normally bake it out

[@indianastilts]

@@grabbitt must say however you are extremely talented and love your videos. Your videos have helped sooo much and love them all. Love this video, just made me think about the colour mapping part as alot will want to put blender models into a game

[@KalponicGames]

you can just use a flat colours or gradients and project uv on them on whatever colour you need like in his low poly course as he shows. That way only one material and one texture so u get one draw call for your character or scene

[@thestellarvoid7077]

Great video but you arent showing the buttons you're pressing so it's almost impossible to know how you're getting those perfect vertices first try.

[@shotakhakhishvili8640]

Idk about you guys, but I found some parts very hard to follow, I didn't feel like it was a begginer-friendly. But anyways thanks for the tutorial!

[@grabbitt]

Yeah it's more an intermediate one this one

[@AnimaStudio88]

Bottom of the bottom =)

[@jamieunited]

I am almost disappointed these are free KZbin videos as I would happily pay for an in depth version like the Anime character course. I know its similar but I like to follow your in-depth courses.

[@grabbitt]

Maybe I'll make another one 😀

[@XxBeyBladexX]

@@grabbitt Please make another anime character course! Your first course was too good and we need more! :D

[@nemam83]

the giant, deformed eyes are damn creepy

[@hot_fun_videos]

i feel that sculpt is much more easier than this techniques , when u do it it seems too easy but when i try i never can get the shape of head by extrude edge and faces