Open source best in class 3D Art and modelling program.

Low Poly Color Palette

  • Grab a palette from https://lospec.com/palette-list
  • Make an image with a square area in pixels that just barely covers the number of colors in the palette. If the palette is 16 colors, make a 4x4 pixel image. Color each pixel with a different color from the palette and export it as a png. It's easier to work with these images if they're more square, leaning towards a vertical orientation if the count of palettes, leaving extra spots as transparent.
  • In blender open a new scene and go to the shading tab
  • In the node tree, Shift+A to open the add menu, navigate to Texture -> Image Texture.
  • In the new Image Texture node open the palette png file, and set the Interpolation to Closest (default is Linear)
  • Connect the color node to the base color of the Principled BSDF shader
  • Switch to the UV Editing tab
  • In the very top right of the 3D viewport there are four viewport shading options (wire edges, solid, material preview, render preview) and a dropdown tab. In that dropdown tab under Color change to Texture.
  • with the 3D viewport choose face select in the top left, then press the 'a' key to select all of the faces.
  • Click in the UV editor pane and press 'a' to select all the vertices of the unwrapped box and scale the size of the unwrap to 0 by pressing 's', '0', 'Enter'. Move the resulting point to the base color your model is going to be by press 'g' to grab and move it to the default color in the texture.
  • To change the color of an individual face, select the face(s) mouse over the UV area, press 'a' to select the point, and 'g' to move it to the new color. When you deselect the face you'll see the new color. Worth noting that you want to pay attention to where the dot is, not where the cursor is.

This may need some tweaks to properly handle exporting to game engines for lighting purposes. In Unity it looks like this can be handled automatically with a Generate Lightmap UVs option, alternatively I saw a quick mention of adding a second UVMap in Object Data properties of the model but I don't know how that works yet. I'll have to come back to it later.

If I ever want to reset the color of the entire object again, I'll need to select all the faces, then select all the UV points, scale them to zero again (and confirm it with enter), then grab them and move the point to a specific color.

Shiny Viewport Settings

  • In the top right corner of the 3D viewport, next to the viewport shading options, there is a drop down.
  • In that drop down turn on Backface Culling, Shadows, and Cavity (with type 'Both')
  • Set the revealed Ridge and Valley options for both world and screen space to their maximums of 2.5 and 2.0

If I want to have the same look in a rendered output I need to open up the Rendering tab and in the Render Properties tab on the right I need to change the Render Engine to Workbench, set the Color to Texture, and apply the same shadow and cavity as before.

Note: The backface culling option is to let you know when an object's face is oriented the wrong direction. This can prevent issues when importing the model into a game engine. If a face is facing the wrong direction, you can select it hit f3, search for flip normals and apply it.

Random Tips

Movement Gizmo

Shift + Space + G will turn on the movement gizmo, allowing for quick handle to grab and move things along different axis if I don't want to manually select them. This can be made the default on selecting something by clicking the viewport gizmos dropdown in the top right of the main 3D window and enabling the Move gizmo.

With an individual vertex selected, it can be moved along an existing edge by pressing g twice.

Invidividual Face Scaling

If the scaling behavior of multiple objects is adjusting too much of the mesh, might want to try switching to scaling individual origins. This can be done by selecting the meshes to scale, press '.' in the main viewport and choosing 'Individual Origins'. When scaling with 's' again the faces themselves will be scaled without impacting measurements relative to the face. The default is Median Point.

Multi-Direction Face Extrusions

With multiple faces selected I can press Alt + E and choose Extrude Along Face Normals to have the multiple faces all extrude individually instead of a weird shifting that would be the default.

This will keep adjacent edges touching so can quickly make something like the center of a box 'fatter' without scaling.

If I want to extrude the faces but break the adjacency of edges I can use Extrude Individual Faces instead.

Mirror Modifier Inset

By default with the mirror modifier on, insets will be relative to half the overall model. To get the faces to 'connect' across the mirror'd boundary. After selecting the face and pressing I to begin the inset process, you can press B to turn the boundary off to keep them connected. If it doesn't work try pressing I to turn the individual setting off.

3D Cursor to Selected

The 3D cursor is used as the initial origin of any newly created objects. To make the origin the center of the face, select the face, press Shift + S, and choose Cursor to Selected.

To return the 3D cursor the editor origin I can press Shift + C

Selecting Sub-Geometry

If I'm editing an object with multiple base meshes in and I was to select all of one mesh, I can click on the mesh I'm interested in and press 'l' to select all linked vertices, edges, or faces.

I can select additional mesh objects by mousing over them and pressing l again, or removing them by pressing Shift + l.

Connected Proportional Editing

If I'm working within an object with multiple meshes and I want to use proportional editing (press 'o' to turn on or use the orbit looking tool at the middle top of the 3d viewport in edit mode). If I want the proportional changes to only apply to one mesh I can select that dropdown in the middle top and turn on 'Connected Only'.

You may be able to go directly into that mode with Alt + O

Box Select

To select all things in a box like selector press b. This will only select the front objects unless X-ray mode is turned on using Alt + Z or the toggle in the top right of the 3D viewport.

Lasso Select

Like the box select but with a free drawn selector. Hold down Ctrl and right mouse button while drawing the shape to select.

Grow / Shrink Selection Area

If I want to expand my selection by one face I can press Ctrl + NumPad '+', likewise with shrinking using Ctrl + NumPad '-'. Useful for selecting all neighboring faces consistently and quickly.

Hiding Submeshes

When working on an object with multiple submeshes it can be useful to temporarily hide some of them. For this I can hover over it and press 'l' to select the mesh, then press 'h' to hide them.

The geometry can be returned by pressing Alt + 'h' to show everything that has been hidden.

Reducing the Polygons of An Object

The Decimate object modifier can be used to reduce the final geometry of an object by a best approiximation method. Subdividing, doing some relatively detailed modeling, then decimating it can lead to some neat accidental effects.

Removing Extra Geometry

One way would be to turn on "auto-merge vertices" an option in the right of the title bar of the main 3D viewport, turning on vertex snapping and moving (with ctrl down) the offending vertices.

If the vertices, faces, or edges have already overlapped exactly. I can press the 'M' to bring up the Merge meny and select 'By Distance'. This is good to do periodically for more complex tasks.

Inverting Face Directions

This can be useful if making a cave. You can create the object that represents the shape of the overall cave structure, but the back faces will be on the inside where you want the camera to be able to see the surfaces. Select all the faces press Alt + 'N' and choose Recalculate Inside. Recalculate Outside is available to which is more useful at fixing weird holes in meshes.

Mirror Modifier

To quickly get started create the default cube, do a loop cut along one axis and delete half the cube (cut along y for the defaults to apply). Go into object mode, add a Mirror Modifier and turn clipping on.

Low Poly Geometry Flattening

I'm not sure what this should actually be called but I was trying to figure out how it was done and finally saw it go by in a 20x speed video. There was a single object with many overlapping rectangular prisms of varying sizes, primarily vertically stretched. To get the 'flat' look associated with that kind of 3D low poly game the artist used 'Remesh' tab (same tab that has Vertex Groups).

In there applied a Voxel remesh with a voxel size of 0.072m (they had to play with this a bit) to get the corners sort of blended together. Then applied a Decimate modifier to the mesh in 'Collapse' mode with a radio of 0.0287 which gave that flat look I was looking for.

After manually cleaning up some of the mesh, reflattening some of the surfaces, The normals were auto smoothed to about 35 degrees which helped clean it up even more.

Rigging Notes

Useful Blender Extensions

  • Mesh: Auto Mirror
  • Rigging: Riggify

Tips

  • It seems like it is better to have different object components for different movable pieces for mechanical objects. For organic deformation a single mesh is fine. Each object will get its own Vertex Group automatically.
  • Objects probably shouldn't be parented to each other, but can be in the same collection for organizational reasons.
  • Armature deforms are an object modifier, if there are other modifiers they generally should be below the armature object (I suspect subdivide is probably one of the exceptions for organic objects).
  • Before Rigging, make sure all transforms are applied to the various objects in the model so everything is zero'd out (press a to select everything then Ctrl + A, Apply All Transforms)
  • While rigging it can be super useful to ensure the rig is always rendered in front of the model. This can be done by select the Armature object, going to the "Object Data Properties" parameter page, expanding Viewport Display and checking 'In Front'
  • The 'head' of the bone is at the base (the fat end), the 'tail' of the bone is at the top (the skinny pointed end).
  • Rotation in pose mode happens around the 'head' point
  • Subdividing works with bones to split them equally and evenly
  • Using a suffix of 'L' can allow blender to magically symetrize models that mirror about a single axis (ex: 'Hand.L.001'). Select the relevant bones that have been named with this convention, right click and choose 'Symmeterize'.
  • Making future changes to symetrized bones can be duplicated by expanding the tool options, and click X-Axis Mirror (might be a different). Changes such as parenting should be replicated.
  • Usually when I want to parent a bone I'm going to want to do the 'Keep Transform' option. The other option 'Connected' will move the head of the child bone to the parent's tail.
  • Precision placement of the joint ends can be done using the 3D cursor, select a target object, press Shift + S then 'Cursor to Selected' (this may need to be done in Edit Mode), select the bone's head or tail (whatever you're trying to move) and press Shift + S then use Selected to Cursor.
  • Once the rig is created, if it's an organic object that is elastic and can be deformed a bit more freely automatic weights can be used. This is the fastest way to setup a rig but doesn't work well for mechanical constructions. Select all the mesh objects that apply to the rig, then select your Rig (it's important to select it last). Then press Ctrl + P, and select 'Armature Deform With Automatic Weights'. For mechanical constructions you instead want to set the weights by hand so choose 'Armature Deform With Empty Groups'. To assign weights to the individual components, click on the relevant object in Object mode and open the 'Object Data Properties' attribute panel. Switch to edit mode and choose the vertex group with a name matching the bone that will be controlling that object and set its weight to 1.0 and click on 'Assign'.
  • In pose mode I can prevent certain bones from having different types of rotations and transforms by locking them in the transform window. This is very useful when building an IK model. Some bones are meant for rotation only, some translation only, and rarely scaling will be useful.
  • After vertex weights have been applied, you can duplicate parts of the bones to be used as control nodes or as a separate IK model (for example for mixing it with a FK model).
  • IK controls are normal bones that have no weight associated with a vertex group
  • To add a constraint between bones, enter pose mode, select the two bones, press Ctrl + Shift + C. The one that was first shown and probably one of the most useful ones is the 'Inverse Kinematics'. The length of the IK chain handling can be set in the 'Context/Bone Constraints' attributes panel you can increase the chain length.
  • To control the direction of something like an elbow's position around an arm, we want to set a pull vector. Extrude a bone from the elbow, press Ctrl + P and clear the parent. Move it a little ways away along an axis perpendicular to the elbow. Parent it to the root bone of the armiture. Add a bone constraint, associate the pole target with the armature, and the bone with whatever you named that extruded control bone. You may need to adjust the pole angle to get it facing the correct direction.
  • To cause a duplicate set of bones to behave like another one, individual bones can be selected, press Ctrl + Shift + C and choose Copy Transforms. You'll want to do this between each pair of bones.
  • To blend between an IK model and an FK model, make sure there is two copies of the relevant bones, an IK model setup on one of them, and copy transforms between the two copies of each bone and the root. Reset the 3D cursor with Shift + C, add a new bone, and move it to the side (this will be the blend controller between IK & FK). Parent it to the root node. Add a bone constraint of the Limit Location, enable all the min and max limitations, leaving the Ys and Zs at zero, Set Min X to 0m, and Max X to 1m, set Convert to 'Local Space', and enable 'For Transform'. This will restrict its behavior to being posed like a switch. On one of the bone constraints between the primary armiture, and the FK armiture, right click on the influence slider, go to Add Driver, change the expression to 'blend_amt', in the variable, adjust its name to 'blend_amt' choose the rig as the object, and the freshly created control node as the bone, with X location in Local Space. This driver can be copied and pasted on each of the copy transform constraints between the IK model and the base model. It should work at this point, if not make sure that the IK bone constraints appears after the FK bone constraints.
  • If I want to move copies of a model back onto the OG version to move it correctly in edit mode, I'll want to select all the bones with the bone closest to a root bone selected last, change the 'Pivot Point' (one of the options along the to bar) to 'Active Element' and move it into place.
  • Different sets of bones can be placed on different layers to make it easier to select the appropriate ones. Very useful to grab only the FK layer when initially posing and all the models are overlapping. To set bones on a layer select them and go to the armiture object data, press m on the keyboard and click to position it on a separate layer (can I shift click to keep it on two layers?). It would be nice to have layers for 'all', 'fk', 'ik', and 'root'. I may not be able to have the 'all' layer... In the armiture properties view multiple layers can be shown by shift clicking them.
  • If I'm gettig weird roll behavior on a lower part of an arm, I may need to reorient it relative to one of the parent arm rolls. Select all the bone on the lower segment of the arm, and one of the parents they should be rotating relative too (as the last bone), press Shift + N and choose 'Other' -> 'Active Bone'.
  • Custom shapes can be setup on bones to more accurately represent their intended use (such as root movement, or an FK/IK control). Create the desired object shape, go to the bone attribute panel, under Viewport Display select the reference object of the shape you want to use. If the orientation is wrong relative to the shape, object mode rotations can be used to match how it appears, and edit mode rotations can apply them to the display. Turning on the axis in the viewport display can assist with this orientation. If the controls are too large, the scale option in the bone viewport display can adjust the size of the control. I might need to be in pose mode to set the custom control object.

Blender Special Bone Prefixes

Apparently some prefixes have special annotations in blender, I haven't confirmed any of this.

  • CTRL: ???
  • MCH: A bone that is strictly controlled by other bones. When making an animation these won't be keyframed automatically.