Friday, February 8, 2019

A Blender 3D Mini Cooper and A Little Green Alien

With all of the cold winter weather keeping me indoors the past couple of weeks I have been keeping busy once again modeling with Blender 3D.  Also since I thought I better get another posting out to keep all of you up to date this makes another good subject to write about.

As most of you already know I drive a very nice little 2014 Mini Cooper.  It has been one of my goals for a long time to model my Mini in 3D using Blender 3D.  I finally bit the bullet this past week and got started on this project.  Like most of the vehicles I model I know this will take some time as it usually takes me around 100 hours or so to complete any vehicle that I put a large amount of detail into using Blender.  I suspect that this will be the same with my Mini Cooper.


As with all of the vehicles that I model in Blender I start by tracking down as many images as I can of the car or truck that I am working on.  I am fortunate to own my little mini so I have a good reference point to start the project.




I also rely on a lot of images that I can find online.  The photos above work out very well to get the details of the vehicle to the right proportion when setting up the model in Blender.  So a lot of research goes into setting up the model before I start modeling.  Again the plus side to all of this is the fact that I own the car so I can get a close up view or photo of something on the car to get the detail exactly right.



Here's a good example of what one of the front headlights for the Mini looks like up close. It's the little details like this that I want to get into my Blender model and usually this is what makes the completed model stand out from the average looking model. 


Here's a good start to the front hood of the car.  I play around with the color of the car early on just to get an idea of how the completed model will look when I am done.  I feel pretty good about the color at this point so I can check that off of my to do list for the model.  The shape of the hood also at this point looks good as well.  But with all of my Blender modeling it is tweaked over and over again until I am completely happy with the end result.


After a bunch more hours work the lower front of the car is starting to take shape.  It can get frustrating at times when a model just does not seem to fall into place.  At that point I leave it sit for a couple of days and then go back at it.  This morning the lower section that I thought I would not get laid down to my liking started to finally take shape.  It still needs a bit more finessing but I am again happy that I am getting it worked out.  Progress is being made and that is always a good thing.  That is where I am at this point this morning anyway with the Mini Cooper Blender model.


Now for a completely different Blender 3D model pictured above is my version of a little green alien. I had modeled this guy years back and wanted to put more detail in the model but had lost him due to a major computer failure.  I ended up losing this little guy along with a lot of other Blender models that I had worked on over the years.  Luckily a large portion of the images to these models still remain so at least I have that much.

I had tracked down the instructional video that was put out nine years ago and decided that I wanted to recreate this little character once again. Here is the link for the video instructions on how to make your own little green alien.  


Some time down the line I thought it would be great to animate this character and with the instructions that I found to create what you see here the alien is laid out very well. He should work perfectly if I do want to animate him.  Another idea I had was to modify this little guy to give him two eyes instead of one and maybe put some green fur on him.  Both are easy modifications so it would be fun to play around with him to see what else I can come up with.

Also before I end here I wanted to let you know that the tutorial to create the alien is very easy to follow even for Blender 3D beginners.  So look into it. I think you will enjoy making your own little green alien. Have fun!




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