I suggest taking the scalp geometry (where the hair will be), duplicate it, thicken it by extruding, then do some extrusions if you want a ponytail for example
@@garbaj Actually, technically, there are kinds of 3d models that aren't based off of triangles used for other things like product design, but I know what you meant lol
The smooth mesh shading helped me alot on my models. By the way when texture painting, I find it a bit better to start off at slightly higher Res(512x512) to get more details when you downscale the image to 128x128 or 256x256.
@@garbaj Another idea: when downscaling try going for nearest neighbor scaling for that extra crispy pixel look that PS1 is known for. Bilinear gives more of an N64 look instead.
Modelling tip: You can have several 3D Viewports so you don't have to constantly switch (e.g between Front and Right View). At the very least, have one 3D Viewport in Camera Perspective (not Orthographic), and adjust the angles around the model so you can spot potential weirdness early on.
Was helpful in a backwards kind of way. Everything said that's basically "a bad thing" in this video, is the exact aesthetic i wanted. example: I finally found 'shade flat'!
I think Megaman Legends pulled out the best looking low-poly 3d anime character models, that also were pretty damn expressive. Also Vagrant Story is a good source of inspiration for low-poly characters with more edgy design.
0:03 "first you need a design" and that is the most extremely, hardest part of the whole process. No character/creature design = nothing to model otherwise you are going to rely on someone's designs all the time, which is completely invalid to make a game for example.
I think the only part of this I'm not confident in is the rigging, I've definitely tried and failed at weight painting in low poly but I'm not sure how to get it to treat the separate parts as connected to each other.
Really late here, but really all you need to do is parent the mesh to your custom skeleton with empty vertex groups, and assign each individual body part to their respective bones. That way, the seperate parts are still seperate, but they have the illusion of being connected since the bones themselves are connected
This is fantastic information - thank you so much for sharing! High res stuff seems so out of reach for me as a 2D illustrator but you've made low poly modelling very accessible!
Another thing you can do is assign vertex groups named after the bone you want it to correlate to. I use this for actual N64 compatible skinned models.
video was actually so unhelpful it made me close the program out of frustration that a guy saying "you can make a low poly model in blender' somehow passes as a tutorial..
this is the type of modeling that is fun. i should do this more. the more complex, the more investment, the less fun. keep it simple, do it a lot, you'll get good in no time
I mean, you can rig it in the classic style with all the limbs separated, but you can also fix the topology and make a good rigging with weight painting. I just don't recommend automatic weigh painting since it's messy, and instead use empty groups.
@@Kallensayz just search “blender beginners tutorial” and you’ll find thousands of series for beginners. Advanced students need their education aswell yk?
But modeling is a very specific term, I want to know the process of making low poly models specifically, not just shading and drawing on them that’s the easy part lmfao
You have to remember that they couldn't have weights for joints back then; a vertex could only be influenced by a single bone in a skeletal mesh. It was very common to have shoulders that didn't connect to the body. They usually still connected the elbows because they have simpler movement that was easy enough to deform properly. Hands would depend on the game; if they did a lot of intricate hand movement like in MGS they wouldn't be connected, but for a simple shooter where all they do is hold a gun they would be. The only alternative was to use vertex animation which came at the cost of memory. It was common in PC games but rare among console titles.
Cool! Thank you for this vid because I’ve been struggling with how to make stuff in blender and this makes sense, it gives me an idea of where to look into next
An important trick for making an N64-style model is to have varied texel depth. Your model here used a 256x256 texture, but for an N64 model you'd need to use 64x64. The trick is to focus that detail on the portions that most need the detail, such as the face, and then make most surfaces use only a couple pixels.
What are you on about, many tutorials are available online. Heck, Royal Skies LLC has tutorials 100 times better than this that are all under 30 seconds. Seems you just either don't know about the other artist mate.
Oooh, very interesting. I did not know that for the purposes of rigging and animation having the body parts be separate is actually easier. I do know retro models did it, I've been consuming references by tonnes looking for solutions and inspiration. But I thought that I will need to make a connected model for ease of animation. Learning that I actually can not do that - makes it a loooot easier. Thanks!
I need to try this one again later, I gave it a shot making a model for a friend, but texture paint gave me the hard time, most likely due to my uv unwrapping which didn't let me texture the model properly when texturing at 256 =(
I've been trying to do a PS1 styled low poly model myself where the model is seperate by chunks kinda like an action figure. My question is once you seperate the model and you rig a bone to each one of their limbs, what do you do to turn it all into one single mesh without ruining the rigging process?
i may not be garbaj but you can select the objects and combine them. click on one then use shift while clicking to select another object right click to bring up a menu and click on join
what shape is the best to start with? i've tried with a round cube mesh before but i can't get it to look right. i genuinely have no idea what i should start with edit: no actually using a rounded cube was the right choice!!! for anyone wanting tips, i recommend choosing either the octohedrod or quadsphere presets and changing the radius/divisions :D
your channel is fucking awesome for laymen that have an interest in game dev. also do something related to Guilty Gear Strive! seems like talking about its technical aspects is all the rage right now.
i swear to god "How To Make Low Poly Models" then proceeds to show a finished model and talk gloss over the texturing , jesus christ and then there is a lot of comments of acting as if it was a masterclass what the heck
What do you think about having the limbs seperate but still part of one mesh just the acording bones are fully wieght painted to the acording limbs for optimization?
This. So it still works like a skinned mesh and has all the GPU optimizations etc. Get a lot of these characters and low-poly or not you're gonna be boned in Unity when each one is a heavy af GameObject. Not sure if joining the model, after you've done all these steps, works or not.
Hi, i know this comment is coming a bit late, but how do you merge the multiple objects into one without loosing their individual mesh, and still apply a mirror modifier to all of them as if they were one?
You did such a good job on the model!! Thank you so much :D Can't wait to show this off in the near future ;)
This would be perfect as a change of pace in VRChat or for VTubing Retro or Low-Poly games
Bruh
Eyyy
saw the model, didn't see this video and my mind is blowing rn
with this you won't have anyone asking you to change into a poor or better xd
We NEED a tutorial on how you make your hair for these models, there doesn't seem to be any really good tutorials for low poly hair out there.
I suggest taking the scalp geometry (where the hair will be), duplicate it, thicken it by extruding, then do some extrusions if you want a ponytail for example
Everything uses the strongly stuff that I don’t like I came here for this
If you wanna go the extra mile then model in triangles
Technically, all 3D models are made of triangles, but I know what you meant lol
Who doesnt?
@@garbaj Actually, technically, there are kinds of 3d models that aren't based off of triangles used for other things like product design, but I know what you meant lol
All hail the Triangle.
Hexagons are bestagons.
@@Aereto are you rooting for triangles or-... the bestagons >:)
Now I'm curious why PHIA wants retro style of her avatar.
Time to play some 5/6th gen games!
Eventually it’ll go to 32bit then 16bit, 8bit, 2bit, 1bit
🤔
@@Jakewake52 HALF BIT , QUARTER BIT!!!!
THE WRIST GAMEEEEEEE
Hmmm
@@Gaven7r *wrist* game
The smooth mesh shading helped me alot on my models.
By the way when texture painting, I find it a bit better to start off at slightly higher Res(512x512) to get more details when you downscale the image to 128x128 or 256x256.
that's a pretty schnice idea actually
@@garbaj Another idea: when downscaling try going for nearest neighbor scaling for that extra crispy pixel look that PS1 is known for. Bilinear gives more of an N64 look instead.
Modelling tip: You can have several 3D Viewports so you don't have to constantly switch (e.g between Front and Right View).
At the very least, have one 3D Viewport in Camera Perspective (not Orthographic), and adjust the angles around the model so you can spot potential weirdness early on.
True, dunno why I keep forgetting about that 😆
Yeah, but I like the rotation, it looks neat and takes just half a second. :D
Yeah.. I just can't make a habit of it, maybe I just like the wide view
Was helpful in a backwards kind of way.
Everything said that's basically "a bad thing" in this video, is the exact aesthetic i wanted.
example: I finally found 'shade flat'!
I think Megaman Legends pulled out the best looking low-poly 3d anime character models, that also were pretty damn expressive.
Also Vagrant Story is a good source of inspiration for low-poly characters with more edgy design.
0:03 "first you need a design" and that is the most extremely, hardest part of the whole process. No character/creature design = nothing to model otherwise you are going to rely on someone's designs all the time, which is completely invalid to make a game for example.
The most unexpected crossover.
lol yeah it was a surprise when she reached out to me. I've been a fan of her content for a while too
@@garbaj Makes you wonder if Phia is interested in game dev. :D Hope she liked that model, it looks great!
I think the only part of this I'm not confident in is the rigging, I've definitely tried and failed at weight painting in low poly but I'm not sure how to get it to treat the separate parts as connected to each other.
Really late here, but really all you need to do is parent the mesh to your custom skeleton with empty vertex groups, and assign each individual body part to their respective bones. That way, the seperate parts are still seperate, but they have the illusion of being connected since the bones themselves are connected
@@IAmVarious if you could find out the reason that my generate rig button is greyed out when i go to rig the character that would help me out
dude your channel is a godsend for these low poly blender tutorials. I hope you make more because as a newish blender user I can't get enough!
oh wow your channel is not just game design commentary but actual game design too, nice
1:54 when she sees my lighning mc queen crocs
This is fantastic information - thank you so much for sharing! High res stuff seems so out of reach for me as a 2D illustrator but you've made low poly modelling very accessible!
Another thing you can do is assign vertex groups named after the bone you want it to correlate to. I use this for actual N64 compatible skinned models.
video was actually so unhelpful it made me close the program out of frustration that a guy saying "you can make a low poly model in blender' somehow passes as a tutorial..
same
this is the type of modeling that is fun. i should do this more. the more complex, the more investment, the less fun. keep it simple, do it a lot, you'll get good in no time
I actually wanted to do this but didn't know how I wanted to do it. This is a good start!
OMG! this is exactly the kind of tutorial I was looking for! Alongside wit your 3d pixel art tutorial
Thank you!! ✨
Bro basicaly said do it yourself, like how...
Great fucking tutorial on showing few second of u modelling and skip to finished product. brilliant. Totally I could follow that yea totally.
Gonna make low poly models for a mod that's for 0 ad for performance reasons
I mean, you can rig it in the classic style with all the limbs separated, but you can also fix the topology and make a good rigging with weight painting. I just don't recommend automatic weigh painting since it's messy, and instead use empty groups.
you made video titled "how to make low poly models" without actually telling how to model them
This is probably for more advanced students and not one for beginners
@@zla_204 that’s not fair though, where’s a tutorial for us beginners??
@@Kallensayz just search “blender beginners tutorial” and you’ll find thousands of series for beginners. Advanced students need their education aswell yk?
But modeling is a very specific term, I want to know the process of making low poly models specifically, not just shading and drawing on them that’s the easy part lmfao
@@zla_204 yeah none of those are actually helpful. They explained everything as if you have EXPERIENCE. Which we DONT.
can you make an tutorial on how to actaully make the model, like how do you make those shapes
Fr
Not a super great tutorial to be honest, more of a technique. Im pretty new to blender so seeing how you broke it down would have been nice.
You have to remember that they couldn't have weights for joints back then; a vertex could only be influenced by a single bone in a skeletal mesh.
It was very common to have shoulders that didn't connect to the body. They usually still connected the elbows because they have simpler movement that was easy enough to deform properly. Hands would depend on the game; if they did a lot of intricate hand movement like in MGS they wouldn't be connected, but for a simple shooter where all they do is hold a gun they would be.
The only alternative was to use vertex animation which came at the cost of memory. It was common in PC games but rare among console titles.
Im glad this exists!
also immidiatly recognized phia from the tumbnail, which is good cause it shows you translated the design well!!!
thanks. i recently realized that texturing can make low poly seem medium to high poly, so this was a great video to add to my understanding.
Can you do a tutorial or time lapse video of creating this type of low poly humans?
even better if you have a ristricted pallete
Never thought about making separated limbs, makes total sense!
Then how to rig it? each limb is full Hard Weighted?
Tying that later
I thought this was a tutorial on how to model it not just color it and stuff
Cool! Thank you for this vid because I’ve been struggling with how to make stuff in blender and this makes sense, it gives me an idea of where to look into next
BRO THAT REALY HELPFUL
SO NOW IF I WANNA MAKE A HORROR GAME BUT I DONT HAVE A SCARY CHARACTER, I CAN MAKE ONE!
THANKS AGAIN
Phia?! Let's go! Best collab ever.
you make it look so easy...
Man, now I really want to learn blender. This is making it feel a little less intimidating.
thank you! I've been looking for this
Low-Poly Phia adorbs! 🥰
I love how the algo saw the two seconds of Minecraft and decided it was a video about it 😄
1:54 phia crab
Pleasee full tutorial of this modelling 🙏🙏
this makes me want to learn 3D and make my characters come to life
Maybe show us how you make the low-poly model in full detail?
bruh thats what ive been looking for but they never explain smh
An important trick for making an N64-style model is to have varied texel depth. Your model here used a 256x256 texture, but for an N64 model you'd need to use 64x64. The trick is to focus that detail on the portions that most need the detail, such as the face, and then make most surfaces use only a couple pixels.
One of the few artist on internt who like to show thier scerets !
What are you on about, many tutorials are available online.
Heck, Royal Skies LLC has tutorials 100 times better than this that are all under 30 seconds. Seems you just either don't know about the other artist mate.
Oooh, very interesting. I did not know that for the purposes of rigging and animation having the body parts be separate is actually easier. I do know retro models did it, I've been consuming references by tonnes looking for solutions and inspiration. But I thought that I will need to make a connected model for ease of animation. Learning that I actually can not do that - makes it a loooot easier. Thanks!
I need to try this one again later, I gave it a shot making a model for a friend, but texture paint gave me the hard time, most likely due to my uv unwrapping which didn't let me texture the model properly when texturing at 256 =(
Making Custom SM64 Models be like:
Could you do a full modeling tutorial?
I've been trying to do a PS1 styled low poly model myself where the model is seperate by chunks kinda like an action figure. My question is once you seperate the model and you rig a bone to each one of their limbs, what do you do to turn it all into one single mesh without ruining the rigging process?
i may not be garbaj
but you can select the objects and combine them.
click on one
then use shift while clicking
to select another object
right click to bring up a menu
and click on join
i like the part wher u showed us how you made it
The collab i never thought would exist
hey bro nice video dude you're the man
I needed this becuase I wanna make my own fall back model for VRchat
This could be useful for a fan puppet combo killer
what shape is the best to start with? i've tried with a round cube mesh before but i can't get it to look right. i genuinely have no idea what i should start with
edit: no actually using a rounded cube was the right choice!!! for anyone wanting tips, i recommend choosing either the octohedrod or quadsphere presets and changing the radius/divisions :D
1:54 the crab stance
Nice videos dude, I've been enjoying them recently!
your channel is fucking awesome for laymen that have an interest in game dev.
also do something related to Guilty Gear Strive! seems like talking about its technical aspects is all the rage right now.
a 256x256 was huge at the time. try 64x64 for a character and try to stay between 50-100 quads.
could you make a longer tutorial ? please? XD
Ok, and how do i do all these things?
i swear to god "How To Make Low Poly Models" then proceeds to show a finished model and talk gloss over the texturing , jesus christ and then there is a lot of comments of acting as if it was a masterclass what the heck
@@TheManudo00 yeah, basically that
YOOO THE PHIA FEATURE LET'S GOOO
Ok, now do this in Blockbench
can i have a more simple and step by step tutorial about how to make low poly models in 1990 style?
This creation inspired me! Thanks!
Wow this is a very underrated video great stuff this is extremely helpful!
does anyone know what tutorials he used to learn?
0:10 what mode is that?
Heroes of the storm mentioned, YESS !
This looks cute! Maybe I'll try
Wow! Thank you for inspirational video!
Not the Jill sandwich cutscene 😭😭😭
now just add subdivision surface modifier and you get a high poly model
What do you think about having the limbs seperate but still part of one mesh just the acording bones are fully wieght painted to the acording limbs for optimization?
This. So it still works like a skinned mesh and has all the GPU optimizations etc. Get a lot of these characters and low-poly or not you're gonna be boned in Unity when each one is a heavy af GameObject.
Not sure if joining the model, after you've done all these steps, works or not.
"Welcome to the virtual reality show!"
couldve been more detailed on the modeling process when it comes to a tutorial..
I’m just tryna make 2000s video game 3D art for music covers
❔Hi, I'm reaching out to ask if I can include this video in a Blender playlist I'm creating for my channel.
This looks so easyyyyyyyyyyyy but is probably so difficult, why must art torment me like this?
It looks like something Directly out of play 1 or nintendo 64, Nice!
I am gonna make my own version of v1 and use it now.
Well… time to start over again…
(I used the same shape as the full body for mine 😔 )
Ah, i see your man of culture
Thanks! This was very entertaining and such a great idea.
I appreciate the tutorial!
a video on Godot character animation handling would be cool
animations made in blender can be imported directly into godot, and you can play the animations using godot's animationPlayer node
you lost me after 10 seconds, how do you even start with the polygons
1:54 that pose 🤣
0:10 how to do that making-surface thing
would try if I knew how to draw the characters in my head
that was cool, maybe this will come in handy lol
Very cool also uncanny how much the model reminds me of someone I know.
I think you'll get more fps if your models are low poly in VR, right?
(Since the image has to render twice)
Dunno much about vr, but yes Low poly is definitely better for performance
@@garbaj Love your vids
Hi, i know this comment is coming a bit late, but how do you merge the multiple objects into one without loosing their individual mesh, and still apply a mirror modifier to all of them as if they were one?
Please do more!! You’re my inspiration !!
I'm struggling, but I must try
that tiny blushing anime face made me lol