Creating Hand-Painted Models in Blender

Sharing on Sketchfab

Since I discovered Sketchfab, I realized that I wanted to do some simple but effective things. After my “photorealistic era”, this was something totally new for me. Sketchfab itself was that impulse for me as a new way of presentation and it also motivated me to hone my skills in modeling and texturing. Texturing was pain before, but I pushed myself through it.

The first finished work in this series was «Go on vacation!» inspired by Alejandro Diaz:

It was so well received by the public that it was like fuel for my creative engine. Don’t be shy and share your work!

Sometimes I look at a picture and feel a strong desire to transfer the mood and feelings from 2D to 3D. This happened when I saw «Sør-Helgeland» project by Kristofer Haugvik which resulted in my project Parallax.

The same happened with «Concerto» based on «All in the mood» by Pascal Campion and «Bath Time», inspired by Wiebke Rauers.

I should say, the Sketchfab team is very open and friendly. The Sketchfab community is great – there are a lot of very inspiring and supportive talented artists, so I’d encourage you once again to try and share your work there.

Modeling in Blender

I make almost everything in Blender and use a standard modeling process starting from a plane or verticles.

If I need some organic shapes I switch to sculpting with the help of Skin modifier. It works almost like ZSpheres in ZBrush. I use it for making animals, trees and even fire and water splashes like here.

Another good tool is Shrinkwrap modifier which helps with retopology. Also, try to use Snap to Face, it’s very helpful  (the Magnet icon or ‘Ctrl’ key).

Since we are talking about low poly modeling and hand-painted textures, remember that you need to keep a good silhouette with minimum edges needed, all the time. Keep it simple and model the elements that will impact the silhouette. All the small details will be added during texturing.

Texturing in Blender

For UV packing, I use UVPackmaster 2 which speeds up the process a lot.

I prefer to paint textures right on the model in the 3D view. For most cases, I use Standard brush with hard enough profile or plain profile for soft lights and shadows. I also increase/decrease the pen pressure for harder/softer colors. I almost never use 1.0 pressure, usually, it is somewhere between 0.3 and 0.8.

I often use Sampler (key ‘S’). It helps to match the colors taken from reference and mix the colors on your textures to make them softer. The idea is to start from blocking your model with a few main colors first and add details, shadows, and reflection after that. Painting small details right on the object helps to make sure that everything works together. Also, make sure that UVs are clean and have enough margins between islands with no unwanted overlapping.

Actually,  there is a good tutorial for hand-painted texturing in Blender which can explain the workflow better. I highly recommend it to everyone who wants to learn this technique:

I also recorded a small video to show you an example of my approach:

Gregory Khodyrev, 3D Modeler

Interview conducted by Kirill Tokarev