3D breakdown - Cowbee - PART 1

And yes, I did make this specifically so I could beehaw in style.

So, first up, blocking it out, pictured below. I've been thinking, and I came to a realization. You can't do sculpting without knowing how to model, at least in a basic sense... Since, you need to, again, get it blocked out. I know it looks crummy, but this is the absolute first step in making something like this. So, doing that, I was ready to move onto the next step.

And that next step is; subdivision surface ! yaaaay
If you don't know what a subdivision surface modifier in Blender is, it's a thing that makes your sharp things smooth and stuff, pictured below. I've learned throughout the years that, if you're going STRAIGHT FROM blocking out to sculpting, it ain't gonna bee fun. (haha)

Still looks pretty crummy, but that's when sculpting begins !

Sculpting consists of -- you guessed it -- sculpting, much like a clay figure in real life.

I actually started with the shirt, which I completed much quicker than I thought I would ! But the sculpt, in general, took about a few hours, maybe 3-4 hours ? I don't really remember, I'm writing this after the fact.

I actually had to do the hat separate, too. It was a matter of making a block-out, subdividing it, combining each separate part (and making a hole) with a boolean, and then smoothing it out. Here's the finished hat;

And here's the finished sculpt;

I actually did have to put in more work to get everything combined and stuff, but some parts are separate, such as the hat, the eyes, and the pouch (and the belt that the pouch is on !)
Oh, and the boots. Don't even get me started on how much a pain that was. For some reason, and I don't have a screenshot of this, the boots got reaaalll messed up when I "detail flood fill"ed (something I do to make sculpting easier), and I couldn't figure out why... So, I had to fix them after I was done combining everything. It was so frustrating.

They just look lumpy and sad now.

But then, it was time for retopology... The part I dread the most. Retopo is basically optimizing a mesh for use elsewhere, taking the one million polycount down to about one thousand. It's not even that hard, it's just really timeconsuming and not that fun. It's a whole buncha this;

The best way to do it is manually, as seen above. I'm not gonna talk about it much because I hate doing it, but it took me about two hours to do that in its entirety, so at least it was merciful.

With retopo done, I've brought the polycount of 1,438,364 down to 2,948. Next up was the first part of texturing... Which, was baking normals. And, I should mention something; I have it set to flat shaded in the above image. With normal maps (which I will explain in the next part), and smooth shading, it'll look as good as the sculpt ! :D

But I'll leave the texturing bit to part 2 of this blog post, which will be soon !

Lemme know what you think of the beehaw so far ! And thank you for reading.