Neopets Zafara my beloved.
DEAR READER

No title available

blake kathryn
Cosmic Funnies
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"

No title available

JVL

@theartofmadeline
Not today Justin
Stranger Things
Today's Document
Xuebing Du

oozey mess
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her

Love Begins
KIROKAZE
dirt enthusiast
RMH
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda

Product Placement
seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from Indonesia

seen from United States
seen from Canada
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from Belgium
seen from United Arab Emirates

seen from United States

seen from Indonesia
seen from Thailand
seen from Germany
seen from South Korea
seen from Pakistan
seen from Chile
seen from Chile

seen from Brazil
seen from United States
@nathanier
Neopets Zafara my beloved.
Recycling a mesh into a VRChat Kangaroooooo. Also can be a bunny. Needs a lil pouch! If I were a more powerful person with Unity skills, I think it would be cool if you could pull stuff out of the pouch. That'd be fun. But idk how to do that. I just make models haha.
24 fps (Left) 12 fps (right)
6 fps (Left) 3 fps (Right)
2 fps (Left) 1 fps (Right)
I needed some animation reference so I've drawn over a .gif found via pinterest that was created by Starca on DeviantArt. It's not perfect but it'll do for what I need.
Oopsie.
The American Healthcare system: My significant other h… US Healthcare Is only for the Wealthy needs your support for We were told sur
SIIIIIIIGH.
Man I literally JUST finished paying off the $8,000 ER trip from last year for him to start building credit. They want about $650/mo for this one. :/ I'll be making him apply for dollarfor.org but. Shit's due. IDK what to do. I don't GO to hospitals or ERs. Do we just let it go to collections?
US Healthcare system be like:
My significant other has been facing a series of ~mysterious and untreated health conditions~ (Because who can afford specialist care in this hellscape that is the United States?) that cause him to suddenly fall asleep, lose consciousness, or pass out—even while standing.
After about 4 years it's finally hurt him more than a potential concussion and plentiful scars. He fell asleep upright after getting up in the night and broke his left leg the MORNING OF a music gig that was going to get his name out there and hopefully increase his client base.
Unfortunately, the US healthcare system has failed my family and myself multiple times with malpractice and negligence, and NOW my significant other with a life-altering accident.
After the hospital ER fumbled his discharge instructions and made a clerical error, his contact number was not updated, causing him to miss his appointment with the orthopedic surgeon and delaying his surgery by an entire week.
We were supposed to call the specialist. Not have the specialist call him at a dead number that was never updated to what was entered upon intake.
We requested to start without a down payment because that's about 2.5 years of income, but the morning of surgery, we were called back and told we were denied financial assistance and that we needed to put down $10,200. Also couldn't afford that.
They all but said "No payment no surgery" so we cancelled assuming we'll have to find a surgeon/hospital that will actually give us the REAL self pay rate.
Thankfully, the surgeon stepped in after hearing us cancel for financial reasons, called us back, and said that was completely inappropriate for an urgent broken leg surgery, and managed to squeeze him in for surgery later that day without a down payment.
He has been denied any financial assistance for the Ambulance, ER visits, labs, surgery, etc. This has caused immense emotional and physical pain and stress.
The funds raised will go directly toward his medical bills, including ER visits, surgery, labs, and follow-up care. Starting with the surgey cost we finally were given a NORMAL SELF-PAY amount for: About $13,000 USD
Thank you to anyone who even considers donating to help. Please don't feel obligated. But man we'd appreciate any assistance we can get.
The surgeon and his office were cool as shit. I'm pretty sure it's the hospital that pulled all of stupidity.
I drew him a skeleton as a thank you card. He enjoyed it.
McCalls Pikachu Plush P462 Sewing Pattern
This thing has been out of print for like, 26 years and some of us want to make chubby classic pikachu so uh... I figure it's okay to share bc it's kinda hard to get your hands on the remaining physical copies.
Bonus points: Aelith made some embroidery/applique files for it too
Remade by AeilithArt so that we could use the pattern without like, destroying it. It's not exact since it's trace, but it's p much the same
Drawing Software 50% off
HI. I want to blatantly advertise that Clip Studio Paint is 50% off for Black Friday sales.
It’ll end in 4 days.
Look at wat it does. Look. http://www.clipstudio.net/en/functions
It has vector layers and a smart eraser that makes drawing with intersecting lines REALLY EASY.
3D models you can pose for pose/perspective reference
A REALLY AWESOME SMART FILL BUCKET TOOL.
My tablet pressure sensitivity actually doesn’t work with my old CS5 after windows updates slaughtered my tablet drivers, but Photoshop is garbage for tablet strokes on higher DPI or bigger resolutions for me. And people use lazy nezumi plugin for that? But by default, Clip Studio has a cool stabilizer option that makes my lines NOT WIGGLY. It’s literally why I draw digitally.
I’m gonna delete this later. I just spam this bullcrap every time it goes on sale because it’s affordable and amazing.
3D Model to Sewing Pattern Prototype Masterlist
This is exclusively for guides I've made, it is not a resource/masterlist for all guides, just my personal workflow.
Editing & Unwrapping a Mesh in Blender (& how to use Plushify) - Text/Image Tut
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5
It's very wordy on explanations because I write for "baby Nat" and baby Nat wants ALL THE INFO on how the thing works.
Making Your Own Mesh & a Pattern From It (Blender) - Video Guide
Part 1 Part 2
Editing an Existing Mesh for Patterning (Blender & Plushify) - Video Guide
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 on - Not video edited yet o|-<
Blender to Plush Pattern (2022) - Video Guide
2022 Workflow Recording + Commentary
3D Sculpt + Tape Method (Spyro) - Shorts
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 - Still haven't finished sewing him
Fixing Badly Unwrapped Parts - Shorts
Fixing a flat muzzle (Sphere ass head) Rescuing an ugly plush with Thread Sculpting (Sphere ass head)
Duct Tape Method (Fursuit) - Video w Text Tips??
Making a neck for my first go at a fursuit head
Nat's free (janky) Blender tools for Plush Pattern Stuff:
https://nathahniel.gumroad.com/l/plushtools
Free Patterns I've made using these methods:
Neopets Zafara (2022 Ver) - no instructions
Togepi - no instructions
Buizel + simple instructions
Yamper - no instructions, raw Plushify export
Girafarig - no instructions, raw Plushify export
Shadow the Hedgehog (Head only) - no instructions, raw Plushify export
Go craft shit. If you wanna support me I have a Ko-Fi and Patreon but no pressure fam. I just like helping.
Making a Plush Pattern with a 3D Model - Part 5
We can go two ways with this - Continue in Blender - Continue via Plushify I don't have a Blender tutorial written yet. Just videos.
This is a playlist of my Blender-only Plush Tutorials
Documentation of about 10 hrs of work to make Vulpix.
For the rest of this text guide tho let's use Plushify
(EDIT: Now no commercial use without Premium. Plushify is a bit more user/newbie friendly.) For a Blender-only guide,use the videos above, I MAY eventually make a part 6 for Blender-Only At the time of writing this guide, Plushify was fully free with no premium features and fewer tools. It has gone forward with a premium mode that adds a few handy tools! But not everyone can justify the price if they're a small artist who wants to sell their patterns. I was never comfortable selling raw Plushify exports and manually edit my patterns anyways. I used Plushify just for it's scaling and labelling feature. But I also regularly do so in Blender.
The better and cleaner your model edits are, the easier this process will be. It's okay if you spot an issue and need to go back. You can also do ALL of that UV editing stuff of setting seams in PLUSHIFY. As long as there are edges where you want a seam to be, you can use plushify to set your seams instead of Blender.
BUT it's IMPORTANT TO TRY to UV unwrap in blender first. Why? If you dont do any of the UV mapping in blender, and you have to re-import your model into plushify after a small fix, you'll have to REDO all of your Plushify seams. With the new premium update, that will count towards your model upload credit, I think it takes a few hours to "count" though, you can delete and re-upload over and over if it's pretty soon after you've uploaded (within a certain time window or something I think?) Doing a chunk of the work in Blender will make this significantly less painful if you need to go back to the model and make any revisions like adding geometry you won't have to select the same edges over and over in a web browser based tool if you have it already set and ready to go on the .obj file you're uploading! You can easily edit it in plushify and clear your blender UVs if you want to drastically change something too!
Upload your .obj file
Orient it with the prompts & select your appropriate UV option.
The Seams Panel
Once your file is uploaded, enter the Seams Panel and turn on Show pattern quality (This is similar to showing UV stretch which you can also do in Blender. if you want to exclusively do everything in Blender.) The red areas show where you may want to put seams or darts, it is essentially showing you where the pieces may not lay flat if you were to use the Duct Tape Method.
Plushify seam marking is the same thing as marking seams and unwrapping in Blender. (UV unwrap) Many may find Plushify to be easier than fiddling with Blender. But the pros of blender are you won't lose progress on UVs if you have to go back and edit the mesh.
As of time of writing, Blender and Plushify will unwrap pieces the same as each other. So you can use both in your workflow.
Markings
Using the markings option you can create "stickers" to place onto your model. This is very handy if you know how to draw. This is great for those who want to digitize embroidery files.
If you want to instead "trace" the features on your model using the knife tool instead in blender to add them to the pattern, you can skip drawing things like markings, eyes, etc. but it will count each as a separate piece on the UV maps
(The markings cut in blender and made with seams instead of using the markings panel)
Colors
The Colors Tab lets you preview your colors on the model, and label them. This will calculate how much fabric you need per color.
Pattern
In the Pattern tab you can click on a part of the model and it will expand a menu on the left side panel, showing you what piece it is.
Size
The size panel shows a visual representation of you plush compared to a human, You can also make it sit on a table, or chair to get an idea of the scale. Setting the size will calculate an estimate of how mcuh fabric you'll need! It's very handy, and will print the pattern pieces to result in a plush toy of the size you choose!
In the print tab you can select a page size, and seam allowance. You can also do a calibration test, to make sure things are printing at the right scale.
Then you can print your pattern! A donation prompt will pop up. It's optional, but I highly suggest throwing a bit their way! This saves so much time and can speed up the plush prototyping process.
Save
Plushify only stores models locally on your PC via your web browser. Not on the website. I highly suggest saving the file it will create for you a .plush filetype* If you are sharing you pattern, you can share this .plush file and others will be able to upload the model to plushify on their own device so they can see how the pieces go together. It's very handy! (**This is now a premium-only feature)
Edit
Any patterns I do I will usually add small notes, if not fully re-digitize, to be more clear with at least a little bit of instructions. Like this!
Good Luck!
That covers MOST of what I do to create prototype starting patterns for plush projects. I have only been sewing for about 3 years VERY casually/infrequently, and consider myself to be a new sewist. If I can do it, you can too! I believe in you!
Togpei is something I probably could've cracked out in only 1-3 hrs if I didn't document the process, but anything more complex than Togepi will result in significantly more pieces and can take WEEKS of time.
I also have a video on the process of a slightly more complex pokemon, and the resulting pattern available for free! It is a recording of the entire process (with timestamps in the comments)
I forgot the pink spikes on it's neck.I'm not going to go through over an hour of plushify again.Photos & Sewn plush seen in the images
Making a Plush Pattern with a 3D model - Part 4
I will now edit a copy of the body model and make it into a "Cutter" object. I delete some of the bottom rows of the faces, and add a bottom, to make it a solid object. Exactly the same as the eggshell in the last step.
Now I will use this as the cutting object in a boolean modifier on the eggshell.
Then I delete the inner faces it made and now the jagged edges match.
And I add a seam to the shell, and join the objects into one.
With both objects joined, you will probably have to unwrap it again so the UV islands don't overlap. (So go to the UV Editing Layout to see the UVs and unwrap it again.)
Triangulate!
With the model's polygons all selected, we will now TRIANGULATE the mesh. (Boolean Modifiers usually create N-Gons.)
Now that the model is only tris, Plushify.net will be able to understand it.
Export
To easily export your finalized model, hide any cutter objects or WIP stages of your objects, select only the final triangulated UV mapped model is visible (it needs that orange outline) and export it as an .obj file
Plushify
You CAN print your UV map if you export it as an image...
This is how I do most of my first 3D UV-based patterns, just raw Blender UV exports with scribbled notes on them in texture paint mode. Using a combo of Clip Studio Paint. Blender, and PosteRazor.
Or you can save yourself some work with Plushify
The "simpler" method is to use Plushify.net it can automatically layout the pieces onto printer sized pages of your sizing choice AND it will label the pieces if you set them up to have labels. It will even print with a seam allowance of your choice! (Or none) so you don't have to draw it onto your pattern manually in image editing software, or on a printed version that you scan back in and digitize.
The drawback is you'll likely need to do a lot of back and forth as you find problems and quirks of this 3D Model-based patterning process if you're new to this. But then once you're over that hurdle you know how to do it!
I'll cover plushify in the next post, and a Blender-only version in the one after.
Making a Plush Pattern with a 3D Model - Part 3
Unwrapping it again to show both sides, you can now get a slightly better idea of what piece is what. The face/body part needs a seam somewhere because there is none on the body, so I add one.
I added a few more seams to make the triangular head parts easier to cut out as individual pieces instead ot the circular UV-Mapping style arcs. (See the individual triangular pieces in the blue image) If you know you want to change the layout of the pieces and how you WANT them to lay on the fabric you can do so manually. -------------------------------------------------------------------
Optional: Tex Tools Add-on
In your PREFERENCES you can add an add-on called TEX TOOLS to have some more control and visual understanding of your pieces.
With all of the model's poygons selected to make them visible in the left viewport, you can move the UV Islands around to identify which is which, you can also edit the UV islands just like editing the model if you want things to lay a certain way. But this is generally not required.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Editing the Mesh
Sometimes you'll need to edit the model to make it sewing pattern compatible. For example, the Togepi head/body we've been working with is an object that intersects with the shell, a separate object. Back into the Layout Workspace I'm going to select the egg shell in object mode and examine it.
It has internal faces, which we do not want. I also want to make the body connect to the eggshell in a way that a plush toy would be sewn. So we will be editing the meshes.
I have once again, converted the mesh into quads. Tab into EDIT MODE with the egg shell selected and use ALT + J or with the faces selected use FACE > Tris to Quads DO NOTE that this often breaks textures and can remove edges marked as seams if you've done any, proceed with caution. (You can quad-ify just selected face too)
I'll delete these inner polygons. (The image on the right I have turned on BACKFACE CULLING this makes the polygons only show the side they are facing, and the backsides will be "invisible". This is just so you can see the edit I've done better.)
Extruding Polygons
I then select the top edges of the shell, I will EXTRUDE it and make the shell "solid" on top.
Sorry keyboard shortcuts are the main way I know how to extrude and scale it down this way. It may take you a few tries to do this. An image is going to show this best:
I will then change my selection mode to VERTEX SELECT and join the vertices. Creating a mesh with no holes. It is "Water tight".
Boolean Modifiers
I didn't want to have to cover boolean modifiers because they can be finnicky but I will be using them for this Togepi. Here's a quick video that will explain it much more efficiently than I can.
I duplicate my objects so I have a backup copy any time I'm using Booleans. This is personal preference.
First, I'm going to be using the shell we just edited to cut the upper body. I want it to cut the ARMS and BODY but not the FEET. So with the BODY/HEAD selected I enter EDIT MODE, select the little feet, and just move them away from the the eggshell so they don't touch each other.
Then I return to Object Mode, Select the head/body, and add a Boolean Modifier to the Head/Body object. In the Modifier settings I set it to Difference, and choose the Shell as the Object .
This uses the Egg Shell object as a "Cutter" and so now, any parts of the body that went inside of the solid eggshell object will be deleted. I will then APPLY the Boolean Modifier, making this change to the body permanent.
Then I select the added faces, and delete them. That way they are recognized as seams by default. (Any edges that dont connect to another face are considered SEAMS.)
I will do the same to the egg shell using the body.
Making a Plush Pattern with a 3D Model - Part 2
You're gonna learn a lot about polygons today. YAY LEARNING! Sorry. I can't shut up. I personally like understanding the WHYs and how things work so... You're in for a text wall. Buckle up.
Modifiers
Now that half of my model is deleted I only need to edit ONE half. But I still need to be able to see the other half. (Or I would like to at least.) To do this We will go to Properties Panel. By default it's usually on the 'Materials' Properties submenu.
There are a TON of submenus in here, but we'll usually mostly only ever mess with 1-3 so don't be overwhelmed! Blender's one downfall is menus and menus and MENUS. (But they're nice menus...so many tools I will never use but totally should.)
Click on the WRENCH Icon to enter the Modifier Properties submenu and add a Mirror Modifier.
It's location varies a little depending on which version of Blender you're using. In the later 3.X or at least 4.0 updates they've been categorized into new subsections.
MIRROR is under "Generate" because it will be generating/creating.
Now we have Togepi's other half, currently think of it as being "simulated" It's not REALLY there YET. This is good for non-destructive editing. You will "Apply" the modifier later (you can not apply modifiers in Edit Mode, use Object Mode) to make the other half "really exist" if needed.
Understanding Unwrapping (Optional Info)
Lil Ramble you can skip:
This is the actual "Patterning" Part, which is basically a digital (slightly less accurate unless you're very good at it.) version of the Duct Tape Pattern Method. The model is your Duct Tape. The Knife Tool will be your cutting tool that makes the seams you sew by making the pieces lie as flat as possible for cutting them out of flat fabric. In 3D modeling this is called "UV Mapping" & "Unwrapping" a model. It's similar to sewing but where you place seams can be very different "Efficient" UVs for animated characters are not important for stuffed toys for example. (Game models also don't have a need for things like Darts.)
OPTIONAL BUT VERY SUGGESTED STEP:
It's generally easier to work with Quads. You can make faster selections by double clicking on an edge (the lines) of a quad mesh than a triangulated mesh so I'll convert Tris to Quads you do not have to do this step. It's entirely optional. It can mess up the UV Mapping of the original model so if it breaks too much skip it or only convert some sections to quads by selecting them manually before converting.
NOTE: If you can't "Draw" the markings (Like Togepi's eyes and eggshell marks) you'll want to add geometry so you can see them on the pattern to use as a guide for placement of features and such. If you can draw them in art software, you can use the "Marking" tools in Plushify instead.
Cutting out the Pieces
We're going to be bouncing back and forth between Cutting with the Knife Tool, Selecting Edges, and Marking Seams. Like. A LOT.
Marking Seams:
You'll be using the knife tool often, but use the model's existing geometry (the polygons n stuff) to your advantage. For example, I am selecting the edges on top of the head since I know I want a seam there, and there's perfectly round already-existing geometry right there.
About That Optional Tris to Quad Step: I converted the mesh from Tris to Quads so I can double click edges and it will automatically select the "smooth" path of edges. As you can see, it stops at Tris. (Poles, actually?: where 5+ edges come together) making them harder to work with, especiallywith a denser mesh).
With the edges selected I'll use the ribbon menu above the 3D viewport and click EDIT > MARK SEAMS this will turn the edges red. They are now seams. (Only edges can be seams, a single vertice can't. So it's easier to use the Edge Selection mode.)
Tip: OPTIONAL (For speed)
You can set the Mark Seam and Clear Seam commands to a Quick Favorites menu that is based on your cursor when you press the Q Key they'll pop up there for faster access. Or you can change hotkeys in the Preferences.
Tip: Hiding Polygons
If the area is tight (Or even overlapping) you can clip the camera into the model OR select the faces that are in your way and hide them with VIEW > HIDE SELECTED (Or the H key) You can unhide them in the same menu (Or with ALT + H). Bonus points is that "Link Selected" works in this context too so if you hide a row of faces leaving "floating" polygons that aren't touching the mesh of the main body you can select linked (L key) the floaty bits to hide them in one click.
Hiding Togepi's frontmost spike so I can access the edges that are hard to reach at it's base.
Pattern Inspiration
Reference is ideal. Especially if you're not familiar with common ways plush patterns may work. I'm going to imitate the pattern of the eggshell on the left official plush as I like that look better. Which means I'll have to EDIT THE MESH a bit to match. I'm also going to try something similar with the side spikes as you'll see here in the next few steps.
Still in EDIT MODE, I will select the Knife Tool. I'm going to use this to add a few edges for where I want the seam of one of the head spikes to be.
Using the knife tool can be a little weird. You need to hit the ENTER key to confirm a cut and make the tool stop drawing lines. Sometimes I'll just have to hit enter even if the lines are all wrong, and do over, because I'm not used to controlling it very well.
I'll add another seam in the middle of the spike so it's a "2 piece" part.
I'll make as many seams as I need on each part of this object (So the head, arms, and feet) I've added at least one set of seams per mesh object so now I can Unwrap it to fine tune my patterning of these parts.
UV editing (unwrapping)
Click on your object in object model, and enter EDIT MODE SELECT ALL (A key) of the polygons of your object in edit mode to highlight them. This will show black lines on the left viewport that represent the flattened model. We will be breaking the original UV mapping to create a plush pattern UV instead.
Then we will UNWRAP our object, this will use the seams we've set manually (the red lines). ANY TIME YOU ADD OR REMOVE SEAMS ON AN OBJECT YOU MUST UNWRAP IT AGAIN. OR you can turn on 'Auto unwrap'
Add a little bit of a margin so the unwrapped polygons aren't touching. (They need a little bit of space between the "Islands", it's easier that way.) While unwrapping the object I found a polygonal face underneath the round top of Togepi's head. We don't want any internal faces in most cases so I will delete it. The same will be done with the part of the arms that intersect into the body later.
Applying Modifiers
Here I've marked each piece with a different color and wrote what is what, for illustrative purposes only. As you can see, because we only have half of the model, with the other half mirrored only ONE HALF of the model shows up on the new updated plush UV map. The MID-LINE or LINE OF SYMMETRY edge will be counted as a SEAM too.
I've already done the seams on the rest of this object so now I will APPLY the MIRROR MODIFIER to make the right half of the model "physically" exist in the 3D space and become editable.
Making a Plush Pattern with a 3D Model
What you need: - blender.org (Free) Any version of Blender - plushify.net (OPTIONAL Free) - A 3D Model - Image Editing software or some kind of .PDF Combiner - You must learn how to navigate blender's camera, that's the hardest part tbh. - You must also know how to select objects and click points, faces or lines on the model. You can run multiple installs of blender on one PC. So if you're reading this 12 years from now and everything is different about the current version's UI and keyboard shortcuts, you can always grab Blender 4.0 which is what I'm using here.
Today I'm going to use a Togepi model from the 3DS.
Importing a model
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW about Plushify is covered on the site's User Guide this is "tutorial" will cover all of that in more detail for Blender newbies.
Assuming you have a 3D model to work with you need to open/import it into Blender. (Game models are usually .dae .fbx or .obj files all of which Blender supports under FILE > IMPORT > 'insertfiletypehere' Sometimes you need to enable an add-on for certain file types. Under FILE > PREFERENCES or EDIT >PREFERENCES (Depends on your version of blender) you can search for add-ons of your file type under - FILE > IMPORT > 'insertfiletypehere' Sometimes you need to enable an add-on for certain file types. Under FILE > PREFERENCES or EDIT >PREFERENCES (Depends on your version of blender) you can search for add-ons of your file type
Here's an add-on for Importing and Exporting .FBX files. In Togepi's case it was an .obj file.
Textures
By default it wont show the textures (Sometimes you may have to set up materials yourself. I won't be covering that here but you can message me for help.) You can show textures by messing around with the Viewport Options
Inspecting the Model
Blender is in Object Mode by default in the Layout tab setup. This means you can click on objects and do basic edits (Locations, Rotation, Scale). Any Edits you do will not be fully set in stone and can be undone. You need to 'Apply Transforms' if you edit something in Object Mode and want it to be a permanent change. (This only really matters for using Modifiers which I won't cover here.)
In this case, Togepi is made up of 4 objects. (Body, Eyes, Mouth, & Shell) I need the eyes and mouth to be part of the head So I will Join the objects by Clicking them while holding the SHIFT Key or dragging over it with the select box tool to SELECT the Body, Eyes, and Mouth Objects.
With the objects selected I will JOIN them (CTRL + J) or while in Object Mode: Object > Join
This is where things become much more complex:
EDITING THE MODEL:
With Togepi's body selected I will enter EDIT MODE.
EDIT MODE will let us modify delete or create Vertices, Edges, and Faces. (You dont need to remember the names there is no quiz at the end.) You will need to know the difference between a Tri /Quad and an N-GON though. N-gons are faces with more than 4 vertices. Most engines and computers render things in Quads or Tris so some software will not understand an N-gon. (Or might convert it to tris.) Plushify (which we will be using for this) will NOT accept a model with N-Gons. When we are done editing our model's mesh we MUST TRIANGULATE ANY N-GONS. (It's easiest to just triangulate the whole model.) docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/meshes/editing/face/triangulate_faces.html
Select Linked Objects function
I'm going to use Select Linked to show you how these separate objects are still separate polygons they line up perfectly at the same coordinates in 3D space as each other but are not connected. We want them to be connected/joined or Plushify will misinterpret the edge as a sewing seam which we don't want.
I select one point, then use "Select > Select Linked"
As you can see the eye and mouth objects aren't connected. So we will connect them by using MERGE BY DISTANCE. By Selecting All of the vertices and then using Vertex > Merge > by Distance
Merge By Distance function
A little menu will show up, keep the distance pretty short. If you make it too large it will join more than just the very edges that are touching together, making it harder to work with.
Changing the Viewpoint
If it's hard to see the piece you're working on, you can use SELECT LINKED or select a few polygons, or select the part in object mode and set the view to pivot around that area.
By using Select linked, I set the viewpoint to center around what I have selected to make it easier to work on that area. To do so, make a selection of the area you want to edit, then in the top ribbon bar, Select View > Frame Selected (shortcut: numpad key.)
Symmetry
Because Togepi is symmetrical I'm going to delete half of it & then use a mirror modifier*. That way any edits I do to one side will also apply to the other side and match perfectly. In some ways this cuts the amount of work needed in half too!
To do this I want to select half of the model but when I do that it only selects the polygons the viewpoint sees. So we're going to turn on X-Ray Mode to see through the whole model to be able to select "through" it. **docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/modifiers/generate/mirror.html
I will delete the model's right-hand side with the Delete key.
That's all of the images I can fit in one post, please see PART 2.
Trade for a friend who goes by Lockley. :)
Emergency Commissions Ref Sheets & PWYW Headshot sketches
Or donate but who can afford that tbh? In this economy?: https://ko-fi.com/nathanier
Ref Sheets: Tend to start at $80 PWYW Headshots: $15-20 minimum Contact @ nathahniel on Discord if interested.
I need help. (Well. My SO does. Which is who I live with. All of his paycheck goes to rent/utilities/etc. so I'm footing the ER & other "Emergency" bills.)
The actual details of $$$ numbers is on my Ko-fi goal if you're curious.
My very basic rig for a lion model is done. Someone wanted to commssion me to model their OC for 3D printing as a statue and I got rather excited by the idea of making a lion.
It has some shapekeys added to it for light character customization. Here's a few turned on just to show some funky variation.
The neck has been revised (shortened)
But now I'm going hardcore and added like 100 more bones so it can be animation-able instead of just a very very basic action-figure for 3D printing. So I'm giving it an IK setup and some facial animation bones.
Have something mildly cursed from when I was adding to my rig:
It'd be fun to make a silly lil Lion OC Maker in Unity but that's probably very much outside of what I can do just by myself. I have to do other things to be able to buy groceries.
I opted to draw the orthographic for my Zafara model with the body fully upright like a standing kangaroo for the T-pose, instead of sitting on it's haunches like the pet art pose (& leaned more into the classic look bc I'm biased AF) It'll have the normal Zafara Sit as a pose after rigging. :)