Horse WIP

[Euphoria]

After completing the “Complete Blender Creator 3: Learn 3D Modelling for Beginners.”, I really wanted to challenge myself to use all of the techniques that I just learned. (Since I never even so much as touched blender before) So here we are. I began box modeling the horse with a drawing I made.

Added some thickness to the body and started modeling that. Then added a lot of “clay” in the sculpting tab. (The legs below are just the extruded box model). As you can see: I still got a long way to go! But the ultimate end goal will be to have a animated and textured horse. I will be updating this topic along the way: so any tips will be more than welcome, since I can apply them immediately

As you can see, the horse in the foreground is not matching the horse in the background. This is fine, since I’m only using the reference for anatomy.

[NP5]

Looking a good start.
Some front and rear views may help body thickness.

[Euphoria]

Thank you! I realised my reference pictures weren’t the best. So I made my own going to: https://kwpn.tv/category/eerste-bezichtiging-2023. It’s basically a stallion show, and since they have to judge the horses ability and exterior, they show them from every side. Great free resource if anyone wants to make a horse too

[Euphoria]

Well, turns out: Horse legs are really really hard, but: I am not giving up!

Seriously: Why do horses have the tiniest of legs?

[Euphoria]

The body is starting to look way better already!

[Euphoria]

Starting to look like a horse

[Crixus]

nice job, this is looking pretty good!

[Bahaa]

I’m no longer into 3D Modelling, but I’ll confess this is one amazing-looking horse

[Euphoria]

Thank you for the kind responses Bahaa and Crixus
I started working on the front and chest. I still need to make some front hoofs and those lower legs certainly need some love and care too!

[Euphoria]

Some good looking front legs. Time to do the rib section!

[Euphoria]

Realised that the muscle on the bottom of the neck doesn’t actually line up with the bottom of the cheeck, but the top of the cheeck instead. So I changed that and started working on the bum and hind legs.

[RayMobula]

Looks great. Grant has a YT video where he models a horse.

For inspiration for troubleshooting

Make Animals In Blender 3 - The Easy Way

Cheers,
Ray

[Euphoria]

Oh thank you so much! That is an amazing resource!

[Euphoria]

The horse bum is one of the more difficult areas. It makes you question:

• How detailed should this model go?
• How do I make sure the model is ok for kids to look at and how do I keep the flow of the model without those parts?
• And most importantly: How long do I want to stare at horse butts?

[Euphoria]

After doing some more work on the legs, I lowered the amount of faces and started shading. My first two tries didn’t succeed. I thought it was because of the amount of faces, but it was just because the head wasn’t sculpted the right way. So I changed that.

Before the change

And after

[Euphoria]

After a lot of shading and no result. I realised that I needed a bigger skillset, most notably: uv texture painting. So I followed the Blender Texture Painting: Create Stunning Stylised Models. What I didn’t realise was that my model isn’t suited for unwrapping. This means that I need to remodel the entire model .

The result after 2 hours of trying shading. (Doesn’t look much different does it?)

[Bahaa]

why not just get a map off the internet and UV-Unwrap that instead?

[Euphoria]

That would be easier, but the end goal is bringing this model to life all by myself. Even when that means that I have to re-do things completely. The failing is just part of the learning process, and it has now given me the opportunity to learn retopology.

[Bahaa]

fair enough, I’m not discouraging you

Word of advice though (do with it as you wish):
“You don’t have to walk alone (aka: if someone does something better or you can outsource it, and there are no legal issues, do it. There’s no point of reinventing the wheel)”

[Euphoria]

Don’t worry! It’s just a genuine question in my opinion.

As for your advice, thank you. If this was ever to be in a game, I would completely agree with you. The time I spend on this far outweighs any monetary benefit I could get from it. You’re just looking at my first model ever xD Well, I did the complete beginners course and never touched the program before. So this isn’t some professional work, just a hobby.