How to learn Blender?

Hi, I want to develop a game in the following style. It's a kind of garden simulation, so I want prefabs like Animals, growing plants and trees.
As a beginner I think the design of the animals with the fur looks good even if the models are primary.




Is it realistic to learn to make this in Blender as a person who is new to 3d modelling? Which techniques should I learn especially for this „fur/paper“ look of the animals, and how can I make the leafs on the tree? Are there any tricks? Do you know any systematic tutorial which explain the elementary concepts of Blender?

Thank you.

 

As far as learning Blender goes the learning process is two fold, you're learning both the software and the principles of 3d modelling. If you have zero experience with 3d artistry, then your first focus should be getting comfortable with both the software and how to assemble basic 3d models alongside how to bring them into Unity.

3D is a discipline that you start learning and never finish learn, same as any of the other primary disciplines of making video games.

I'm not sure how the above visual effects were achieved, particularly on the piñata characters. Could be a lot of little 3d planes or it could be a shader.

But before that, how much game making experience do you have? Have you ever used Unity before? Have any programming skills? If not then you really should be thinking about just learning the fundamentals.

 

Thanks for answering.
I would say I developed the fundamental game mechanics. So I have scripting and basic Unity skills.
Can you recommend a free tutorial which was especially made for Unity cases?
How you learned Blender?

 

I learnt Blender in the context of making models for Morrowind, well over a decade ago at this point (god I'm getting old). There was shockingly little in the way of learning material, so it was mostly just teenage me plugging away at it until things started work/make sense.

Nowadays there's almost too much learning material!

The only website I've been across that had Unity centric 3d tutorials was a site called CG Cookie, though most of the content on that site is paid (but good quality). I'm sure there's decent free resources out there; just need to go searching.

But honestly, getting a good grasp on Blender in 3D principles will get you 95% of the way there. The process of exporting models is something you can easily figure out along the way; it's not exactly rocket science. Most of your visual magic will be happening in Unity anyway.

But first things first, you probably want to prototype your project with bare bones place holder assets to get an idea if your idea is fun (either for potential players, or perhaps just for yourself).

 

The fur may be fins and shells technique.
This is simple modeling so if you can spend a month or two doing beginner tutorials you will probably know enough to get stearted making models like these.

 

One thing to keep in mind though, design is the key thing here. Making the models is just a technical thing, you only need to lean what buttons to push. Design the art is a separate part of the process. So if you are trying to design at same time you are trying to learn what buttons to push, results will be bad. Just keep in mind so that you don’t think your blender skills suck and you spend ages trying to learn secret techniques, when the only problem was you didn’t have strong design before you started with the 3D.

 

https://www.skillshare.com/ has plenty of courses or from https://studio.blender.org/welcome/

 

I advise against trying to make fur in Blender though. If you try to create the fur using materials, it will not be compatible with Unity. Geometry fur will probably not be suitable for real-time rendering. Which ever way you create the fur it will probably not be usable in Unity.

Instead I would simply model/rig/unwrap the animals in Blender and then import them into Unity. Then research how to create a Unity-compatible fur shader all in Unity. The other thing you could do is buy one from Asset Store (Your mileage may very).

 

I think this really depends on the type of "fur". On first impression I thought that the fur in the OPs pictures were little cards, which would be simple (though time consuming) to implement by hand.

But on a closer inspection I wonder if it's not a shell-based hair shader with really wide strands? In some areas the fur doesn't seem to connect to the animal, which gives me this impression. In which case, yeah, it won't come from a modelling package to a real-time renderer on its own.

Even if they are cards, if you've got it in you to learn some shaders I'd definitely go that route rather than making them by hand. It'll be faster to make, and once in place trivially easy to vary, so you could make 5 different dogs in 2 minutes after the first one is done, rather than having to basically start from scratch hand modelling unique fur each time.

 

I mean... in Blender you could use Geometry Nodes and be able to do this as quickly as using a shader, without having to go through the rigmarole of learning how to make a shader.

 

Fair enough, that closes the gap quite a bit.

The shader solution does allow you to create randomised, unique animals on the fly, though, where geo nodes presumably require an export of each variation. Not that I'd be worrying about that as a learner.

 

Yeah, you would need to export each variation. But it's not a hard pipeline to set up, and something I've done for 'same but different' assets, like rocks/boulders.

You've a good point too, and with shaders I imagine you could animate them in some basic way too.

One day I will properly learn shaders.

 

Actually, that kind of sells it for me. I'd definitely go shaders over geo. Even if the geo already existed, I'd apply a shader to it to animate it anyway, so I may as well do it all in one place.

Edit: Assuming it performed well on target hardware, of course.

 

I was thinking fins and shells technique using something like spiney mentioned for easy setup. And there can be a shell too like a base layer to give sense of depth. That is all easy to setup once you know the right tools.

shader only needs basic transparency for fins and shells techniques I thought so I thought it would be pretty much renderer agnostic. For wiggliness I think if you find any grass-wind shader tutorial you can apply same concept for fur.
But our hero is only worried about modeling for now. Rest assured there is plenty of known techniques for making the fur furry so I don’t think they need to worry about it too much. Can just go one step at a time.