Beginners Tutorial For Low poly Design in Blender

As we see, Low poly style illustrations are the latest wind of the designing world. We see them everywhere like– books, animations, music videos, apps, etc. Artists and designers have an affection for unreal; they do not mimic reality or go overboard with polished lifelike 3D designs. Instead, they try to give the essence of an object in a spectacular way rather than making it over-realistic. That is where Low Poly modelling is introduced.

Source: Behance.net by Patric Tate

I found Blender a way more easy to design low poly models or scenarios. If you don’t like to go with complex tools you can easily give a try to Blender.

I made this scenario using Blender and today I’ll help you to learn how to create one in 20easy steps. This tutorial will highlight more on how to achieve the style, rather than learning illustration theory or modelling anything in precise. So we are going to create one example illustration and learn the steps to bring out the desired result.

Step 1:

In a new file press Shift-A and add a Plane.

Step 2:

Press TAB on the keyboard to enter into Edit mode. Then Press S and drag the mouse to scale the Plane up.

Step 3:

While in the edit mode press W on keyboard and choose Subdivide and do it for several times. Three to four times would be sufficient, don’t make it too dense.

Step 4:

Press A to deselect all the vertices. Now to create the mountain ridge, select two vertices as shown in the following image. Right Click on any vertex to select it, and then holdShift and Right Click on another vertex to select multiple vertices. Here I have pressed 5on the Numpad to get into Perspective mode. To Rotate the view, click and drag using the Middle Mouse Button.

Step 5:

While in Edit mode, press O on the keyboard to enable the Proportional Editing Tool(Soft selection), and make sure that Smooth falloff is selected.

Step 6:

Now drag the Arrow Widget to move the vertices upward (Z axis). Or press G and then Z to move the vertices along the Z Axis only. Move them up just a little bit, not too much. You can increase or decrease the area of influence with the Mouse Wheel.

Now select only one of the vertex and pull it upwards. Again you can either use the Arrow Widget, or press G and then Z and move your mouse, to move the vertex up. Press A to deselect all the vertexes.

Step 7:

Do the same procedures from step 4 to 6 to draw mountains on the other side of the plane.

Step 8:

Now we wanted to add some texture to the middle of the hill-clips so that it looks like kind of rough hillside pathway. We do the same procedures- Randomly Right Click on any vertex to select it, and then hold Shift and Right Click on another vertex to select multiple vertices. Now drag the Arrow Widget to move the vertices upward (Z axis). Or press G and then Z to move the vertices along the Z Axis only. Move them up just a little bit so that it looks like a cragged surface.

Step 9:

Press Tab to enter the object mood again.

Step 10:

To color the scenario there are few more steps you have to perform.

With the Mountain object selected, click on the Materials button in the Properties window and press the New button. Name the new material “Green” or “Ground”, and set the Diffuse color to a warm green. Reduce the Specular Intensity to 0.0, as we want to have a non-shiny material.

Now add another Material say mountain and select a brownish color as we want to color the mountains.

Step 11:

Here we will learn how to assign multiple materials to a single object. Press TAB to enter into Edit mode and then press Z for Wireframe mode, so that while selecting we are able to select the faces and vertices which are behind and nothing will be left out. Press Control-TAB and select Face in the Mesh Select mode menu. Now press B and drag to select the part of the mountain which is above the ground. If you miss some faces, manually select them by holding down the Shift key and Right Clicking on them. Now the mountains are colored to brown.

Step 12:

Select few points to the top clean to add the snowy looking hill top. Add a materialnamed snow and following the previous procedures select a snow like “matt whitish” color then assign. Here you draw a picture of a snowy hill side scenario. Press tab to enter object mood.

Step 13:

Now we’ll add the camera. Press Shift-A and add a Camera and place it according to your composition. Press G to move and R to rotate the camera, and press 0 on the numpad to change to the camera’s view.

Step 14:

Now lets add some light. Press Shift-A and add a Sun. Place it on top of the mountain so that the ray fall on the other side of the mountain and adjust its direction by rotating it with the R key.

Step 15:

To add the background as sky click on the World settings in the Properties panel and set the Sky color to blue and check the Blend Sky option, so that we get a nice gradient with the zenith color. Set the material to kind of “navy blue” color.

Step 20:

Hit F12 to render and you’ll see the effect of the sky color.

Hope you like the Tutorial!!

Originally published at http://gameover.studio on November 3, 2016