# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Modeling a Wolf from Guide Images

|previous=Aligning Vertices with a Guide Image
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This tutorial assumes that you have completed all previous tutorials.

## Method 1

### Get the pictures of the model

If you have a puppy and a digital camera, take three pictures of the
cute little rascal and upload them. If you don\'t have a puppy, any
object or small animal will do. Ideally, the photos will be looking
straight down at the top of the puppy, a side view, and a front view.
It\'s important that the puppy be in the same pose in all three photos!
Or at least close to the same pose\...we all know puppies don\'t stand
still very long.

You could use two mirrors. One is placed next to the puppy at 45 degrees
to the camera and 45 degrees to the puppy. Another is placed above the
puppy, also at 45 degrees to the camera and 45 degrees to the puppy.
This produces three images, one of the puppy (**front \\ NUM1**), one of
its reflection seen 90 degrees to the right (**side \\ right \\
NUM3)**), and one of its reflection seen from overhead (**top \\
NUM7**). Take the photo from a long distance away with a zoom lens to
get close to an orthographic
projection.

Or how about pictures of a toy wolf taken from 6 view points?:

-   Left view
-   Right
    view
-   Front
    view
-   Back view
-   Bottom
    view
-   Top view

Using your favorite image editor, such as PhotoShop or the
GIMP (see detailed GIMP instructions below: Detailed
steps to align images using
GIMP),
down-scale the images need to a reasonable size (I made mine 512x384),
and then match them to each other. To match them, draw construction
lines (pulled from the rulers above and to the left) on the left view
for example to pick out key features. I picked the tail, the front of
the back foot, eye level, tip of the ear, and the front of the nose:

![](Toywolf-construction-left.jpg "Toywolf-construction-left.jpg")

I found when I picked out these features that this first image needed to
be rotated slightly. That completed, I proceeded to scale, rotate and
shift the other two views (top and front) until they matched fairly well
as layers on top:

![](Toywolf-construction-top.jpg "Toywolf-construction-top.jpg")
![](Toywolf-construction-front.jpg "Toywolf-construction-front.jpg")

Once I had the proper results I saved the resulting images, and these
are the ones we will use in Blender.

The results are the files you\'ll need for Step Two:

![](Toywolf-left.jpg "Toywolf-left.jpg")
![](Toywolf-front.jpg "Toywolf-front.jpg")
![](Toywolf-top.jpg "Toywolf-top.jpg")

Just right-click and save them some place where you can find them to
load them into Blender for Step Two. You may notice the photos aren\'t
perfect, but we\'ll use them just to show how you should deal with your
real photos. When you are creating your own pictures to import, note
parallax. In this example,
parallax is present, and we\'ll attempt to compensate.

### Get the Picture into Blender

Getting the image into blender is the easy part. The more difficult part
will be creating the mesh, but first things first. Create a new file
(*File → New*) to see the familiar default objects. Don\'t bother
deleting the cube, we\'ll end up using it in the tutorial. Just as was
done in the \"Making A
Pyramid\"
section, split the 3D Viewer into four views with CTRL-ALT-Q.

Each window will show you different XYZ coordinates.

Go to View \> Properties, or press . A
new toolbar will open to the right of the viewport and by scrolling
through you should see *Background Images*. Use the \"Add images\" bar
and options will open up. Then check the box to display your images.

Click the *Add Image* button and several more buttons will appear. Now
\"Open\" button. A new full-viewport window will appear. Explore this
window a bit and end up selecting the image file of the wolf from the
top view. What you should get is the picture of the toy wolf from above
with the default cube on top of it.

Now load the top view of the wolf, click on \"Open\" select the picture
and set \"Axis:\" to \"Front\". Repeat the procedure and load the
picture of the wolf to the other views.

**Noob note:** the photo from the top goes into top view, the photo from
the front goes into the right view, and the photo from the right goes
into front view, if you have front in front, change it now!

The pictures are now loaded into the Blender viewports. If you look at
the pictures on the grid, you may notice that the front view of the wolf
isn\'t quite center. That is okay, Blender has a way to fix it.

Press **Shift + SpaceBar**, this expands the current viewport to a
fullscreen view, then go to \"Background Images\" and go to the Front
view. Notice that there are picture manipulation options available. One
of these includes picture offsets. Click on right side of the \'X
Offset: 0.00\' to increase the offset to 0.20. The picture will be
shifted over slightly so now the wolf is more centered. Press **Shift +
SpaceBar** again to return to the window-setup you had earlier. Correct
the other views also, and scale the cube if needed.

**Noob Note:** If you made, and aligned your own photos, you will need
to use a different value than \'0.20\' to center the head in the cube in
front view.

The setup work is now done! Let\'s start on actually making the wolf
model.

![](Wolftut1.png "Wolftut1.png")

### Create a Rough Model

This is a brute force model creation using techniques discussed
previously in this book. This section is meant to help you explore and
become more comfortable with them. Do *not* try to follow the example to
the tee. Your wolf and my wolf will probably not look the same since you
may want to add more or have less detail.

**Noob Note:** If you are just getting started with blender, this step
may likely take several hours to complete, since you must use your own
creativity to position things in 3D space, using 2D views. Just like
sculpting, drawing, or oil painting, it will be extremely fustrating at
first, but once you get used to the way it works, \"modeling\" will be
much easier.

The rough fit stage requires either some planning or on-the-spot
decisions. Think about where the wolf will have parts of its body flex
or require parts jutting out.

The first step is to create a blocky wolf. Start out with a column of
blocks using the extrude face command (select face,
). Don\'t worry about snapping the
vertices to the grid since we are working with an organic figure.

***Noob Note:** It is handy to do this in wireframe view, to see better
how the rough model fits out*

**Figure 2.3.1** Body column formation\
![](Wolftut2.png "Wolftut2.png")

The next step is to split the ears and legs off of the body. Do this by
subdividing (With \"Quad/Tri Mode\" checked) the appropriate faces. Save
often, and if you make a mistake, go ahead and use the undo option
(**CTRL** ). Also, if you find yourself
looking at redundant faces, combine them
().

**Figure 2.3.2** Appendage formation\
![](Wolftut3.png "Wolftut3.png")\]

If you are having trouble with this, try mousing over the perspective
window (the one you designated with NUM0) and using the MMB to rotate
the view so that you are looking at the underside of the wolf. Click on
the face underneath the wolf that is alongside his front legs (use the
side view to check this). We are going to subdivide this face in order
to grow legs off the new faces. To subdivide, press the
 and choose subdivide. You will see
that the face has been divided into four. Take one of these faces and
extrude it as many times as is necessary to make the right leg. Then do
the same again for his left leg.

**Noob Note:** To avoid making the extruded faces share common vertices
(and be connected to each other), either extrude the legs separately (as
stated above) or select *Individual faces* in the Extrude pop-up menu.
The same works for the ears.

Doing the ears is similar, except instead of working underneath you will
start with the face on top of the wolf which is directly over the ears.
Select this face and subdivide it once. Deselect everything using
, then select one of these four faces
and extrude it upwards once to make an ear. Do the same for the face
alongside it to make the other ear.

Finally, extrude the tail end of the wolf one more time, so that your
wolf has as many divisions as the picture above.

### Refine the rough model

Let\'s start refining the model starting with the tail. Try putting your
viewports in wireframe mode by pushing
, it may make things much easier. Line
up the vertices over the wolf in each viewport by lasso selecting
multiple vertices (**CTRL LMB, Drag**). then move to the right location
with grab ().

**Figure 2.3.3** Working on the tail\
![](Wolftut4.png "Wolftut4.png")

Continue onto the hind legs of the wolf. It is trickier to manipulate
the legs so keep rotating a viewport to look at the model from multiple
perspectives. Remember that we are working in three dimensions.

**Figure 2.3.4** Working on the hind legs\
![](Wolftut5.png "Wolftut5.png")

Continue working up along the wolf fitting the blocks to the pictures.
If you have problems seeing the picture because the model is in the way,
let\'s hide the model. In Edit Mode, select the entire model by
 or by pressing
 when you have the cursor over the
model. Simply pressing  will hide the
selected items. To unhide the view, use
+. By
hiding and unhiding the model, or parts of the model, you should be able
to keep using the picture as a guide. *Note: It is much easier to just
switch layers by, let\'s say, pressing 
(not the Num-Block one) to hide the entire model (thus getting a look at
the picture) and  to reveal the mesh
again.*

Once you have the first pass done, you\'ll notice that the model just
won\'t fit all three pictures correctly. This is due to parallax. The
most obvious example is the side view. The four feet should be level, as
they are all standing on a flat surface. Since they are not, we\'ll just
ignore some of the aspects of each picture and continue with the model.
(This is a helpful example to show what you need to consider when taking
your own pictures.)

**Figure 2.3.5** Completed rough fit\
![](Wolftut6.png "Wolftut6.png")

### Subsurf the model

Now that the rough fit is done, let\'s smooth out the wolf. Add a
Subsurf modifier and set the Levels to 2. The wolf will now be smoothed,
but we want to add some of the hard lines back into the model. This may
be accomplished with creased edges.

Select Edges or faces you want to crease and press **SHIFT + EKEY**. Use
the mouse and pull away from the center until the Crease value is close
to what you want. A value of +1.000 will give you the sharpest look and
is useful for places such as the bottoms of the paws. When an edge has
been creased, the edge will be highlighted in yellow (positive crease)
or black (negative crease). These highlights are shown due to the \'Draw
Creases\' button being turned on.

In this example, I creased edges along the paws, tail, ears, and nose to
give them some sharpness.

**Figure 2.4.1** Creased edges\
![](Wolftut7.png "Wolftut7.png")

The last step is to refit the model to the pictures. You may have
noticed that when the model was smoothed, the result didn\'t quite fit
to the pictures. Now is a great time to tweak the vertices to fit to the
pictures or add to/modify the model.

*Noob note: if you see a weird edge on the body after smoothing, check
the face normals (F9 \> Mesh Tools More \> Draw Normals; and then W \>
Flip Normals on the culprit faces).*

And here is my basic wolf based on three pictures!

**Figure 2.4.2** Final toy wolf model\
![](Wolftut8.png "Wolftut8.png"){width="400"}

## Method 2 (using mirroring)

In this alternative method we will do half a wolf and then mirror it to
create a complete wolf. You should start out by creating a silhouette of
the wolf body in the side view, and then in front view start to shape
the wolf head, tail and legs\...

**Noob Note:** If you are attempting this method, it is best to avoid
using triangles in rounded areas of a Mesh, because they tend to cause
artifacts in your model (artifacts are protruding edges or other things
that don\'t look realistic). Using quads is a much better alternative.
Triangles should only be used on flat areas of your mesh if they cannot
be avoided.

![](Wolf_building_side.jpg "Wolf_building_side.jpg")
![](Wolf_building_front.jpg "Wolf_building_front.jpg")

Here is what you should end up with
![](Wolf_finished.jpg "Wolf_finished.jpg"){width="400"}

## Using mirroring with method 1

You can also use mirroring with the first method (the one with cube
extrusions).

This can speed up your work as you don\'t have to do the same changes on
each side of the fox - just once.

To start the mirroring:

-   Go to Editing (**F9**)
-   In the *Modifiers* panel, add a *Mirror*
-   Check only the *Y* button

When modeling:

-   You may want to adjust the *Merge Limit* value (e.g. 0.14): this
    means vertices too close to each others (after the mirroring) will
    be merged, thus avoiding artifacts along the mirror\'s axis.
-   Remove the faces along the mirror\'s axis, otherwise Subsurf will be
    confused by the faces *inside* the body of the mirrored fox. Keep
    all the faces for the legs though.
-   To move the legs differently on each side: when you\'re done
    modeling the rest of the fox, apply the Mirror modifier, and then
    work on each leg independently.

## Detailed steps to align images using GIMP

From this point forward there are multiple ways to do exactly the same
thing, however for simplicity\'s sake and so that I can be more detailed
I will be using one method (the one which I use) and be using GIMP.

I found it best to size all the photos to a known width, with an easy
way to find center. (Mine happened to be 850x638 pixels, I don't
recommend that but you can choose any size you want really, as long as
all of them are the same size). Then drag the construction lines to form
a crosshair in the middle of the photo. To do this, click on the top
ruler, and drag down to the middle (Exact middle) of the photo, then
click on the side ruler and drag across to the middle (Again exact
middle) of the photo.

If you are having trouble finding the exact middle of the photo, move
the cursor to the very bottom left of your photo and the height of your
photo will be listed at the bottom left of the GIMP interface. The
numbers are listed in an (x,y) format so you want the first number to
say 0 and the second to be the largest you can make it by dragging your
cursor. The second number is the height, and half of that is the middle
of your photo. You can do the same with the top ruler to find the
vertical middle of your photo. Only this time the co-ordinates at the
bottom left of the GIMP interface should list the second number (y) as
0, and the first number should be as large as you can make it by moving
your cursor (to the upper right of the photo). Once you have your width
again half of that will be the middle of your photo.

Then using construction lines put one at the top of your object, and the
bottom of your object. Find the \"height\" of your object by the
distance between them. Remove the construction lines from the top and
the bottom, and place a new construction line above the horizontal
center line by the half of the \"height\"(of your object). Now place a
construction line on both sides of your object and find the "width"
(distance between the new vertical lines), then remove those
construction lines and place a new construction line vertically half of
the \"width\"(of your object) to the right of the vertical center line.
Now cut the object out, and drag it so that the point you used as the
\"top\" is on the horizontal construction line that is above the middle.
Then Drag the photo left or right until the right edge of the object is
on the vertical construction line you put in right of the middle
construction line.

Now the center of your object is at the center of your photo. This is a
very important thing because when blender loads in the picture you will
need this so that all of your pictures match up with each other 3d. You
should repeat these steps with all 3 photos. I also don\'t recommend
doing it in GIMP\'s \"layered mode\" as that caused more pandemonium for
me. I recommend opening each photo in a new window .

Taking your pictures is the most important part, because if the pictures
are not all in the same scale (object size to photo size) then your
photos will not line up and you won\'t be able to place a dot on the
same location from front view, side view, and top view.

As a recommendation I would recommend making your first model from a
Lego man. That is what I did and it is very simplistic easy practice. To
take my photos I took about 10 minutes to construct a photo platform for
my object. It consisted of a cardboard box with two sides cut out. I
covered the inside area with computer paper. I then used a 2"x4" and a
ruler to make sure that the box stayed the same distance from the camera
for all shots, as well as marking where the Lego man's feet were
positioned inside the box with a pencil. This will provide good
pictures, providing you keep the camera at the same distance and zoom
for all three photos.

