Research

Box modelling is probably the most common type of modelling technique in Blender. This usually starts with a “primitive mesh”, (e.g., a cube, sphere, or torus), and then you are able to model a complex shape. These meshes can be modelled in edit mode, object mode, or even sculpt mode. A more advanced form of box modelling would be poly modelling, which is where a mesh is created one polygon at a time. This gives the creator more control over how large each polygon is and the placement and proportions of the mesh before continuing to model.

Polygon modelling is very similar to box modelling, except instead of starting with a 3D primitive mesh, you start with a single vertex or edge. This method puts more emphasis on building your mesh from edges and vertices and getting more detail. The advantages and disadvantages of this method are pretty much the same as those of box modelling.

This technique has many advantages: it is very versatile and is a sort of stepping stone to the more advanced modelling forms. Anyone looking to learn modelling in Blender should start with a box. One disadvantage of this technique is that it's more difficult to get organic-looking shapes by starting with a simple mesh without things being distorted by subdivisions and smooth filters.

This is a common type of modelling used in Blender to create organic shapes, such as humans or animals. The difference between this kind of modelling and others is that instead of working with sharp, shape-based primitives and manually pushing and pulling the faces around to create an asset, you use brushes to mould the asset organically.

A good thing to note about sculpting in Blender is that there is this technology called “multi resolution”. This allows the modeller to create new levels of detail and store the mesh between each layer, allowing you to get more detailed at your leisure instead of having to work with thousands of polys right from the beginning. This also prevents the model from lagging behind the software and crashing due to too much complexity.

Simple rigging in Blender is actually a lot easier than one might think, not only because Blender provides many pre-made humanoid rigs and armatures for you to use freely. A native addon called "Rigify" allows the user to create a pre-made human rig, and then one simply takes away the bones that they do not need and resizes the needed ones to the correct size for your mesh. In order to make your rig more advanced, you go to the rig options tab to the bottom right, as shown by the green stick figure, and select "generate rig." This will turn your simple rig into one with constraints, custom bone shapes, and other advanced tools. This is extremely useful if you want a character with complex movements.

Weight painting is very important when rigging a character from scratch. It is, essentially, making sure your rig effects the correct areas of your character and smoothing out all of the joints so that the right vertices are moving at the right rate when you pose your rigged character.

Essentially, the best way to quickly rig a character is to take the rig, roughly outline which parts you want weighted, bend the rig in as many strange directions as you can manage, and then go in and fine-tune the weights in order to get it looking right. Each weight paint is going to be different for each character model, and so fiddling around with it is really the only reliable method of getting your rig perfectly weighted.