Okay, so today I’m gonna walk you through my attempt at building Doug from Brawl Stars. It was a journey, let me tell you!
First things first, I scoured the internet for reference images. You know, gotta get the details right. I grabbed a bunch from different angles – his front, side, back, even some fan art for inspiration. I even watched some gameplay videos to get a feel for his animations and personality. This part is actually important, gotta know your subject, right?
Next, I started with the basic shapes. Doug’s got that kinda boxy head, so I blocked it out with some simple cubes in my 3D software. I use Blender, by the way. Nothing fancy, just good ol’ Blender. Then, I roughed out his body – kinda like a sausage shape, haha. It was really rough at this stage, but it gave me a starting point.
Then came the tedious part: retopology. I had to smooth out those rough shapes and add more polygons where I needed detail. This involved a lot of clicking and dragging vertices, making sure the mesh flowed nicely. I swear, retopology is like 80% of 3D modeling. It’s boring, but you gotta do it right if you want a decent model.
After the retopo, I started sculpting in the details. I used Blender’s sculpting tools to add his little snout, his eyes, and those weird little fin-things on his head. I kept going back to my reference images to make sure I was getting the proportions right. This is where things started to look less like a blob and more like Doug.
Now, for the fun part: texturing! I unwrapped the model and painted the textures in Substance Painter. I tried to capture that cartoony style of Brawl Stars. It’s all about bright colors and bold outlines. I added some subtle gradients to give him some depth. I had to redo the texturing several times cause the first time it was too dirty but the 5th time, it was finally good.
Next up was rigging and posing. This is where you create the skeleton for your model so you can move it around. I added bones for his arms, legs, head, and even his tail (does he have a tail?). Then, I created some simple animations – his idle pose, his walking animation, and maybe a little victory dance.
Finally, I imported the model into Unity. I set up the materials, added some lighting, and created a simple scene. Then, I showed it off to my friends. They said it looked “kinda like Doug,” which I guess is a compliment. Still, I was aiming for a little better so I re-touched some areas again!
So yeah, that’s how I built Doug from Brawl Stars. It took me a couple of days, but it was a fun project. I learned a lot about 3D modeling, texturing, and animation. Plus, I got to hang out with Doug. He’s a cool dude!
- Reference Images: Key to getting details right.
- Basic Shapes: Start simple, build up.
- Retopology: Essential but tedious.
- Sculpting: Adding details.
- Texturing: Bring the model to life with color.
- Rigging and Posing: Make him move!
