Original subtitles

In this chapter we are going to create the branches on the head if you press 1

for the front view you will see it on the reference here and we'll use some

really simple trick to do this. We'll be just extruding some vertices and

applying skin modifier over them and then fixing some issues so let's get to

it right now and I will select the mask first and press H to hide this and now

select the ball that's a placeholder for head and hold shift S and switch cursor

to select it so we have a cursor there and now I'll press shift A and with the

extra objects active we have an option to create a single word object add

single word and right now we are already in the edit mode after adding so just be

sure to switch this to vertex select by pressing 1 and now we can move the

vertex in place where the first branch will go so somewhere here probably and

now we'll just extrude some branches and don't worry if you don't see behind the

feathers here remember that this should be very organic process when I first

extruded these branches I didn't have any like a real branch reference or

anything so just go with the flow and finish like you see here on the

reference so I will just press E now and extrude the first vertex and continue

like this until I match something similar that I can see here on the

screen I might have a little trouble to do that as well since I don't remember

the exact position for these branches and now let's enable the x-ray and I

will push this a little bit up and extrude this down so I can create this

part as well so let's extrude this then a little bit of that okay and I will

just continue by duplicating this first vertex so shift D and duplicate where

the next branch would go and just start extruding that so press E extrude or you

can ctrl right click to make things really fast and just click through that

but sometimes I find actually pressing E and extruding a little bit more precise

than with the ctrl right click so keep that in mind

okay something like this and there's another branch right here and it's

barely visible so let's just do something like this and then a little

part like that I will now tab out so you better see the structure for these

branches if you want to repeat this and now I will add the skin modifier so go

to the modifiers tab and add a skin modifier and this doesn't look pretty

right now but we'll fix that if we tab back in and select these three vertices

we can drag a selection around them or shift click and we will mark all of them

as root and now select all so press A and press ctrl A to scale all of this

down and with this we are actually modifying the radius on these vertices

from which the skin modifier takes the information about how thick it should be

so right now we are trying to find some middle range some middle median value

for the thickness of these branches something like this I would say and now

we can scale up the roots so press ctrl A and scale this up and we can maybe

move them a little bit closer here so it's really visible that these are a

little bit more wide and now select all of the endpoints you can see so by

holding shift just click the end vertices on every branch and we'll now

enable proportional editing so press O or click here press ctrl A and scale

this down and remember you can modify this with the scroll wheel on your mouse

so we don't want the radius to be very large we want something like this

remember to look at the reference you will see at which point this starts to

match so I think something like this should work and now we can turn off the

proportional editing by pressing O again and let's look from the side so I will

press 3 on the numpad and you can see these branches go in several directions

so right now I will hover over the first one and press L to select all the linked

vertices now go back here to the side view and I will press G to move this

here and R to rotate to place this over the reference like that and the bottom

one here so you can see I hovered over there and press L and let's rotate this

as well and around the Z axis so we can place it like this okay and a little bit

more towards the head here so something like that should work and you can always

play with this a little bit more if you hover over this one and rotate around Z

you can get a little bit more angle so from the side it's visible that it's

branch I will leave it like this for a while and we can now exit the edit mode

so tab out toggle the x-ray again and I want to enable smooth shading here on

the skin modifier you have to do this it won't help you if you enable smooth

shading right there because it's overridden by the skin modifier here so

check the smooth shading there and I want to add one level of subdivision

like this so press ctrl 1 or add the modifier here manually and you can see

we have a one viewport division and I really like this so right now I'll just

have to check around if there are some shading issues I really recommend doing

this after using a skin modifier I will try to simulate some problems here if

you maybe have some vertices too close together let me disable the subdivision

it can really break your skin modifier like this so it's always good to go

around your model and check if the skin modifier works properly if you see some

problems like this don't worry about this you can just easily select the

vertex and move it a little bit around until the problem disappears these

vertices just need some breathing room around them depending on the radius you

have applied with the ctrl a so they'll just need some breathing room to work

properly we can now enable the subdivision modifier again and one last

thing that's missing here is the mirror modifier so we'll apply that and it

works automatically because we move the cursor to the center of the head and

that's where the origin point for this whole object is so the modifier

automatically applies the X mirror around that origin point so right now we

can just press alt H to unhide the mask toggle the x-ray to look around and we

are getting somewhere this already looks nice and remember these easy small

modeling shortcuts like creating something from a single vertex and then

applying skin modifier and some of the other modifiers to create something that

looks complex that's something where blender really shines