Alright, let me tell you about this little project I did recently, something I just called “golf gir” in my notes. It wasn’t for anything specific, just felt like messing around and trying something out. Sometimes you just gotta make stuff, you know?
Getting Started
So, the idea popped into my head – make a simple character, a girl playing golf. Why golf? No big reason, maybe saw something on TV, or just thought the pose would be a decent challenge. First thing, I jumped online, searched for some reference pictures. You know, typical golf poses, outfits, clubs, that sort of thing. Didn’t need anything super detailed, just enough to get the basic idea right.
The Actual Making Of It
I decided to use Blender, mostly ’cause I’m comfortable with it and it’s free. Didn’t want to get bogged down learning new software for this.
- Blocking out: Started super basic. Just throwing down simple shapes, spheres for the head, cubes stretched out for the body, arms, legs. Really rough, like a wooden dummy. Spent a bit of time just pushing and pulling vertices, trying to get the proportions looking kinda human.
- Adding Detail: Once the basic shape felt okay, I started refining it. Making it look more like a person, adding curves, defining the muscles a little bit – not too much, wanted to keep it fairly simple, maybe a bit stylized.
- Clothes and Club: Then came the clothes. A simple polo shirt and a skirt. Nothing fancy, just modeled them loosely over the body shape. Made sure they looked like they could move. The golf club took a couple of tries, getting the head shape right was annoying.
- Textures: Slapped some basic colors on. Didn’t go crazy with photorealistic stuff. Just picked some colors that looked okay for the skin, hair, shirt, skirt, and the club. UV unwrapping wasn’t too bad for these simple shapes.
- Rigging: Okay, here’s where I usually sigh. Rigging. Adding the bones so you can pose the character. It’s always fiddly. Placed the bones inside the mesh, parented the mesh to the bones. Weight painting took a while, trying to make the arms and legs bend without looking too weird or broken. The shoulders and hips are always the tricky parts, especially for a golf swing pose.
- Posing: Once the rig was kinda working, I started posing her. Tried a few different golf stances, finally settled on a sort of relaxed, post-swing pose. Took some tweaking to make it look natural-ish.
Problems Along The Way
Oh yeah, things went wrong. The weight painting for the skirt was a nightmare. It kept clipping through the legs when I moved the bones. Had to redo that a few times. And Blender crashed once or twice when I was messing with the textures, lost about 10 minutes of work. Annoying, but happens, right? Also, getting the hands to grip the club properly looked weird for ages. Hands are hard.
How It Turned Out
So, after all that messing around, I got a final render. Is it gonna win any awards? Nah, definitely not. It’s pretty simple, kinda low-poly looking. But you can tell it’s a girl golfer. She’s got the pose, the outfit, the club. For a quick personal project, just practicing skills, I’m okay with it. It was good practice for rigging clothing, which I always need more experience with. Just another little piece added to the pile of things I’ve made. Kept me busy for a bit, job done.
