Blender 3D Model a Ghibli Art Stylized Scene

From winding stairs to stone steps and cosy fountain nooks, to lush grass, 'Blender 3D Model a Stylized Oriental Island' will take you on a tour of oriental stylized design. Let's build your own Asian fantasy. Exciting course content includes accessing 3 courses within a course on key 3D modeling functionalities, seeing butterflies move realistically along a set path, creating grass using the Japanese Ghibli art style, and learning how to use HDRI stylized lighting.

In this lesson, we will discuss the course layout. I will also show you how to turn on system information, such as your current polygon count and memory used. This is like a short course within a course, introducing you to the basics of Blender.

This lesson will be an introduction to working with and importing references to Blender. You will also learn how to use edge loops.

Lesson 3 will see us create the lamp part of the lantern. You will be introduced to beveling and filling meshes in Blender.

In this lesson, you will learn why seams and sharps are important in 3D modelling. This is like a short course within a course, introducing you to using and applying seams and sharps effectively.

This lesson is an introduction to materials and how to import them into Blender. You will find out why UVs are important. Best of all, you will learn about the basics of the Blender node system.

Lesson 6 will see us add our first materials to our street lamp light and our general stylized oriental island scene. You will learn about a simple material node build in Blender.

In this lesson, we will look at importing a simple sunlight source and we will discuss how it works. We also create an emission shader complete with a gradient to give us that stylized feel for our oriental flying island scene.

This lesson is our first look at the power of curves and how to create ornamental edges on the top of our light. We also take a look at a few Blender modifiers including the mirror modifier.

Lesson 9 will be a complete introduction to smoothing options within Blender. You will learn how to mark seams and sharps on our small build to create more realism and move away from blocky-looking models.

In this lesson, we look at how to draw curves and meshes with our mouse to create 3D meshes. This is a very useful skill that will quickly elevate your 3D modeling toolkit.

This lesson will show you how to style swirls with a simple but underused option in Blender - proportional editing. We will go through the various options for procedural editing and it will quickly become part of your 3D modeling workflow.

Lesson 12 will involve adding the rest of the materials to our lamp.

In this lesson, I will introduce you to using Blender’s bevel modifier. Not only does it speed up our workflow, but, more importantly, it is a very easy way to add realism to any model.

This lesson will show you how to import designs you created in Adobe Photoshop into Blender. We will discuss how to use scalable vector graphics (SVGs) to reduce complex meshes and their respective build times. Within a few clicks, you will have created your oriental pattern.

Lesson 15 will involve continuing work on our small bridge build. We will look at how to make the bridge look structurally realistic. As part of this lesson, we will create the planks and the side rail.

In this lesson, we take everything we have learned so far and use it to create a faster 3D modeling workflow. We also add a lot of edge loops and learn about planning.

This lesson will see us finish the small bridge in preparation for the next major step in designing our stylized oriental flying island scene. By this point, we will have added all our materials, sharps and bevel edges.

In this lesson, we will work on our circle entrance and learn how to create stonework. We also look at simple techniques to create flowing meshes. Finally, you will learn what a normal is within the context of 3D modeling.

This lesson will show you why booleans are great in 3D modeling. You will also learn about the difficulties using booleans can cause. This lesson will be essential to your independent troubleshooting as an artist because there is no point in learning how to use booleans if you do not know how to fix distorted meshes to achieve clean topography.

Lesson 21 will teach you how to quickly and easily create hollowed-out models. This lesson will also see us start work on the fruit basket that will be featured in our stylized oriental island scene.

In this lesson, we will start working on our first full and complex procedural material. We will be using Blender’s node system. At the end of this lesson, you will have finished working on your fruit basket.

This lesson will see us creating procedural materials. One of these materials is the melon material for the fruits that will be placed within our fruit basked. The melon material seems complex, but with everything we have learned so far, the process will be simple. As part of this lesson, we will also start working on our large arch reference.

Lesson 24 involves utilising the efficient and fast workflow we have learned so far. We will finish our large arch including modelling, beveling and material work. Before finishing, we will also take a quick look at our next build we will begin working on - the rock pool.

In this lesson, you will be introduced to sculpting within Blender. We will go through mesh preparation and look at a few of the brushes available to use. We also look at quick ways to remesh our rockpool grey box.

This lesson will see us create the procedural rock material for our rock pool using the Blender node system.

Lesson 27 will focus on creating the water for our rock pool using a material shader. We will also be creating the water plane using displacement.

In lesson 28, we will be creating the petals that will lie on the water of our stylized oriental island scene rock pool. To do this, we will use the Blender spin function.

In this lesson, we will create the lily pads using the Blender knife tool. Using a combination of curves and proportional editing, you will learn how to make reeds for the main body of water in our stylized oriental island scene.

This lesson will see us creating the procedural material for the reeds using a gradient node system. You will also be making a basic start on our roof template.

Lesson 31 will involve working on our roof template using a mixture of an array system and a lattice modifier. You will find out how to quickly and easily create roof templates using this method.

In this lesson, we will start creating our food storage building for our stylized oriental island scene. We will be building its grey box.

This lesson will continue work on the food storage building we began 3D modelling in the previous lesson. To add a fantasy element to the scene, we will be working on creating the Hobbit style door for the building complete with wooden door planks and a stone circle around them.

Lesson 34 will see us laying out the food storage foundation. We will be greyboxing out all the parts in preparation for the main build.

In this lesson, you will learn how to manipulate an object from an orientation. We will finish modelling all the food storage building parts apart from the roof tiles.

This lesson will see us beveling all the parts of the food storage building to limit the number of edges the design has and to increase its realism. This will build up the stylized feeling in our oriental scene.

In lesson 37 we get to test out our roof template for the first time. You will learn how to fit it in place and a great way to manipulate it using the lattice and proportional editing.

In this lesson, we will be creating our oriental lanterns that will adorn either side of our food storage building’s hobbit style door.

This lesson will begin the texturing process for our stylized oriental island scene’s food storage building.

Lesson 40 will see us troubleshooting within Blender. You will be learning how to fix problems with sharps.

In this lesson, you will begin working on the flora of our stylized oriental island scene. We will be creating low poly tree branches in anticipation of adorning them with stylized cloud-shaped leaves.

This lesson will be a full guide to manipulating low poly branches within Blender so that a realistic shape is achieved.

Lesson 43 will see us creating the template for our stylized tree leaves. To keep with the stylized theme of our oriental scene, these leaves will be cloud-shaped in a style reminiscent of anime.

In this lesson, we will be creating our first particle system.

This will lesson will continue our work on our stylized oriental island scene’s trees. We will be creating the tree trunk material using the Blender node system, focusing on making it look like real tree bark.

In lesson 46, we will begin work on our stylized oriental island scene’s gong tower. We will start working on its roof. Gongs are iconic Asian musical instruments that emit noise when a mallet hits its metallic circular disks.

This lesson focuses on problem-solving once more. Because we used the knife tool, the mesh we created had broken geometry. To resolve this, we remeshed the model.

In this lesson, we will create the gong roof using the template we created for the food storage building. This will be adapted using the lattice modifier.

Lesson 49 will focus on the gong roof. We finally finish the roof and prepare it for adding in modifiers.

The lesson will involve using an amazing modifier called simple deform. This simple modifier will be doing the bulk of the work when it comes to getting that oriental feel for our scene.

In this lesson, we will begin working on the Gong supports. Our stylized oriental island scene gong will hang from four wooden supports, giving the musical instrument enough space to swing backwards and forwards on either side.

Lesson 52 will see us breaking the gong. We will do that to add another fantasy storytelling element to our stylized oriental island scene. By the gong being broken, we are implying that a battle happened on this island that has since been restored.

This lesson involves creating procedural rope. This rope will be what our gong will hang from. Although the rope is just a basic cylinder it can easily be brought to life with a simple node setup.

In this lesson, you will learn how to create gold material using Blender’s node system. We will focus on getting the gold material to look right by ensuring that it glints in the light.

Lesson 55 will focus on building the environment of our stylized oriental island scene. A large part of that are the rock formations placed around the scene. You will learn how to create stylized rocks.

This lesson will be the start of your journey to creating an oriental water mill. We will be creating the water wheel using basic modeling practices within Blender.

In this lesson, we look at how we can quickly and easily calculate objects following a radius. This is a good idea before creating the full mesh.

Lesson 58 will test your 3D modeling skills. We will begin work on the large bridge building for our stylized oriental island scene. It involves building a bridge with three curved entryways, steps, wooden supports, and a curved roof with roof decorative details.

This lesson will see us working with multiple modifiers at the same time. This will enable us to create our unique bridge look. In a later lesson, we will be taking a look at the problems that come with creating the bridge this way.

In this lesson, we will be creating the bridge support blocks for our large bridge building. These will become the outline of the three curved openings of our bridge. Stone blocks will also be placed in three other locations on the bridge to add to the stylized effect of our oriental island scene.

Lesson 61 is focused on troubleshooting. Booleans distort 3D meshes, so, in this lesson, I will be showing you how to fix this. In other words, we will be rebuilding our bridge.

This lesson will involve learning how to use Blender viewport options to give us a better visual of our scene. This is a small part of the lesson but well worth learning.

In this lesson, we will be working on the decorative elements of our stylized oriental island scene. This will be focused on the large bridge building. The roof will be adorned by swirls on each of its four bevelled edges, thereby adding to the stylized feeling of the design.

Lesson 64 will involve starting to work on the most complex roof of our stylized oriental island scene. The roof will have four bevelled edges, a flattened bell shape at its bottom, and an angular top.

This lesson involves us continuing to build and refine the bridge roof. This is perhaps the hardest roof to get right. We also create the edge loops in preparation for deformation.

This lesson will see us complete the build of our stylized oriental island scene’s large bridge building. We work on adding in all the materials and bevels to really bring the bridge to life.

Lesson 67 will see us adding in a couple of simple deform modifiers. We do, however, come across some issues and I will show you how to easily correct these and why these problems may surface.

This lesson will see us creating some of the foliage for our stylized oriental island scene. You will learn how to use empties to create the leaves of any foliage quickly and easily.

In this lesson, we will be making the procedural materials for the foliage of our stylized oriental island scene.

Lesson 70 will be the start of our work on some of the animals in our stylized oriental island scene. Our work will begin modeling low poly koi fish.

This lesson will show you how to create a 3D mesh by mirroring the design to the other side to have the same mesh proportions on both sides of a model.

In this lesson, we continue working on the fish mesh. We come across various problems you might face when building meshes in this way. We go through various techniques to rebuild and fix simple meshes.

Lesson 73 is aimed at looking at two Blender techniques to complete our low poly fish. The first is decimation which we will use to reduce the mesh density. Then, we will move on to voxel remesh which will retopologise the mesh and create a much cleaner topology.

This lesson will see us creating the procedural material to texture our stylized oriental island scene’s koi fish. By this point, you will have a good understanding of what and how the nodes work together to create the fish skin.