Blender 2.8 Model a Lightsaber for Beginners

Hi and welcome to this new 3D Tudor Udemy course, ‘Blender 2.8 Model a Lightsaber for Beginners’. Sci-fi is here to stay and I am happy to announce that I am releasing another 3D Tudor modeling course under this genre. I have not moved to pastures anew permanently, but 3D Tudor courses aim to be versatile in helping you explore different art styles. The sci-fi genre would not be the same without certain archetypes, and with ‘Blender 2.8 Creating a Lightsaber for Beginners’, we will be learning how to make a lightsaber. As before, we are learning together, and trial and error will help your workflow as you will be presented with solutions to common problems.

This is one of my most exciting Udemy courses to date. Like my other Udemy course, ‘Blender 2.8 Beginners Guide To 3D Modeling A Sci-fi Scene’, I will be taking you on an extensive 3D modeling journey involving modeling, texturing, freebies, animation, lighting and rendering a sci-fi asset. The focus of this Udemy course is to show you how to make realistic models, to a real-world scale. Enroll in this Blender 2.8 course and experience over 8 hours of content, full of learning opportunities to take your 3D modeling, animation and simulations skills to the next level. By completing this course, you will walk away with a comprehensive view of how to model from the ground up, with a super-fast industry-standard workflow. All this exclusively in Blender 2.8.

Using everything I learned from previous courses, mainly from all your helpful feedback, I was able to make a course that really has the wow-factor; something you will be proud of accomplishing.

My move into the sci-fi scene has been met with remarkable student feedback, such as:

“I found the course great. And the asset is shaping to be something that looks at home in Metroid or Halo- I really think the end asset does look that good. Plus for a little extra spice, you could also bring the asset into Substance Painter and truly make it your own. Overall whether this is your first Blender course or you have been around before, the course is worth it. The instructor does not go too fast or skips about how he did; a, b, c -everything is explained.”.

Through my introduction of on-screen tooltips, 3D Tudor courses have become much more beginner-friendly and in-depth. The focus of this new course is to take anyone no matter their level in 3D modeling and teach them how to model a lightsaber from the ground up. The course has nearly 9 hours of content and is a one-stop course to take you on your way to a professional level. By joining this Udemy course you will engage in a journey of in-depth learning focused on the most important aspects of 3D modeling and animation. Blender Procedures will cover modeling, texturing, animation, lighting, and rendering. By the end of the course, you will have created a professional-looking sci-fi asset most commonly known as a lightsaber.

Modeling

We will be creating one of the most famous sci-fi assets – the lightsaber – a contraption reminiscent of popular cinema titles. This course is coming out just a few months before a major game release that will revolutionize the sci-fi genre, Cyberpunk 2077 by Project Red.

‘Blender 2.8 Creating a Lightsaber for Beginners’ has a new learning format that will be relevant to beginners. This course is also relevant to those students who are more familiar with 3D creation and modeling using Blender software, or those who are transitioning into Blender from another piece of software or from the previous older versions of Blender.

This Udemy course aims to teach you from the ground up. It will cover the very basics of modeling and teach you the tips and tricks that the pros use in Blender 2.8. This course explains everything and will include a step-by-step exploration of all the new shortcuts that have come with this new Blender version. You will be able to keep up with the course’s pace through having an on-screen visual tooltip. Anything that needs some explanation is explained easily using a small pop-up box, so you will never be lost. My goal here is to not only have students re-create this lightsaber but for them to come away with a comprehensive understanding of how and why. By the end of the course, the knowledge you will have learned can be put to use independent of the direction you take in 3D modeling – following the amateur or the professional path.

Texturing

Texturing is perhaps the most important part of any 3D model. I will show you the most efficient and quickest ways of preparing a mesh for adding materials in Blender. We will be going over how to mark seems, how to correct texture resolutions, and how to UV-unwrap. A new thing in this course will be learning how to mark sharps, so that you can create hard and soft edges for your 3D models within Blender 2.8. You will also be able to keep these edges you create even if you are exporting to Substance Painter or Unreal Engine 4. All these course components would be a course in their own right, so by enrolling, you will be able to develop your skills in a multi-faceted way. To save time on your usual trial and error process, I will show you both the right and the wrong way of doing this. You will be fully prepared and provided with the skills to ‘clean’ a 3D model mesh to an industry standard.

We will also explore the Blender 2.8 node system in depth, where you will learn not only how to import textures and maps, but also how to change the way materials look.

Animation

Have you ever wanted to learn how to build a full animation cycle? The learning outcomes of this Udemy course include creating a complete animation cycle in Blender 2.8. The lightsaber we will be creating will be animated with light coming out and in. The animation will be set up in such a way that the light (i.e., blade) will be following the assigned movement consistent with how the lightsaber moves – making it perfect for fight scenes!. You will learn all about armatures and bones, and you will be shown how to keyframe. We will move on to the complex fundamentals of animations, where we learn how to weight and attach bones to meshes. This is exactly the same process as in Hollywood for computer-generated imaging (CGI) or the respective gaming industry. You can apply these skills to any animations you decide to make in the future, and I would be excited to see you upload animations of other models as part of this Udemy course project.

Freebies

You will be glad to know that this Udemy course comes with a small resource pack of five 2k resolution texture maps including all albedo (i.e., color), normal, roughness, metallic, and displacement maps free to download with this course. These are resources that you are free to download and reuse in your other projects. You could also utilize them in your lightsaber course project, which you are encouraged to upload as part of this course. Freebies also include two references, created in Adobe Photoshop, created specifically for this course: a dual lightsaber, and a small lightsaber. I created all these textures and resources using a mix of Substance Painter, and Adobe Photoshop. All textures included for free with this course are custom made specifically for this course.

Lighting

I always feel that lighting is one of the key components that tend to be the most overlooked. To be honest, I learned this the hard way, seeing as lighting is important with regards to making a scene look overwhelmingly beautiful or realistic or tragically bad. I went back to the drawing board and developed my skills in Blender and in lighting. Over time, I learned exactly how to light scenes. This knowledge I now pass on to my students. You will learn all about Blender 2.8 lighting and lighting effects.

Rendering

Finally, after all the preparations for making a realistic sci-fi scene, we will be rendering two stills in one of the best renderers in the industry – Eevee Render. Through this course, you will gain the knowledge to create great-looking scenes in Eevee rendering engine. We will also be setting up studio lighting to create a nice render for a portfolio piece. You will spend a lot of time on getting your emission nodes correct. We will be setting up cameras and I will be going through different techniques to help improve the quality of your renders.

Happy modeling everyone!

Neil, 3D Tudor