Learning Blender: A Hands-On Guide to Creating 3D Animated Characters

Box Modeling

Box modeling is based on the premise that you can model anything from a simple primitive (for example, a cube, a sphere, or a cylinder). Don’t be fooled by its name: the “box” in box modeling means only that the most essential shape can be the base for any kind of object. The idea behind this method is that if you start from a primitive, you can divide it, extrude it, and otherwise modify it to reach the shape you want.

With box modeling, you start from something very basic and, little by little, keep adding details to it. However, from the beginning, your model already has the basic shape it will need, so you only have to add as many details as you want. You can compare box modeling to sculpting with mud: for example, you would ...