Lego Knight | John Dickinson | 3D Artist

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3D Modeling | Rendering | Asset Creation

Lego Knight

I’ve modelled Lego bricks in the past but this character which is a combination of Nexo Knights and Ninjago, created by my son Jay, looked like a worthy challenge with plenty of interestingly shaped pieces.

Client / Personal Project

Role / Modelling, Texturing, Lighting

Software / Cinema 4D, Substance Painter, Redshift

Process

The original Lego character built from a combination of Nexo Knight and Ninjago pieces. The final model didn't include some of the peripheral pieces including the snake.

I decided to start with the wings, modelling flat to establish the base topology.

Next I selected the inner feather polygons and extruded upwards…

then the outer feather and outer edge and extruded downwards, working in Symmetry.

The most time was spent adjusting the topology to give the feathers separation once the sharpening cuts were introduced.

For this model I decided to unwrap each object on completion using 3D Coat.

The next object was a clip that holds the feather onto the should armour.

The shoulder armour started out as a cube object, once again working in symmetry.

The mostly finished armour rendered using simple Redshift materials.

The lego man came next, starting with the legs.

Adjusted topology to fix the pinching created by having the diamonds on the edges and to dispense with the extra control cut shown in the example above.

The Lego arm was deceptively tricky. I started with a cylinder object for this and kept the edge count as low as possible to allow for clean curves under subdivision. The flat part was booled in then cleaned up.

The head started out as a Cylinder object and the torso as a Cube object. Starting to look good with the wings in place!

I took some snaps of the helmet with my phone to make attacking this section a little easier.

I decided low poly box modeling would be a more efficient approach to this helmet. Easier to establish the shape using the Brush tool to reshape in 4 views.

Once a smooth, overall shape was established using box modeling, I used that as a target to retopologise onto using the Shrink Wrap deformer.

The basic, low poly helmet, still smooth and holding it’s shape thanks to the Shrink Wrap deformer.

Next I used the Current State To Object command, then reapplied the Shrink Wrap again with the original template, but this time re-positioning edges & points using the Slide Tool and HB_LineUp Tool , and changing the flow in preparation for straight & clean extrusion of details.

Next I used the Current State To Object command to convert the object and used the Extrude tool to extrude in the depth and detail.

The completed helmet minus the visor.

The finished visor and helmet with visor in place.

Early stages of the shield. Once again I used snaps from my iPhone as guides, which are not perfect but better than having nothing at all.

The basic shield shape. The next step is to boole the hex/cylinder section in with the body of the shield, working in Symmetry of course.

Booled the top hex/cylinder section to the main part of the shield, working in symmetry. Connect & Deleted then cleaned up and added sharpening cuts. Cleaning up the Boolean was tricky but resulted in a clean and unified, all quads shape.

For the Aero Blade I started with a Cylinder object, working in double symmetry. The curved pipe started out as a Sweep objects which was made editable and welded onto the main cylinder.

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