Joey Carlino's Beginner Cat Model Walkthrough 3-7 | Blender 5.0

Описание: Blender Character Modeling 16: Tuxedo Style & UV Coloring 🐱

We’re crossing the finish line on this iteration of Bizo! Despite the "dinosaur-head" glitch from the last session, we pushed forward into shading and materials. Today was all about turning our gray mesh into a dapper Tuxedo Cat.

Coloring in Blender can be intimidating, but using a low-poly palette workflow makes it feel more like a paint-by-numbers game. Here’s how the transformation went down.

The Build Session: Shading Smooth & Palette Painting
Smooth Shading Fix: We started by applying Shade Smooth to the body. For the whiskers and sharper edges, we used the Smooth by Angle modifier (the new way to handle "Auto Smooth" in Blender 5.0) to keep them looking crisp without weird shading artifacts.

Skin Modifier Application: I finally bit the bullet and applied the Skin modifier for the limbs. Pro-tip: Duplicate your mesh before applying major modifiers like this just in case you need to go back!

UV Editing & The "Point" Trick: I ran into a snag where my UV points were disappearing. Shoutout to Gemini for the assist—turns out you need to be in Vertex/Point Select mode (not Face select) for the scaled-down UV point to stay visible. Once that was fixed, it was as easy as G (Grab) and sliding the point across the color palette.

Tuxedo Styling: We went with a classic black-and-white tuxedo look. White paws, a blue winter sweater, khaki shorts, and some "well-worn" gray socks. It’s amazing how a few flat colors bring the personality out of the mesh.

Technical Troubleshooting: Material Linking
To get the whole cat colored quickly, we used the Ctrl + L shortcut to link materials from the head to the rest of the body parts. This ensures they all use the same palette texture, making global color changes a breeze. We also adjusted the Image Texture settings to "Closest" to keep the colors from bleeding into each other on the low-poly mesh.

Progress Report
We finished this run at around 30 minutes of work time:

Shading: Full Shade Smooth with "Smooth by Angle" on the whiskers.

Materials: Palette-based UV mapping is complete.

Character Design: Tuxedo cat aesthetic with a blue sweater and khaki shorts.

Lessons Learned: I'm skipping the hair in the next run. Bizo looks much cleaner and more "classic cat" without the extra geometry on top.

Next up: Round Two. We’re going to rebuild him from scratch, aiming for a cleaner head shape and faster execution now that the muscle memory is settling in.

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