Welcome to Part 2. In Part 1 we got our feet wet in Blender 3D for the first time. Now that we have a basic familiarity with the software, we are going to start modelling our dog.

The most complex part of modelling a dog is getting the face correct. As we are not yet experienced 3D artists, we shall make life easier for ourselves my modelling the back of the dog first. This week we shall model the dog’s tail.

Start a new project and delete the cube. Click Create on the far left of the screen and add the cylinder primitive.

Now switch to Edit Mode by pressing the Tab button. Using the middle mouse button, rotate the scene so that you can see the top of the cylinder.

Near the bottom of the screen, click on the icon for face select:

Now right click on the top of the cylinder to select the top face:

Press E to activate Extrude mode. You can now stretch out a new portion of the tail.

When happy, click the left mouse button. Now press the S button to enter scaling mode. Make the top face just a little bit smaller.

If the model is moving outside of the screen, remember that you can pan around by holding down the shift key and the middle mouse button and moving the mouse.

Press E again to extrude once more, clicking left again when satisfied. Also scale the new top face down a bit further. Repeat this process at least twice more. When you are happy that the tail is long enough, scale the face down by a larger degree.

We now have the basic shape of our tail. However it is vertical. If you want to model a dog with it’s tail up, this is fine. However if you want the tail out, it needs to be rotated until it is horizontal. Press A to select the entire object, and R to enter rotate mode. Rotate the tail horizontally and left click when happy.

This concludes Part 2. In our next lesson, we will create the body of the dog. Once again, this will be available next Sunday.