Welcome to Part 3. In Part 2 we created a dog tail in Blender 3D. Today we will create the dog’s body.

Start by selecting the face where the tail begins. Press S to scale this bigger and left click when happy. Now press E to extrude a little and left click again. Press S to scale this bigger.

Do this once more and then extrude out the full length of the dog. We already have a rough approximation of the dog’s body and will and the details later in this series.

Dog’s tend to be symmetrical when viewed from above. We can save ourselves a lot of repetitive work by taking advantage of the mirror feature to automatically replicate changes that we make on one side of the mirror.

First we need to split the large circle into two parts. We do this using the knife tool. To activate the knife, either select knife from the tools menu, or press k.

Left click at the top of the circular face, and again at the bottom of the circular face, then press Enter.

The large cylindrical shape that we’ve created today needs to have vertices along the top and bottom. If this isn’t already the case, either use the subdivide tool to create extra vertices, or use the knife tool to create them manually.

Next we need to make sure that our model is exactly level along one axis. Press A to select the whole model.

Use the Translate vector coordinates, setting these to 0.0:

Check that the model is positioned correctly by looking at it from each axis. For example pressing 7 on the number pad switches the view to Top Ortho. For further details see the documentation on Perfect Views.

There are two ways to select multiple faces. The simplest is to hold down ctrl and the left mouse button and then drag the mouse. This selects all faces in the area that you draw.

Alternatively, press B for box selection and then drag across selecting half the model.

It is easy to either select too many vertices or not enough here. Pan around the scene to check that all the correct vertices are selected. Press ctrl and right mouse button to select to deselect.
When happy press X and then choose faces. This took me some time to get right, so don’t be disheartened if you don’t get this right first time. It comes with practice.

Once you have removed have of the model. It is time to add the mirror modifier. Click on the wrench icon on the right hand side of the screen.

Click Add modifier and find the mirror modifier

By default it will mirror along the X axis. If you have aligned the model along the same axis as I did, you will want to mirror along the Y axis instead.

Thank you for reading this tutorial. In the next part of this series, we will create the dog’s legs, however there will unfortunately be a delay in this publication due to the high amount of public interest in the Software Craftsmanship / Post Office story.