Hellhound – 3D Model (Kiri's Blender Jam)

Hi there!

This is my submission for the 3D Modelling Jam with Blender, a realistic 3D model of a Hellhound.

About the model

The Hellhound was originally designed for this jam, but I ended up liking the result so much that I’ve decided to include it in a personal game project I’m working on, a story-driven RPG. Because of that, I can’t share the .blend file, but I’ve included a high-quality render so you can see the result!

About me

This was my first sculpt ever! I mostly come from game development, so sculpting was new territory, but I had a blast exploring it during this jam.

Making of

Here's a brief overview of the process I followed to create the Hellhound:

• Concept & Blockout: I started with a rough blockout to get the basic shapes and proportions right. My main goal was to give the creature a strong silhouette and an intimidating posture.

• Sculpting: I sculpted the head first, followed by the trunk, limbs, and tails. As each part started to feel right, I remeshed and merged them, smoothed everything out, and began refining the smaller details: muscles, claws, and facial features.

• Detailing: With the base anatomy in place, I added finer surface details like wrinkles and veins.

• Polishing & Fur: Once the sculpt was done, I cleaned it up and performed retopology, since I plan to use this model in my game later on. Then I created all of the necessary materials, added fur and spent way more time than I'd like to admit combing it.

• Scenery: I used the A.N.T. Landscape add-on to generate the terrain, then created and placed assets like the chains, bones, vegetation, and particles. I set up the lighting and added some volumetric fog since it wasn’t feeling hellish enough. Oh, and the spit! I felt the left head wasn’t getting enough attention, so I added some streams of drool to help it stand out a bit more.

• Rendering: I rendered the scene using Cycles... and quickly ran into a memory issue with my GPU. That’s when I discovered Render Layers, and let me tell you, I’m never going back. They're amazing! After that, I tweaked a few things for a more dramatic look and composited everything together in Blender’s Compositing tab.

I'd love to do a more visual breakdown in the future if I find time to gather screenshots. Thanks for reading!

Feedback welcome!

Please criticize me to your heart’s content, as I've already said, this was my first sculpt and, although I'm pretty happy with it, I'm sure you’ll spot things I missed. Thank you!

P.S. I originally planned to create a short animation with the Hellhound, but I’ve run out of time, both because the jam is ending and I won’t be available much in the next few days. That said, if you’re curious about the game this creature will be part of, here’s a teaser I made last summer. Just a heads-up: the audio is in Spanish!