Blender Tutorial for Beginners: How To Make A Mushroom

Using a Mask

It’s time for a new trick to make things easier! You can mask out parts of your model so only those faces can get paint on them. If you ever painted in real life before, this like applying painter’s tape next to the parts you’re giving a fresh lick of paint so you don’t accidentally paint something you didn’t want to.
To create a mask, press the Tab key when hovering over the 3D View to enter Edit Mode and activate Face Select mode by pressing 3 on your numpad or by clicking the corresponding icon in the header. Now select the faces you just painted and press the CTRL/Command + I to invert your selection, thus selecting the black faces.

Now switch back to Texture Paint Mode by pressing Tab and click the little button between the mode dropdown and the View button, this activates the Paint Mask. All faces of the mushroom where you can’t paint are now faded and lighter in color.

Now paint away all around the model without worry, you can’t paint over your first color.

For a final touch, I’m going to add white spots and a face to the mushroom. Why? Because I can! Make sure to disable the Paint Mask first by clicking that little button again, this way you can paint with total freedom once again.
For these final features, I’m going to be using pure white and pure black. First some white spots on the head, then two black stretched circles for the eyes and then a point of white in each to emulate some bright light hitting it. Like this:

You can do the same, or do something completely different. I’d love to see what you came up with so make sure to share your creation in the discussion below!

Now save your texture to its file by hovering over the Image Editor and pressing ALT/Option + S or by selecting Image ► Save in the header. This is a crucial step, as you can imagine the horror of forgetting to save your nice paint job and returning to Blender to see a black mushroom, ouch.

The last thing you need to do is export your masterpiece so you can use it in your game or application.

Exporting Files

Depending on the specifications of your game engine, API, etc. of choice you need to export to a different 3D format. Always check the documentation of your tool before choosing a format.

The two most popular formats are FBX and OBJ: FBX is a proprietary file format owned by Autodesk that holds both the mesh and material data in a single file. OBJ on the other hand is an open format developed by Wavefront Technologies. It’s a simple data format that only holds mesh data, the material description is stored in a separate MTL file. For both of these, any textures are stored separately in image formats like JPG, PNG or TIFF.

Blender has a lot more export options built-in and even more can be added via add-ons, but in this tutorial I’ll go over the basics of exporting FBX and OBJ files. For both of these, you’ll need the Mushroom.png image file to use as a texture, so keep both the exported 3D file(s) and that image in the same folder.

Before delving into exporting, switch back to the Layout workspace by clicking its tab at the top and make sure to select just the mushroom by clicking on it. It should have an orange outline.

By default, the exporters will export everything in the scene, including any cameras and lights. By selecting just the mesh(es), you can easily only export the 3D data you want.

Exporting to FBX

Select File ► Export ► FBX (.fbx) in the top menu to open an export window. This is essentially the same as the file save window, with some specific options on the right for exporting. Check the Selected Objects checkbox here to only export the mushroom mesh.

That’s it! You should already be in the same folder as your .blend file and the texture image, so click the blue Export FBX button at the bottom to create a brand new FBX.

Exporting to OBJ

The procedure for exporting to the OBJ is almost exactly the same.

Select File ► Export ► Wavefront (.obj) in the top menu to open an export window. Check the Selected Objects checkbox and click the blue Export OBJ button at the bottom. This creates two files: Mushroom.obj with the 3D mesh data and Mushroom.mtl which holds the material data.

Now that you have the model in popular 3D formats, you can put mushrooms in all of your games, applications or even 3D print some if you’re feeling wacky like yours truly!

Where to Go From Here?

I hope you enjoyed this Blender tutorial for beginners! If you want to learn more about Blender, there are lots of tutorials online:

• Blender Tutorials: Great official tutorials from Blender, especially the Get Started section.
• Blender Guru: This guy is a legend among Blender enthusiasts. His tutorials cover just about everything, from creating 3D donuts to mastering shaders.
• Grant Abbitt’s YouTube Channel: YouTube is full of great people that can tell you all about Blender, and Grant Abbitt is one of my personal favorites.

Now you’re ready to conquer the 3D world, and most importantly, have fun and be creative!

We hope you enjoyed this tutorial. If you have any questions or comments, please join the forum discussion below. Feel free to share your creations as well!