Polar/Teddy Bear
My first project in Blender! It's a Christmas-y bear. It started off as a polar bear, but the fur is a bit too fuzzy so I guess it's more of a teddy bear now. Up to you.
Make Some Spheres
I started off this project by taking a large sphere and used Blender's vertex warp to mold the main body into the shape. Then I made 3 more spheres, one for the front legs, one for the back legs, and one for the head.
Mirror the Legs
Since legs are asymmetrical on their own, I couldn't just duplicate the each leg and move it over; I had to mirror them. I used the mirror modifier in Blender to do just this and it came out perfectly.
Add Hair
Blender has a built-in hair particle system that I used to give the bear texture. Each segment of the polar bear (i.e. each leg, the torso, and the head) has roughly 5000 individual hairs that have various attributes that I assigned.
Convert Particles to a Curve
It took me a while to realize that the hair particles aren't actually part of the STL; only Blender can see them. I had to convert the hairs into a curve so that they would be part of the mesh when I exported it.
Add the Ring
Finally, I added the ring for the ornament to hang from by just using the torus shape.