If you've been looking for a straightforward way to learn how to make a hat model blender users can actually be proud of, you've come to the right place. Modeling headwear is one of those projects that seems simple until you're staring at a gray cube wondering where the brim goes. But honestly, once you get the hang of a few basic tools like extrusion and proportional editing, you'll be churning out beanies, fedoras, and baseball caps in no time.
Starting with the right base shape
Before you jump into the deep end, you need to decide what kind of hat you're making. For this walkthrough, let's aim for something classic like a simple sun hat or a beanie, because the workflow for those covers about 90% of what you'll need for any other style.
Most people make the mistake of starting with a cube. Don't do that. It's way easier to start with a Circle or a Cylinder. If you use a circle, you have more control over the initial topology without having to delete the top and bottom faces of a cylinder later.
Press Shift + A, go to Mesh, and select Circle. Before you click anything else, look at that little menu in the bottom left corner. It usually defaults to 32 vertices. If you're making something for a game, you might want to drop that down to 16 or 24. If it's for a high-res render, 32 is fine. Just remember: it's much easier to add detail later than it is to manage a mess of a thousand points right from the start.
Shaping the brim and the crown
Once you have your circle, tab into Edit Mode. This is where the magic happens. You're essentially going to be growing the hat from this single ring of points.
To start the brim, hit E to extrude and then immediately hit S to scale outward. This creates a flat ring. If you want a floppy hat, you can pull those outer vertices down slightly on the Z-axis. For a flat-brimmed cap, keep them level.
Now, let's talk about the "crown"—that's the part that actually sits on the head. Go back to your original inner ring of vertices (you can Alt-click the edge to select the whole loop). Hit E again and pull it up along the Z-axis. This gives you a tube.
At this point, it looks more like a pipe than a hat, right? To fix that, you'll want to scale the top loop inward as you go up. Extrude a little, scale in, extrude a little more, and scale in again. This creates a nice rounded top. If you're making a beanie, you'll do this several times to get a smooth curve. If it's a top hat, you just pull it straight up and then fill the top.
Using proportional editing for natural looks
Real hats aren't perfectly symmetrical or perfectly stiff. If your model looks a bit too "perfect" and robotic, you need to use Proportional Editing. You can toggle this on by hitting O or clicking the little circle icon at the top of your viewport.
When you move a single vertex with proportional editing on, it pulls the neighboring vertices with it. You can adjust the "influence" of this pull by scrolling your mouse wheel. This is the secret sauce for how to make a hat model blender artists use to get that "lived-in" feel.
Try grabbing a few points on the brim and pulling them up or down just a tiny bit. It breaks up those straight lines and makes the fabric look like it's reacting to gravity. If you're making a fedora, this is how you'd pinch the front of the crown. Just grab the front faces, turn on your proportional editing, and scale them inward on the X-axis.
Adding thickness with the Solidify modifier
Right now, your hat is probably "paper-thin." In the 3D world, that usually looks weird because real objects have thickness. Instead of trying to extrude every single face manually to create an inside layer—which is a total nightmare for your topology—just use a Modifier.
Go over to the Properties panel (the blue wrench icon) and add a Solidify modifier. You'll see the hat suddenly gain some weight. You can adjust the "Thickness" setting until it looks right. Usually, a small value like 0.01 or 0.02 is plenty for cloth.
One pro tip: make sure you check the "Even Thickness" box in the modifier settings. Without it, the corners and curves of your hat might look a bit wonky or pinched.
Smoothing things out with Subdivision Surface
If your hat looks a bit "blocky," don't worry. You don't need to manually add hundreds of new edges. Instead, use the Subdivision Surface modifier. This is the heavy lifter of 3D modeling. It takes your basic shape and mathematically smooths it out.
When you turn this on, your hat might suddenly look like it's melting. That's because the modifier is trying to smooth out every sharp edge it finds. To stop this, you can add "Supporting Loops." Hit Ctrl + R while hovering over an edge and slide a new loop cut close to the edges you want to keep sharp (like the very edge of the brim).
The closer two edge loops are to each other, the sharper that edge will stay when the Subdivision Surface modifier is applied. It's a balancing act—you want enough smoothness to look natural, but enough structure to keep the hat's shape.
Making a baseball cap (The tricky part)
If you're specifically wondering how to make a hat model blender style for a baseball cap, the workflow is slightly different. A baseball cap is basically a hemisphere with a stiff bill attached.
- Start with a UV Sphere and delete the bottom half.
- Select a few rows of vertices on the front where the bill should be.
- Extrude those forward.
- The bill of a cap is usually curved, so use your Proportional Editing tool again to bend those extruded faces downward.
Baseball caps also have those distinctive seams. You can achieve this by selecting the edges where the panels meet and hitting Ctrl + B to bevel them. Then, scale those new faces inward slightly. It's a small detail, but it makes a huge difference in how "believable" the model looks.
Texturing and Shading
A model is only half the battle; the rest is how it reacts to light. Once you're happy with the shape, right-click the model in Object Mode and select Shade Smooth. This hides the individual faces and makes it look like a continuous surface.
For the material, you'll want to head over to the Shading tab. Most hats are made of fabric, so you don't want them to be shiny. In the Principled BSDF node, turn the Roughness way up—somewhere around 0.8 or 0.9.
If you want to get fancy, you can add a Noise Texture and plug it into a Bump Map node, which then goes into the "Normal" input of your material. This creates a subtle "fuzz" or fabric grain texture without you having to model every single thread. It's a great way to add realism without killing your computer's performance.
Final tweaks and common pitfalls
Before you call it a day, take a look at your "Normals." Sometimes, especially after extruding and adding modifiers, Blender gets confused about which side of the face is the "outside." If your hat looks black or has weird see-through holes, select everything in Edit Mode and hit Shift + N. This recalculates the normals and usually fixes the problem instantly.
Also, keep an eye on your scale. If you plan on putting this hat on a character later, make sure you've "Applied" your scale. In Object Mode, hit Ctrl + A and select Scale. If you don't do this, your modifiers (like Solidify) might act very strangely, making one side of the hat much thicker than the other.
Wrapping it up
Learning how to make a hat model blender projects can use is really just about mastering the basics of mesh manipulation. You start with a simple ring, extrude it into a shape, and then use modifiers to handle the heavy lifting of thickness and smoothing.
The best way to get better is to just experiment. Try making a floppy bucket hat, then try making a stiff top hat. Each style will teach you something new about how edges and faces flow together. Once you've got the hang of it, you'll realize that modeling almost anything—from clothes to props—follows these same fundamental steps. Just take it one extrusion at a time, and don't be afraid to hit Ctrl + Z when things get weird!