7 Tips For Entering The World Of 3D Modeling!

So, you watched Toy Story and you thought “YES! This is what I want to do for the rest of my life!”… welcome to the world of 3D! I’m a self-taught CG Artist who started 8 years ago and today, I want to share with you a couple of tips of things I’ve learned along the way.

1. The excitement

So you’ve learned your first modeling technique. Well done! Keep learning! I say this because the first thing I wanted to do at that stage was model something on my own. I felt as though I could model anything at that point and my mind was flowing with ideas and inspiration was just coming out of anything and everything. The mistake I made was that I strayed away from tutorials too early, I went ahead and started modeling a car. Of course, as expected, it failed badly and I was very demotivated by the results. So try avoiding the temptation to create something out of scratch too early, make sure your excitement doesn’t get the best of you. I’m in no way saying don’t be creative, by all means! Just be sure to have the proper skill set for the job to avoid any demotivating results.

2. Too far too fast

One technique at a time. Don’t feel rushed to learn everything all at once. When learning a technique make sure you understand how it works, you’ve attempted trials at it and that you understand it’s shortcomings. Just like with anything else, learning too many things at one go will end up in a mediocre understanding of each one.

3. Specialize yourself

Think of Engineering for a second. Is there such a thing as a “General Engineer?” One who can do anything and everything? No. You have Mechanical, Electrical, Civil etc. Just like Engineering, 3D art works in the same way. Once you get the hang of it and you understand a lot of the tools and techniques, focus your time and effort on something specific in it. It could be anything from character creation to vehicle creation to environment creation.

4. Don’t forget rendering!

3D modeling is awesome no doubt, but at the same time, you want to be able to show off your work. This was a mistake I made along my path. I ignored learning texturing and environment setup until the very end. Granted, I got a good grip on modeling but I ended up with a lot of clay renders until I had to actually sit down and diverge into learning proper rendering techniques.

5. Beware of inner beauty!

No, seriously! You’ll experience sooner or later that you will be working on a 3D model for a long time and you’ve lost all sense of what looks good or bad. You’ll step away from your computer after long hours of work only to come back the next day and scream out: “YUCK!” To avoid that, take mini breaks every now and then to rest your eyes and brain from the image you’ve been staring at for the past couple of hours.

6. Exhaustion leads to rushed results

Feel like you’ve spent too much time on a model at one go? Feel like you’re getting bored? Let go of that mouse immediately! You’ll find that sometimes you get so immersed in the model and you get carried away with time. It’s not until you hit a challenge that you realize just how long you’ve been staring at your monitor for. This is the point where you’re mentally exhausted, you’re frustrated and you might start to get demotivated. Instead of trying to find a “simple fix” to your problem or muttering the words “this will do for now”, just leave the model and come back to it when you’re in a more focused state of mind. You won’t believe what a good night’s sleep will do. Don’t try to create something temporary and mediocre; it will just ruin all that you’ve done so far.

7. Don’t lose track of your objective

Just like with anything, the scope of a 3D modeling project gets wider and wider with the excitement of new ideas you’ve come across along your way. If you’ve decided to start work on a project, outline your aims and your expected results and stick to them. Diverging into different ideas and adding bits of pieces here and there will usually end up in the project being scratched out.

Source by Mark Georgui