Beginner starting off

Saulan

Hey guys.

I am a novice who picked up 3D modelling as a fun hobby over the last year after getting interested in the models I was seeing in the games I had been playing. I have been mainly learning what I could through Youtube and this year decided to try my hand at making things on my own. I took the advice of someone on the forum and stuck to things I would be enthusiastic about finishing first, so I have stuck to Star Wars themed projects for now.

I stumbled upon this forum and thought it may give me a bit more motivation than just making projects and then not really sharing it with too many people. Hopefully you will seeing more of me in the future.

I have been using Blender and Substance Painter so far. I still have a lot to learn, but I find the more I keep at it and keep starting off new projects the more I am learning. Here are three projects that I have completed that I am reasonably happy with, A gonk droid, a mouse droid and a stormtrooper helmet:

Eric Chadwick

This is a great start! Keep going!

I think the first thing that hits my eye is the general blobbiness of the models. There aren't enough sharp edges, almost looks like you carved them out of wax and then left them in the sun for a bit. Can you show shaded wireframes? The topology might just need some work.

Saulan

Thanks for the comments, much appreciated. Yeah, that is something I definitely still need to work on. Initially I wasn't really aware of sharp edges and was using loop subdivide which was having some adverse effects as I guess I was using it in the wrong places. I started using them a bit more in the stormtrooper mesh when I went back to it and in the latest droid head I am working on, but any advice on how I should go about it moving forward is greatly appreciated. (I accidentally mesed up the blender file on the gonk droid so any work on that I have to take a few step backs, which isn't such a bad thing.)

3dReaper

These are all excellent starting models. I would suggest following this tutorial made by Polycount's very own Millenia. It is an older video so the texturing pipeline is pre Physically Based Rendering. Follow his tutorial from High Poly to low poly modeling, his UV methods, and how he bakes that detail down. After UVing you can watch his texture process however keep in mind the industry has shifted from DNS or Diffuse (with Ambient Occlusion stored within the texture map), Normal, and Specular to PBR which is Albedo, Metalness, Roughness, Normal, and Ambient Occlusion. (Follow the reference I provided in a post below.)

Weapon creation tutorial - Part 1 (high poly model) - Millenia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Tgy0lBdJK0

Weapon creation tutorial - Part 2 (low poly model) - Millenia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceN-tdgf_fs

Weapon creation tutorial - Part 3 (UV & baking) - Millenia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_1ql8yH2Ow&spfreload=10

Weapon creation tutorial - Part 4, final (Texturing) - Millenia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8oC1HsjOgk

Some great reference for PBR texturing:
http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/pbr-practice

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Fb9_KgCo0noxROKN4iT8ntTbx913e-t4Wc2nMRWPzNk/edit

http://blogs.unity3d.com/2015/02/18/working-with-physically-based-shading-a-practical-approach/

http://www.artisaverb.info/PBT.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNwMJeWFr0U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt30zzBQb3w

Saulan

3dReaper said:

These are all excellent starting models. I would suggest following this tutorial made by Polycount's very own Millenia. It is an older video so the texturing pipeline is pre Physically Based Rendering. Follow his tutorial from High Poly to low poly modeling, his UV methods, and how he bakes that detail down. After UVing you can watch his texture process however keep in mind the industry has shifted from DNS or Diffuse (with Ambient Occlusion stored within the texture map), Normal, and Specular to PBR which is Albedo, Metalness, Roughness, Normal, and Ambient Occlusion. (Follow the reference I provided in a post below.)

Thanks 3dReaper. Even though I only completed the tutorial 10 months later, I found it quite useful for understanding the modelling process. I'm fairly happy with how my shotgun turned out. The normal map did something odd to the end of the barrel which I suspect could have been that I removed too many loops on the low poly so that the high poly didn't hug it well. But from high to low I went from 355,264 tris to 5,028. Still getting used to Substance Painter as well, but overall it was a good learning experience.

Saulan

I started some modelling work of a panda but I think I made too big a jump from what I had been making to an accurate creature and am feeling overwhelmed by it. I want to start a new project and work through it not as a tutorial, just using the skills I have learnt, but at the same time not have something too easy to work with, but also something that isn't going to overwhelm me. Any advice from anyone who has been in this position before?

PyrZern

Well, first off, do you wanna make props, or make characters ? Panda is... probably not a prop.

You can also post what you have of the panda, and we can see how things go from there.

Saulan

PyrZern said:

Well, first off, do you wanna make props, or make characters ? Panda is... probably not a prop.

You can also post what you have of the panda, and we can see how things go from there.

I wanted to try them both out a bit before I committed to one or the other, but after the attempt with the panda I think I much rather prefer working on props. I will post what I had done on the panda so far later today, but I've only really put effort into the overall head structure at this point. I have a rough mesh for the body and ears, but was working on proportioning that first before getting the shapes correct.

Saulan

Alright, here is what I have done on the panda (still early stages) and some of the reference images I was using.