Quick and efficient way to learn Low Poly 3D in Blender?

Selov

I need some tips for learning how to make decent low poly assets. I already learned the basics by watching youtube tutorials, but it got me nowhere. As soon as I try to model something myself and not following tutorial, my assets don't look appealing at all. I also tried copying style of popular low poly assets from Unity Asset Store, but my assets are still far from being good looking. Is there any way to speed up the process? 

Taylor Brown

Unfortunately, there really aren't any shortcuts to becoming a better artist. I wish there were because it would have saved me years of effort :P

The best advice is to just keep. on. making. art. With time and intentional effort, you'll develop your artistic eye and your ability to make "appealing" design choices will become reflexive.

I also do not recommend trying to copy other people's art as a way of learning. Any artist worth their salt is working from endless real world reference images. Even if it's low poly, stylized work. A person takes the real world and filters it down to its most basic elements and exaggerates them. Take a caricature artist for example.. that person still needs to firmly understand real facial anatomy, landmarks and dimensions in order to stretch and distort them effectively. By only researching the work of 3D artists, all you will end up doing is making a copy of a copy.. a watered down soup that lacks any foundations.

This graph sums up the life of an artist. I actually printed it out as a sticker and it's stuck to the base of my monitor as a constant reminder.

Alex_J

awhile back there was a program one of the artist here had to train new artist. it was like, make a model each day that is hand painted with color map only and uses 250 or less triangles.

Seemed to have good results and makes sense to me as a training regimen. Keeps the technicals dead simple and allows lots of iteration to learn from mistakes quickly.

i think in general that is a good way to train. Makes many things quickly, focus on trying to improve just a couple small things each time. Maybe do that for a year or so until you feel like you are ready to create a big portfolio masterpiece.

Brian "Panda" Choi

Post what you have.