Is it just me, or does working on 3D really wear you out, sometimes? Especially new things. Or UV unwrapping. UV unwrapping is the dip in the road, as far as 3D goes.
3D is hard work, and anything that is hard work will wear you out.
but it’s still fun.
Sometimes, the hardest part if coming up with enough ideas for items and other elements to prevent a scene from looking empty (especially if you don’t want repetition). It’s even harder if the scene in question is on a larger scale.
The second one is making sure you take into account any possible quality issue ranging from the modeling to the lighting, I know that this can be harder to be completely on top of when using Cycles because everything in a realistic setting has some degree of reflection (so incomplete areas may reveal themselves) and because there’s bounce lighting from outside of the camera frustum.
I totally agree with you Ace, especially on the first point.
The funny thing is that I start with what appears to be a fully developed mental image of what the image will be, but transferring it from brain to Blender can be harder than it seems (especially since I can really get going and suddenly hit a slowdown from a mental point of view).
Perhaps one aspect of that might be that it’s lost its sense of newness and wonder for me quite some time ago, another aspect might be that thanks to Cycles, the strive to ultimately achieve photorealism is about complete (now that I’ve done some of the cool GI-based ideas I’ve always wanted to do, what’s next)?
Or perhaps because my art is also a business to me and I don’t have to do much creating right now in order to coast on the marketing and selling of my existing pieces (many of them have yet to see a display or a show, though that happens when you have more than 500 pieces).
Or so, finding entirely new ideas get markedly more difficult once 500 pictures are done. I still have a number of future ideas and I can always redo an older one, but I at times don’t feel as dedicated as I used to be.
One final thing, why is this in the Latest News section?
ace get a sketch pad and draw a sketch, you can do it much faster than in 3d. you’ll get everything in before boredom starts creeping in. then you wont have to come up with stuff when you’re getting burned out, it’ll already be in the sketch.
I doodle in 3d…
for fun before I try and get to working/coding if I can stay up long enough 
Moved from “Latest News” to “Blender and CG Discussions”
When I’m doing it at work, yes. We’re doing huge animations entirely in Blender that have many different components. Trouble shooting and coming up with ways to effectively pull things off is exhausting. If I’m doing 3D for my own work, it’s usually just generating assets to comp into live action footage. That’s not so bad. Overall, I don’t enjoy 3D animation, but I do it because I have to. Editing and compositing are my favorite parts by far.
I might be a wee bit stressed about a deadline and frustrated if I can’t get weighting right, fast enough. But 3D modeling for avatars is my Happy Place.
I’m honestly far better at CG work than I am at manual sketching (it’s much easier to tweak things until you get it right and mistakes are far easier to fix, that’s not to mention that you don’t have to manually calculate 3D perspective and lighting either).
Besides, it was Blender that enabled me to really get going as an artist in the first place.
hm well there are various projects i never finished, i’ve been wondering why.
I think the raw draft is easy, say create a car or so; then you decide to do also an inside; and then suddenly it becomes a much larger project. It happens more often to personal projects as compared to someone at work asking me to create something for a sales presentation. I guess loose track of personal projects there’s not much to win with it or so.
then suddenly it becomes a much larger project.
That happens to everyone, I think. I’ve been trying to push through my projects and become a more perseverant person.
somehow it then gets out of control or, i mean if i persist on doing things, i also raise the bar (and thus making it harder, more difficult, higher detail etc). Perhaps where i go wrong is that i should have skipped to do that interior, and on start say this is going to be a basic shape of a …
For me this is fun:p I get it, and I can work with it. Few years ago, I tried to produce my own music for clips, yet I found that various knobs and names and functions were to much for me, and just like sketch-ing, I suppose I could have played the music with my mouth or some instrument ( I do have a few, but they need software to edit the sound and … I can so easily make it wrong) I love the way it wears me out, it makes me think twice of what I am about to do and present to my clients, because, in my point of view, this is the best signature I will ever have
Oh no doubt it is fun, but i think there is some thing among artists that makes it difficult to feel satisfied completely.
e.a. you always see the parts that could be improved, (the average person wouldnt likely see it, but you see it yourself).
And as you grow as artist you raise the bar as well, you becomme a better artist, but also a better critic to your own work.
In fact i know of a old friend who was an artist and couldnt stand the pressure of painting art anymore.
He made remarkable paintings at home, but at some day he stopped painting completely the pressure became to high to handle.
I think it should never go like that, that’s a bit unhealthy. One shouldnt be so hard on yourself, but well artists often are.
Its better to work on something and enjoy it, you got to see the bright sight as well.
I’m a complete noob here doing this purely for fun, unlike most of you. I started using Blender only two months ago and I’ve struggled really hard to just get to a point where I could do anything at all that was satisfying to me. So I was already worn out in the first month! But when I finally got past the initial learning curve and was able to produce something, what was becoming a chore was suddenly a pleasure again, and I was willing to move forward with doing something more.
If this was a job, I don’t think it would be nearly as enjoyable. Now that I have some idea of how to do things with Blender, I can jump from one project to another as it suits me, or start something new, and the struggle isn’t so bad. If I was under a deadline or had to stick to a plan or a client’s concept, it would be completely different.