How do you start out.

Hey all, I basically on my third day of using blender. And I’ve decided to do a simple hand. Its easy, and as I improve my skill and I can rig ,texture, and do simple animations with it for practice. But as I look on some of the users’ works here I am amazed at thier quality. And I wonder how they start thier projects. I know it depends on what your planning on doing. But how do you guys usually start a model. You start with one mesh, and add on?

I generally start by getting some reference images for what I want to model. Sometimes I’ll use them as background images to do the actual modeling, sometimes I’ll just use them for inspiration and details.

If I’m doing something symetric, like a person or a head, I’ll add a plane, scale it down, give it a mirror modifier, and extrude.

If I’m doing a building exterior, I’ll start with a cube, scale it to the general shape of the building, and put in loop cuts where I’ll need extra vertices to add details.

For a building interior, I’ll add a plane, subdivide it, erase the vertices on the inside and outside to get the building outline, extrude out to give the walls some thickness, then add the interior walls, doorways and so on. When the floor plan is finished, I’ll extrude it up to make the walls.

For other things, I’ll try to use one of the primitive shapes to start with, depending on the things shape. For example, a chair with round legs might start as a cylinder.

Depends a lot… I usually start with a circle with a limited number of vertices, and extrude/subdivide as needed. It’s a bit to start with, but once you get going it’s pretty easy.

For more organic shapes, basic 3d primitives and a subsurf modifier. I normally don’t use the mirror unless it’s humanoid, but that could be just me being used to not having it.

For your first stuff, use reference images, tack them up as the background, and work from there. It gives you a basic guide, so you can make stuff, learn, and not get frustrated. (Laying a model over a reference is a good way to pinpoint something that just doesn’t “look right”.)