I am somewhat “new” to Blender- I’ve been using it on and off for a couple of years and It only grew on me, so I have decided to invest more time into and learn it properly, as in the past I always ended up doing the same 2-3 things I knew.
I have figured out what I want to use Blender for and I have set up goals- develop my own style (low poly, solid colours, hand painted etc.). My idea is to build a library of assets and probably rigged humans, animals that I can kit bash into all kind of scenes I want. I don’t have the time or interest into doing photo realistic village- but count me in for a stylized one!
The second thing is… Well photo realism- fun or not I feel like I need to know how to do if I want to make my own style. And the problem solving aspect, despite being too hard at times, draws me in. Photo realism, apart from being used to teach myself proper geometry, lighting and all the things in between and after, will be used, hopefully for digitization of cultural heritage.
The final thing is to get somewhat familiar with all the aspect of 3D- such as Tris are ok in video games, but apart from that are better to be avoided.
I guess in short I just want to learn a lot of things at the same time, but what I end up doing is-
Either repeat the same things again and again.
Or follow a tutorial step by step with no problem, but then failing to apply at least half of the things to other models/scenes- such as looking at “How To Make Low Poly Cat” tutorial and then failing to do low poly dog…
So my question is- Is it a good idea to try to model,sculpt, re-topology, texture, set-up lighting, composite and render single objects like bottles, cups etc. Or is there other things I should do if I want to reach the set goals?
Here are some of things I have done:
Part of a daily challenge I had set up for myself: Suppose to be low poly assets
My personal approach is to have one (never ending) project, that is there to learn new skils.
I have my own universe destroyer, that I revisit every now and again, and apply some new learned skillsets. be it textures, armatures, lighting, animation. (But hope to eventually finish and use it in larger projects)
So having this one unreachable goal is just nice for me to see what i’ve done and how I have improved.
Create separate projects that are specific to the task you want to learn. For example the candle realistic render you did. simple, but allows you to concentrate on the thing you want to learn. For example add a table for the objects to sit on and gain a tad more ambient oclusion. but not spend much time on this.
This allows you to have many projects designed to learn just that one thing…
join in some of the ongoing challenges, be it, a weekly challenge here on blenderartists, or other daily challenges. this allows you to lear the skill to say when something is sufficient enough, and defintely will streamline your approach.
It varies from person to person, but i think that most are in the second or third category.
One approach is to learn all the aspect of CG at a basic level, then start over with more challenging goals.
Or you can concentrate on one aspect for a few month and then move on to something else.
If you want to concentrate on low-poly modeling and texturing , of course you need to spice up the game here and there, it can be to focus on more challenging models, or to get a more professional look ( texture, light, rendering) from simple models you made.
All that said, you’re on a good start, if you’ve got the feeling you’re always doing the same thing , add a bit of challenge and creative problem solving to your next project !
Thank you! I have tried the never ending project and It does seem helpful, or at the very least It doesn’t stress me much when I don’t do something big or the right way.
I will try the separate projects with specific goals/tasks- probably following the fundamental elements. Let’s hope I have some projects to share soon.
