Blender modeling: try these 3 exercises to improve fast

every new animator practices animating a bouncing ball not because the result is particularly thrilling or sexy but because there are so many important lessons packed into that one exercise I'm sure you've heard the saying practice makes perfect but obviously it matters what and how you practice for example if you sketch cartoon characters all day you can make some pretty good cartoon characters but that's not going to help you draw a realistic human body now if you do some figure studies and you go to school and just learn how to draw a very realistic human body that can actually make you better cartoon characters so not all practices are the same and some just have way more payoff than others when it comes to 3d modeling though what are some things that we can practice in order to become better in a wide variety of areas and much faster I'm Jonathan Lampa with CG cookie calm and today we're going to look at three exercises that we can do to become better modelers the last video we looked at the six key principles of 3d modeling so these are many things that help you apply all of those in a practical way let's get started the first challenging object that I'd like you to try modeling is a bicycle now it can be as simple or as complex as you'd like in fact I'd encourage you to start out extremely simple no matter what your skill level is and then just take each piece one step farther and detailed than you're used to now here's why a bike is a really good modeling challenge one of the things beginners struggle with the most is proportions and we talked about this a little bit in the last video but a bike in order for it to look good and work well needs to match human proportions because you know the petals need to be the right distance from the sea in order for the legs to reach it right the handlebars need to be the right distance in order to actually grab them like if these things are just a bit off all the way around the bike then it's not going to look very usable and something just won't feel right whenever you look at it so take the time to get some reference and just make this bike out of basic shapes first and get the proportions right and there's scales in relation to each other now if you have your own bike I highly encourage you to take your own measurements and then use those and stick those into blender for different sizes of your objects and go from there now this doesn't take any complex modeling at all all it is is just moving and scaling basic shapes and primitives but it's often the most overlooked part of modeling and if you get this right then your result will look good no matter how much detail you add to it but if you get this wrong it's gonna be very hard to change later once you start adding more detail because then you're going to be kind of married to the idea and the things that you've already made but once you have your base shapes down a bike is also just a really good modeling problem-solving practice because there are so many individual pieces but each of those individual pieces are in and of themselves not that challenging of course the frame can be mostly made from adjustments to cylinders that are fused together or just stuck right through each other even but you'll need to find a way to make more complex things like gears spokes and tire treads but even these objects are less complex than they appear at first once you find the underlying form model the most base shape and used modifiers to repeat it until you get the result you're after in this way you'll be practicing reuse quite a lot and you'll be learning new techniques as you go you may not already know how to model a circular gear but you can easily find what it looks like online start with a circle and just kind of go from there find ways to add spikes or add holes in the middle of the circle and eventually you'll find your way to it even without any tutorials in fact doing it without a tutorial is going to help you learn multiple ways of doing things so you can find the best way that works for you now at some point in the process you're gonna find an area that's just darn challenging and you'll know what it should look like but you just can't seem to get there and this is where you need to take a step back and just take a break and then come back and continue to problem solve it now you might not want to work on it because it's challenging or you don't know how to do it or maybe because it's just plain boring and the result maybe isn't as exciting as you were hoping for but by just taking a step back and then coming back through it with fresh eyes and problem solving your way through these different tough spots that's what's gonna make you a better modeler another great beginner project is a simple kitchen or other interior space now when I first started out modeling I would often make one object or a few objects at a time but it took me quite a while before I worked up the confidence to build up an entire scene to render out that sounds like you a kitchen could be a perfect next step because there's lots of objects in the kitchen but each one is fairly simple but they all take different types of problem-solving so you've got bowls and cups but you've also got mugs and toasters and refrigerators and counters and cabinets and all this different stuff that each is like slightly different so you'll be solving like 30 or 40 mini exercises that all add up to one really cool result there's also lots of opportunity for instancing so you can make a few objects but still make the scene seem really full while the majority of these objects are going to be pretty simple like plates not that hard there's still gonna be a couple complex objects like maybe a toaster or a refrigerator or rolled-up napkin that's gonna take you outside of your comfort zone even if you're a pretty advanced modeler and you know how to make most things there are still subtle details and things like a coffee maker that can really make you think proportions are a top priority here just like with everything else getting a kitchen to look right depends less on making really detailed objects and more on making simple objects that are the right size thickness and space apart from each other well I'm we're thinking about how big each object is in relation to a person you'll also need to use your creativity to think about how the person living there uniquely uses the space and this is a chance to build your own personality into your render do you like your coffee brewed in a particular way or maybe you cook all of your food in a microwave whatever your personal quirks are build those into the render now not only makes it more fun of a project as you're making it because you can totally make it your own but it's also a chance just to get a more meaningful result fueling your creative work with your own personal experiences is something that you're going to want to carry over into all of your projects modeling or otherwise now since you'll have built up quite a few objects by the end of this project it's a perfect time to practice scene organization I know I know doesn't sound thrilling but without naming things parenting or making collections of similar items it'll become really hard to manage and navigate very quickly take your time structure it right and you'll see what kind of difference it can make especially if you come back later and you want to use these objects in a different scene it'll be super easy and you'll have already done the work last but not least I want you to try building a character this is pretty ambitious if you're just starting out and it can seem pretty intimidating if you see all the crazy detailed artwork online that looks super super good but just go ahead and ignore that for now the reason this is such a good practice is because organic modeling like this is a completely different animal than modeling things like pipes or wine glasses it really forces you to look at your topology in your edge flow in a different way and by taking the time to learn more about these things and how your vertices and components connect and how that influences the flow of your mesh will make you better at anything you model so even if your goal is to become just a hard surface modeler and all you want to do is make mechanical parts building a character can actually help you become better at that because it'll give you a different perspective or new ways of approaching a problem that you may not have thought about before you'll find that you might be able to make more complex shapes that you previously struggled with I've said this for everything so far but I'm going to say it again proportions here are key you can get a pretty surprisingly anatomically correct character with very little geometry just based on where your vertices are and how they're connected so detail is less about how many vertices you have and more about where they're placed now this is likely the most challenging of the three so use a tutorial if you need to but don't try to over complicate things just start with a cube and extrude some legs and some arms and head and go from there if it starts to get too messy start over from scratch and try a different approach while of course the goal here is to make it look good I'd much rather you have a finished but awkward looking character then not make one at all just because it's challenging and one last note please for the love of God don't use make human or one of these other character generators while they're definitely good in some circumstances like if you have an environment and you're trying to quickly fill it in or your focus is on vehicle modeling you need something to stick in there then that's fine but if your goal is to become a good modeler just make it yourself you're not going to learn the things that you need to know by starting with something that's already had all of the difficult decisions made for you saving time is always good of course but sometimes taking the long route the first time can help you save much more time in a long run so give it a shot keep it simple and you'll learn so regardless of your skill level I hope you give these three challenges a try and learn something new along the way if it seems like it's a bit too much to shoot for just yet come check out our beginner friendly courses on cg cooky calm from introduction to blender to mesh modeling bootcamp and character modeling and so much more we'll take you through all the difficult things and show you how to problem-solve through those so that you could have a well-earned confidence in your skills now put a link to those courses in the description below and be sure to subscribe for more videos happy modelling that sounds like you a kitchen could be a for hunting it a perfect next step

Channel: CG Cookie

Views: 202,545

Keywords: blender modeling, blender 2.8 modeling, blender tutorial, what should i model, blender model, blender 3d modeling, best blender tutorial

Id: QIySLhTtY-I

Length: 9min 36sec (576 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 08 2019