Correct 3D Modeling Philosophy

Before you dive into the world of 3D modeling, there is a website that you need to visit before all else. You can find it here.

This website belongs to Bay Raitt who is co-attributed to the creation of Golum in New Line Cinema's The Lords of the Ring trilogy.

After reading the entire article, here are the things you need to remember:

1. Make a mess - As you visit forums you will get advices like: your 3D model must follow proper topology, you must model in quads or triangles or ngons, you must use poles or not use poles.

This is wrong. Atleast in the initial stage. Don't follow these advises or else you will get yourself stumped.

When you are just starting your model, only silhouettes and contours matter.

It's not important if you are not producing perfect quads or tris. You're primary goal is to shape your mesh to the object or character you have in mind.

But while you are making a mess, do aim to use as few edges or vertices as possible. Because as you will eventually find ,it is hard to manage lots of edges and points and move them around in 3D space.

2. Cleanup - You should clean up. But remember this only comes after you are finish shaping your mesh.

During the clean up stage you can concentrate on turning your model to all quads or triangles.

On this stage you can also apply proper topology.

These two principles is no different from 2D drawing. In 2D drawing, professional artists first scribble sometimes producing an incomprehensible drawing.

Then they slowly refine their drawing choosing only the strong lines. Then they delete all the unimportant lines.

If you follow these steps you will save yourself from getting frustrated when you are modeling.