The Importance of 2D Concept Art in 3D Modeling

It is very important that you do 2D concept art or better yet have model sheets before you actually construct your 3D models.

Having one could mean the difference between creating a 3D model in a one day to doing it for a week.

In 2D, you could freely draw your props, environment, or characters. Meanwhile if you work in 3D, you will quickly run against a lot of rules like you should keep everything quads (four sided polygons) and you should keep in mind your edge flow.


If you are just practicing your 3D modeling skills, here are sources of concept arts you can use:

www.anime-model-sheets.com

www.celshading.com/gallery

Blender Hair Particle Tutorial

This hair particle tutorial was made for Blender 2.46 but I think it is still usable for Blender 2.48a.


Blender 2.46 particle hair from Dipingo on Vimeo.

Blender 3D Review

There are a lot of capable 3D software out there but why do I recommend Blender?

Let me cite its features to give you an idea.

1. Modeling
2. Sculpting
3. Texturing
4. Animating
5. Rendering
6. Compositing
7. Game Developing

Some of the other 3D package will give you some of these features. But I have not seen one who has all of them built in.

And it's also rare for a 3D software to have a built in sculpting and game development capability.

You can practically do everything in Blender and you won't need another software.

The last reason why you should use Blender is

8. It's completely free for personal and commercial use.

If you are still not convinced, check out these movies made with Blender.

Freddy's World

This is really cool. Another proof that you can do great art with a free software.



You can visit the official site at http://www.fweibel.com/ for more information regarding this animation.

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.