Ever wondered what that “movie magic” was, behind the adorable Baby Yoda or the fearsome Smaug?

Computer generated imagery, better known as CGI, is responsible for bringing all these fantasies to life. Over the past several decades, the production quality of movies and video games have considerably improved from the 1970s and 80s through further advances in 3D modeling.

What is 3D Modeling?

Part of CGI is 3D modeling, which is the production of three dimensional figures and objects through the usage of polygons and geometry. It’s used for:

• Rendering photorealistic or expressive artwork
• Video game assets
• Movie props
• Medical and scientific research
• Architectural design
• Producing prosthetics, toys, and utility items
• And much more!

All the potential uses of modeling have yet to be fully discovered, so its capabilities are only bounded by our imagination. Its flexibility makes it an appealing skill and hobby to learn. For anybody who is interested in learning how to 3D model, I’ve compiled a guide and list of the most informational and useful tips and videos that I wish I knew going into 3D modeling and I hope it can prove useful to any beginner or intermediate artist.

Tip 1 – Choosing Your Software

There are many 3D modeling softwares available online. But, most of the industry standards, like Maya and 3DS Max, require a paid license to legally use. If you’re interested in 3D modeling as a casual hobby, then I’d recommend Blender3D, a free software with an active community. There’s a good amount of tutorials on it available online, and I’d suggest watching BlenderGuru’s Beginner Tutorial Series to start. I also personally use Blender, since it can also render my models into high resolution pictures for quality presentations, and it’s also an image and video editing software.

Tip 2 – Basics and Topology

There are some core terms that you should understand before 3D modeling. This includes vertices, edges, and faces. As shown in the image below, a vertex is a single point in the three dimensional plane. An edge is two connecting vertices. A face is composed of at least three edges that resemble a closed shape. Usually, a single face will have either three or four edges.

The ones with three edges are called “triangles” and the ones with four are called “quads”. It is generally accepted that it’s easier to work with quads, so always try to keep your models “full quad”, which means that it only comprises of four sided faces.

In 3D modeling, topology is the distribution of edges and refers to the overall structure of the model. Take a look at the two cubes. In terms of shape, they are both the same with a hole in the middle. Although, the right one has cleaner topology, which means it’s easier to be animated and built upon if you wanted to turn it into something like a longer tube. The issue with the left one is that there are faces with more than four edges. These are called “n-gons”. N-gons usually do not work well in animation nor are they optimal for adding details onto the model. This is because n-gons are automatically triangulated when they’re animated, which leads to messier geometry that may result in glitchy mesh deformation when the animation plays. Click here for an excellent video on the nature of n-gons for clarification and for more information on quad topology, visit this link.

(Requires the understanding of basic Blender modeling controls)

Tip 3 – Adding details

Generally, there are two ways to add details to your 3D models. Hard surface modeling is a more intermediate workflow that’s harder for beginners to grasp with little software experience, so I won’t cover it in this post. But, this green model is a result of the hard surface workflow.

On the other hand, the second method involves sculpting, which is a more hands on, artistic approach. You use a brush to manipulate the shape of your object to make engravings, wear, and object textures, like wood or stone. The red model is the result of the sculpting process, with a much more beaten and worn look than the green model. For a beginner, I would recommend trying the sculpting workflow, since it’s easier to get a hang of from my experiences.

Note: Adding more details means adding more polygons to your model. Increased polygon count is detrimental to your computer’s performance, since it has to render every polygon present on the screen at any given time.

Tip 4 – Retopology and Optimization

After you’ve added details to your model, whether through hard surface modeling or sculpting, it may be up in the tens of thousands of polygons. Although a computer should have no trouble rendering that amount, as your scene becomes more and more filled with assets, these polygons will add up and slow down the performance of your render or game. It’s important to note which assets need polygons to be prioritized to. For example, a barrel does not need the same amount of polygons as a video game character. Retopology, a more intermediate technique that’ll prove useful as you utilize sculpting more and more, is the act of retracing over your high-poly (high polygon amount) model to create a low-poly (low polygon amount) model. For more information on retopology, visit this link.

Last Thoughts

I hope these tips and hand picked videos prove useful for anyone trying to expand their knowledge or begin learning 3D modeling. Putting this post together as an attempt to give back to the community that helped me learn was a very fulfilling experience. Modeling is a very entertaining and satisfying hobby to partake it and I think it’s a useful skill for most people to have a basic understanding of.