Some Tips for CG Modelers

This article has written for modelers, however this can be helpful for other artist who is working with other areas, such as animation, vfx etc.

1. GET READY FOR THE CHALLENGES

The very first Things you need is, to be cool. If you are a beginner or intermediate, you can easily lose your patient. During the modeling process, you have to go through with many steps, sometimes need to redo again and again and that needs lots of patients. If you will lose patient that time, you can end up with the unwanted result which makes you the lower class modeler or non professional modeler. Whenever you do modeling just be very calm and try to understand your issue and solve it very patiently instead of becoming exited. Because, challenge is a part of this field, in fact, that’s why it is so interesting.

2. THERE IS NO SUCH DEFINED WAY

There is no such way defined for modeling. Modeling is not like any mathematical equation, which is defined/proven, but it is more like walking on the road where you find your way according to crowd or traffic. Same way you cannot stick to one method to make your model. You need to be flexible to adopt or learn the new way.

3. SKETCHING KNOWLEDGE CAN HELP YOU

Sketching knowledge can help you lot to understand the proportion, whereas it is not mandatory to do modeling. If you can do sketching than you can put your imagination on the paper and keep it for either future or current use. That will be a great reference for you. You can get some idea of your concept before getting started, which can make your lot of time, effort and can give you the nice path. So try to do some sketching, it doesn’t matter how nice sketching you can do.

4. UNDERSTANDING YOUR ENTITY

Observation is the very first important need before you start to do modeling. You should observe and try to get as many details as you can. This will help you to get the fantastic nearest results to your reference. If you will start without understanding your entity, you could come up with the unwanted result. For e.g. you are making a car model, and if you didn’t observe your reference car properly and you missed your car logo or missed registration plate that will show you non professional modeler.

5. FIND YOUR WAY

Instead of coping other’s method or techniques, it is always good to find your own techniques. Here I don’t mean to say that you should not use other’s techniques, but I would rather say you should find your own way to work, which make you more conferrable. For e.g. someone is creating a car by using box modeling, and you feel that you are more conferrable with NURBS or with edge extrusion technique, just do with these techniques rather than following other’s box modeling technique. Otherwise you can stuck somewhere or if not then you may feel unsatisfied yourself. Here I am not saying that you should not learn new or various techniques, but I am saying try to find your own way to work, that will make you more productive, more efficient, and you can get more artistic output.

6. THINK OF END USE, PIPELINE AND DEPENDENCY

While you are making any model, you should know where it is going to be used. If you are making a model for a game, and you make model with hi – poly that will be useless (you can use that for normal mapping, but not for the game). Same way, if you are making a model for VFX, and you make model low-poly that is also useless. Furthermore, you should think about pipeline dependency. This means that if you are creating a model you should think about topology as UV unwrap, rigging deformation, animation and rendering all are dependent on it.

7. USE TOOLS TO EXPRESS YOUR CREATIVITY, DO NOT BECOME TOOL BASED

A tool is to create your model that will never help you to imagine your model. So always be creative and consider tools as tools, which will only help you to build your imagination into the 3d space. Tools are important to save time and work with fewer hustle. You need tools to make your model, but that never can help you to imagine your subject or that will never think creatively. Tools will work only what you will say, but your mind and your imagination will tell you what to do and how to do. Tools are defined not your imagination or creativity.

For e.g. you have a box, and you want to bevel all edges of that box. You can do either by just applying the bevel in single click, or you can do by adding the edge manually or by extrude tool. That’s for all tools you need. However, what you need (bevel) that is up to your creativity, tools never tell you to do bevel. What I mean to say is, just be creative and think what shape you want for your model, think about that don’t think which tools you should use before you start modeling.

8. KEEP PATIENCE

Whole 3d graphics process is time consuming and needs lots of effort to get the job done. If you will lose your patience, then you might end up with the bad product or also possible you would leave that job in the middle. To avoid these kinds of issues and work consistently, you should keep patience while working. You should break down your task. You should plan out your task, which will make your job easier, and you may finish your job efficiently.

9. GET FEEDBACK

After finishing your model, just go to your senior or anyone who can guide you in the proper way and ask for some nice feedback. Here you should put your ego into your backup drive (use it elsewhere) and accept all critics and work on that. That would be great help to learn and finish model perfectly. In some model (e.g. vehicle or any real world object) you can ask to normal/common people.

10. DO NOT BE AN IDLE

After finishing one model do not sit an idle. If you will be an idle, you are not losing only time, but you are losing your grip on those tools what you have learn during the last modeling process. Of course, if you won’t work for few days or months you will start to lose your grip, which will affect your creativity and productivity. So never be an idle.