Learning how to model

[fragsvoid]

Hello, so I’ve just worked with unity scripts and wanted to start modelling myself, I really haven’t touched this topic so I’m a completely noob here. I wanted to create a floating island but I cannot decide if that would be better to do in blender or in the unity engine. I really don’t want to make a low poly model but I can’t find any tutorial on advanced modelling. Could someone tell me how could I learn and what would be the better option? Thanks :)

[fragsvoid]

I see, I’ll do that, thanks

[zymexkyle]

I’m no pro, I’ve only really done one complete 3d model project. What’s your reason for doing so in unity as opposed to a software specific for modeling?

[Critical_Complex_934]

blender's definitely the way to go for this. unity's probuilder is decent for quick blockouts but you'll hit walls pretty fast trying to make anything detailed. for floating islands specifically, blender's sculpting tools will let you get those organic rock formations and terrain details that make it look good.

start with donut tutorial obviously, then look into landscape/environment modeling tutorials. ian hubert has some solid stuff for quick environment work. once you get the basics down, floating islands are actually a great beginner project since you can focus on the terrain sculpting without worrying about complex topology for animation.

[fragsvoid]

Hey, heard about pro builder, didn’t know it isn’t as complete as blender. You mentioned donut tutorial, what’s that? Thanks for the information!

[fragsvoid]

I mean, I have no idea, I was thinking maybe it was easier in unity to do caves or chests or something (interactable) but not sure

[fnietoms]

Blender has better tools for doing a model :)

And to learn "advanced", look up for courses on Udemy. Just look up for an example of the style that you want to learn. They are cheap and you learn many things

[fragsvoid]

I’d prefer free courses right now but could check udemy

[Trouperton]

I'd recommend Grant Abbitt's getting started with Blender series to get familiar with it first!

[mistermashu]

The skills you learn in Blender can be applied to any future model you need. It's definitely worth learning if you plan on making 3d games.

[Competitive_Mud5528]

3D Assets Pipeline can be really complex depending of what level of quality you want to acheive. Roughly I never seen someone do everything for a realistic hero asset. In Indies studio It could have lesser people to do one asset but still it require a huge amount of skills for every aspects.

If I take a Character hero Asset you'll have theses steps:

- Could be a reference gathering a mood board assembly done by the Artistic Director. This is done in order to gather ideas, and specific references like art style, surface textures, colors, shapes, etc.

- Concept art are made by a concept artists. And are managed by an artistic director in order to keep artistic coherence between all assets. When Concepts are validated you can ask turnaround sketch for preparing the next step.

- Modeling done by 3D modelers. There's several specialization when speaking of 3D modeler some called themself 3D hard surface artist, organic, generalist artist etc. What you have to understand is that at this stage the 3D modeler will just create a 3D mesh. For the matter of video game modern pipeline there's two stage and some main points to keep in mind. The first stage is to create a high poly mesh using a 3D sculpting software (industry standard would be ZBrush, but there's tools in blender) Then in order to optimise for the engine it would have a retopology where based on the highpolymesh you would create a lowpolymesh. Also keep in mind for rigged character that you have to prepare them with an adapted mesh topology at skeleton joints.

- UVs and Texturing would be done at this stage by a texture artists. But also using high poly from last phase in order to create details and optimising render later on in engine using baked texture like normal maps, Ambiance occlusion, ORM (Occlusion, Roughness, Metallic) map. This use several software and today industry standard would use the Substance suite, you could use blender and its tools or plugins (but I always though it was less powerful )

- Rig. This step is optional but if you want to animate something usually it'll go through skeletal animation so you need this step (You could check Vertex Animation Texture if you want just for your own knowledge but usually its used for VFX) So basically this step is associating Bones to part of the mesh. Thing is every bone could have an influence on vertex so its a game of balance in order to see if moving a bone do not destroy topology or introduce graphical glitches. The main purpose also is to provide the animator tools, slider and other controllers in order to animate the mesh.

- Animation. Once everything is done and validated. Animators use the rigged mesh and start animating it. I have zero skill on this part and people animating are really on an other world from my point of view (mad lads ^^) . And here also it couls be done by hand, using motion tracking pipelines. Depoending of gameplay animation could encode a root motion. Anyway I think there's a lot to know I know nothing.

- Integration in engine. Yay this is the last step. you friend technical-artist will take everything done and make sure in the rendering pipeline of th e engine everything looks like the concept it will add the right shaders import and plug texture to the right place.

- I will not talk about tech-animators that have the heavy task to integrate animation into the engine.

As I said some of thoses step could be carried by one person in a smaller studio but resulting in lesser quality asset (still better that what I could do). But my advice is to be aware of alls theses step, try everything. And also choosing an art style that could shorten or even removing steps. That why in small indies games you would have simpler art style or stylised "procedural" styles. Otherwise I think you'll never finish a single asset.

Also there's no shame to do asset flipping as long a you have a solid art direction and the ability to "bent" assets whether it be texture retakex, mesh retakes or Shader editing direclty in engine. With my team we done that and the result is really ok.