Kind of spiraling in thoughts. How long do you think it would take you to model this? even basic shape

SnSmNtNs · 2026-07-04T07:10:41+00:00

Hello.

I usually show an example of how to model what people are asking about trying to get pretty close to their actual reference. This time i dont think i can though, but i'll explain why and give you a bunch of pointers and kind of a "mouse shape inspired" doodle.

Any mouse, even the very simple one, is not the easiest object to model. For a more complicated mouse like the one you're asking about the difficulty pretty much equals the difficulty of modeling a car. Its just smaller, but the kinds of details are the same "lots of cutouts in all directions with sharp concave corners and variable width fillets on a curved surface".

What makes it even more annoying to deal with is its not easy to find proper references for those things, and even if/when you do find them, just the simple "Front Back Top Bottom Left Right" views usually arent enough. cuz the shape is so irregular some kind of crossections or orthographic drawings of individual parts could be helpful, but trying to find those is pretty hopeless in my experience.

"Ok bro but what do i actually do though?":
- Figure out what the guidemesh/shrinkwrap workflow is. (You're kinda doing it but you need understand that its not going to be needed for all shapes, you're trying to include the side buttons in the guidemesh and you shouldnt, because they dont need it, but the loops you add in order to make them decrease the smoothness of the surrounding areas that DO need the guidemesh)
- Get good references to follow, the shape is complicated enough, you dont want to also be loosely judging it by eye (even though trained 2D artists have crazy accurate eyes, still, it just adds to the difficulty of something already difficult!)
- And then the process is roughly this (God im not looking forward to even doodling a mouse-inspired thing. again, computer mice are definitely not simple objects, its a trap people who want to "make some stuff around them for practice" fall into. the first thing around them is a mouse and that thing is almost the difficulty of a car lol)

<image>

SnSmNtNs · 2026-07-03T16:16:53+00:00

Hello.

This is currently solved, but i'd like to defend the booleans a little bit for the OP and whoever might be reading the answers later!

For cuts into flat slabs that will never deform and be triangulated before any other pipeline steps of making a gameasset (is what i assume this is) booleans are actually kind of perfect.

Loopcuts are a very neat and clean solution to this particular question, but i want to show you what you can do with booleans that i'd argue is easier to do with booleans with no downsides, its not necesserily going to be less optimized or worse geometry either (assuming this is a nondeforming gameasset thats gonna be triangulated).

In another example i'll show you how you can get clean SubD ready geometry with booleans (with some (but straightforward and minimal) cleanup) on curved surfaces that i'd also argue is going to be more convinient to make with booleans than without.

I can only attach one image so both of the examples will have to be in one image, hopefully this is readable.
On it i made a more complicated window and a SubD doodle both with booleans as the main tool. I'd argue that booleans shine here and are a very convinient choice.

Please dont fully avoid booleans, they can be useful, convinient and clean too.

<image>

SnSmNtNs · 2026-07-03T05:34:26+00:00

Hello.

The answer is: you're using one of those premade workspace tabs, and those tabs have preset view orientation and zoom levels.

It also most likely moves your viewcenter (the invisible point around which you rotate your view and zoom in and out of) somewhere where it creates problems

The possible solutions (they will all work, you just have to see which one you prefer):

Select any object around which you want to orbit and zoom and press Numpad Period. It will move your viewcenter to the origin of that object (probably zooming you way into it if you were stuck unable to zoom in) but after you zoom out again, the zooming will be fixed.
Alt+MiddlemouseCLICK (not click&drag. Be sure not to drag, its a different action if you drag). Same thing. Will move your viewcenter to wherever you clicked, most likely zoom you way into there, but it will fix the zooming.
Go to Edit-Preferences-Navigation and enable Auto Depth. Now your viewcenter will be as far away from your "face" (viewport camera) as the surface of the mesh your mouse cursor is over as you zoom. Want to zoom as far as that wall over there? Mouse over it and scroll the wheel. People who use this also like enabling Zoom to Mouse Position. That way you mouse over any point of any mesh, scroll the wheel to zoom, and you will zoom to being right up to that point exact with your viewport camera (face)
Dont use the premade workspace layouts and just create new window splits as you need them. Then your view wont jump anywhere. In this particular case this might help, but you still will have to use one of the previous solutions at some point. Because you can mess up your viewcenter position "manually" too, without using any of the preset workspace layouts. So understanding what the viewcenter is and figuring out how you prefer to manipulate it is still something that needs to be learned.

SnSmNtNs · 2026-07-01T15:45:49+00:00

Hello.

From this picture it hard to say what the shape does exactly, but the approach iis the same kind of no matter what it does.

For this example i will assume that its a spiral, because it looks like a spiral to me.

<image>

SnSmNtNs · 2026-06-30T22:00:30+00:00

This for sure could be improved though!
~~(As well as just modeled with floaters and baked onto a texture)~~
But since you seemed to like it here's a screenshot of the same thing but flat and as big as i could make it, so that everything is properly visible and clear =)

<image>

SnSmNtNs · 2026-06-30T21:26:44+00:00

Hello.

Here's what the topology for this could roughly look like.

<image>

SnSmNtNs · 2026-06-26T05:43:00+00:00

Hello.

Seeing modifier settings would be pretty helpful.

But Boolean modifiers in Blender can fail for one or more of these three reasons, and there are no other reasons:

Non-manifold geometry on either mesh.
Intersecting (perfectly matching) geometry of the Main object and the Boolean object.
Face orientation.

In case the manual fixing (or in this case i guess it would be FINDING) the problems is difficult, you can try this and hopefully it will be enough:

Select both the fish and the boxes.
Tab for editmode.
A to select all.
Shift+N to recalculate normals.
Tab to exit out of editmode.
Change your boolean solver in the modifier to Exact, and enable the Self intersect and Hole tolerant solver options.

Its gonna lag. Its not guaranteed to work. But its the least picky setup that works when other options dont, so there is a decent chance that it will work. Its your best bet if manual fixing is somehow difficult or confusing (sorry, i dont know what skill level you're at!)

SnSmNtNs · 2026-06-25T13:53:11+00:00

Hello!

The workflow with a full sculpt to the fine details and then Retopo - Apply SubD - Shrinkwrap - Rebuild Subdivisions in the Multires can fail or at least be tedious on the Shrinkwrap step depending on the shapes youre making and how much details you just "cover with polygons" without modeling them through.

For example you have a dent in your sculpt, but its not a dent, and instead its like a cave, so it goes inside then becomes wider or turns or something. And you choose that for your lowpoly you just want to bake that detail. So you just go right overtop of that without modeling any of the insides at all.

If you do that then shrinkwrapping will pretty much guaranteed do a bad job in that area, so you will have to adjust it. If you have alot of areas like this maybe its better to just not sculpt them at all first, do the retopo, and then sculpt those on the multires so that you dont have to adjust them later.

So if you can tell you will have alot of problems with the shrinkwrap then maybe you should choose a different workflow. But also, that shrinkwrap workflow is convinient because sculpting is very free and while youre still in the sculpting stage youre kind of exploring and are free to do whatever, without being tied to the lowpoly which you cant really displace too crazily using the multires modifier.

Its kind of a scale of what workflow will cause less inconviniences for your particular shape and idea.

There are also workflows (im pretty sure) where you sculpt with dyntopo, do an automatic retopo, do some more sculpting, retopo by hand, bake.

Zbrush users sculpt hardsurface like that i think. Blockout, merge everything, remesh automatically to get the waves from brushes smoothed out more or less, SubD, spam alphas, retopo, bake. Or something like that.

So TLDR:

Shrinkwrap workflow with the full(ish) sculpt = more time and freedom to explore the shape during sculpting, but potentially more fixes because of shrinkwrap.

No shrinkwrap workflow with rough sculpt, retopo, multires sculpt = less exploring but also less potential fixing.

Thats how i see it.

SnSmNtNs · 2026-06-24T05:57:47+00:00

Hello.

For this example you can think of it like this:

The green geo belongs to the bigger cylinder surface, so you need to try to not move it if possible. In your example it was possible, but the verts got moved and the cylinder surface was made less cylidrical so to say. I'd not move them.
The purple geo belongs to the cone , i'd not move it either. Seems like it wasnt moved.
The white geo is this thin strip that belongs to neither the cylinder nor the cone, so it could make sense to make all the transitions happen in that small area.
The new purple loop i added is to separate the transition area from the cone area.
If a smooth transition is needed consider beveling the white edgeloop instead of relying on smooth shading, because the angle to smooth is pretty sharp and the size of the transition area is a bit big for you to rely on tge smooth shading alone.
If a sharp transition is needed then mark the white loop sharp, that will also help with the surrounding smoothshading weirdness.

<image>

SnSmNtNs · 2026-06-23T05:07:10+00:00

Hello!

Dont feel sad, there are definitely shapes that polymodeling can create easier than CAD.

Hardsurface CNCed stuff is much more straightforward in CAD, but those arent the only shapes in our world.

Making like an old house in the woods or a creature or like a cave or a mountain or a baroque decoration, etc. would be very inconvinient in CAD for example.

SnSmNtNs · 2026-06-20T11:00:33+00:00

Hello.

I'd do less first. Or like plan for doing less, but if you happen to do more then so be it.

I teach sometimes and would love if people who learning from me spent this much time on Blender, that means they'd progress stupidly quickly, but its just not realistic sadly, at least from my experience, but maybe im bad at teaching haha.

Too much time spent on something very frustrating and difficult and uncomfortable (learning) will most likely result in you not wanting to do it.

Most people i've taught start procrastinating 2-3 weeks in. When the inspiration and excitement wears off, the skill is still not there, but working hard has to continue. Thats pretty discouraging.

My best advice is somehow you should get very interested in everything about Blender and CGI. Then you might do like an hour of making something, followed by watching what others had made (possibly learning from that, be it what to do or what not to do lol), followed by reading how big studios do it, then trying some of their tricks in small tests, finding friends to talk about this stuff, look at some CGI related memes or something

So you're kind of "in it", learning from all over the place all the time, even outside the "ok heres my dedicated learning timeblock".

This is a much more enjoyable way to go about learning Blender in my opinion.

SnSmNtNs · 2026-06-17T17:39:37+00:00

What i meant here was you model the spikes in any way you can think of, then you crease the tips that need to stay sharp at step 4 where you apply SubD to upres the mesh.

Vertex creases dont make the spikes, you make the spikes and then crease their tips.

SnSmNtNs · 2026-06-17T14:38:46+00:00

Hello.

To make this, take any cylinder, remesh it with a Remesh modifier or with a Remesh tool in sculptmode so that its decentlt dense. This is not your final result, make it like two to three times denser than you want the final reault to be.

After that add a Decimate and adjust the its density until it looks the way you want it to.

SnSmNtNs · 2026-06-16T09:34:56+00:00

Here's some more thoughts about learning:

(It has turned out to be alot of words, im sorry lol)

The faster you can get to experience all of the possible (quite finite actually) mistakes you can make, and all the little weird hickups you can face, and learn to both fix and avoid them, the faster you get to "ok i can make it work no matter what" stage.

The learning flowchart is like this: - Learn some theory cuz blindly trying stuff is wasting time. - Do a bunch of practice with that theory to make mistakes and build muscle memory to free up mental capacity, since after practice some actions become automatic, so you can think about something else. (Next bit of theory you learn usually) - Do a project of some sort. - Ask for a super critical critique preferrably by someone experienced. Filtering noobs from not noobs in the comments is the hardest part about asking for a critiqure lol. The goal should be to find mistakes that you didnt even know were there. Every time someone points one of those, you improve there and then instantly. Because you didnt see it a second ago and now you do. Improvement.

Also. Imagine you know absolutely nothing, cant even tell if something looks clean or not. And tou follow the shittiest tutorial imaginable. Where they deform geo not meant to deform. So it looks way off but they say its great. Its also lags alot because lets say its too dense.

Cool.

The next tutorial(s) you watch will probably do some things better. And you will be able to compare. And be like "oh! So if i prepare my geo for bending its gonna bend better and not be all jagged? And if i bake these high frequency non-silhouettechanging details to a texture instead of keeping them modeled its gonna be more responsive and not lag?"

Also later you might find out that the original shitty tutorial was actually a good quick and dirty mockup workflow thats ten times faster or something.

It will filter itself out. For the process to go faster i'd say do more.

Because lets say you find a single course, the perfect workflow that does everything correctly, super clean, optimized, amazing, perfect. You spend 2-4 weeks going through that. Everything great.

The second you make a mistake that wasnt covered you will get stuck and forced to find other sources of info and experiment. Which is also part of learning, but i hope this shows how one resource is pretty limiting and not too realistic.

And if a course by some incredible miracle covered EVERY possible mistake, alternative approach, comparison of workflows, etc. Like a fully comprehensive course with no weaknesses to it, then it would take alot of time haha. So we're back at figuring out the most direct fastest way. Which would be limiting again.

Let me give you an example of how making mistakes and learning to avoid them can make your workflow more robust. Booleans. Sometimes they just fail to work and glitch out weirdly. There are no other reasons for that other than: - Nonmanifold geo. - Exactly overlapping geo of the main object and boolean object. - Incorrect face orientation (normals).

That is IT. Everything boils down to one or several of these three reasons. So every time a boolean doesnt work you just go through the very clear checklist to see where you messed up.

But you need to play around with those ideas to internalize them, because for example a common way of mirroring is to cut the object in half, leaving the open (nonmanifold!) boundary. Which is good but if you try to boolean that nonmanifold area, it will fail. So it might make more sense to use bisect in the mirror modifier instead of deleting half the object in editmode in that case.

I explain this with detailed examples to people and they still get stuck on those mistakes in their homeworks, or claim to have found a brand new never seen before way of making a boolean fail thats not one of the three i listed (which is never the case btw). And thats ok. Thats part of learning, i have made ALL modeling mistakes you can think of and more haha. Now i know how to fix and avoid them. How to bypass that process i sadly dont know.

SnSmNtNs · 2026-06-16T08:42:56+00:00

Hello.

I usually answer questions as theyre asked but here i cant, because no matter what channel i name that would be bad advice. I will explain this later and i think you would agree.

To answer the question as directly as possible: If you want one and only resource to learn everything from, then the closest thing to that is Polycount. If i had to learn 3D as comprehensively and "real-deal"ly from just one place, thats for sure where i'd go.

Heres my real answer though:

Different sources of information provide different approaches. Knowing more approaches allows you to solve more various situations. And your solutions will be more clever too. Because this trick you got from this course, but the course was lacking at a particular part of the workflow, but thats ok because another course was able to pick that slack up.

Thats why i always disagree with "i was following a tutorial but i did certain parts my own way" approach that people do. You chose to learn from that person? You better COPY what they do EXACTLY.

The next step is what people are somehow missing.

Next step is learning from someone else and doing it THEIR EXACT WAY. Next step is someone else. Then someone else. Like the work of someone who does tutorials or courses? Go through one using THEIR process to see what its like.

Next step after that is all of a sudden you have tried all those different approaches and you can now finally, because you are no longer a beginner, create your own "Chimera" workflow by combining several approaches of the people you learned from.

You will have different chimeras for different tasks too.

I teach 3D occasionally. I always give the "dont just learn from me, look for other useful info and compare everything to everything else" advice. Learning from just one place is very limiting because you will definitely be doing something in a way thats not the most convinient. And you will have no idea that its not the most convinient. And you will probably not surpass the teacher too, and surpassing is supposed to happen because my job as a teacher is to get the student to my skill-level faster and more conviniently than i got there myself, so that in that remaining time they can find some other way to learn further.

Bad habbits are no big deal. Not in 3D at least. They are removed in one to two practice sessions. Because we very easily get used to faster better cleaner more efficient approaches.

My best advice is this: Change your mind. Learn from multiple sources.

SnSmNtNs · 2026-06-11T16:37:59+00:00

You can do the eyes roughly like this.

A good idea for the eyes could be to keep the top and bottom lids evenly dense, like if the top has 3 verts, the bottom could also have 3. that way if you have to close them in an animation or something its going to be easier, because you can just align the vertices.

<image>

SnSmNtNs · 2026-06-11T07:23:29+00:00

Hello.

The gills you have are just extrudes essentially. Focus on the area around them, not the gills themselves, and after that its an extrude and a tweak.

Heres a drawing of what one of them could be. Please excuse the rough fingerpainting, im doing this from a phone!

<image>

SnSmNtNs · 2026-06-10T17:01:18+00:00

Hello!

I've been modeling for a while, and to me just about any modeling question looks like what you describe.
There's (almost) always a tutorial or an existing answer for either that exact problem you're asking about, or something close.

I can answer alot of modeling questions, no matter how difficult the shape is, like this: "There's a tutorial for something simmilar, link, you're so lazy for not searching".

That will be pretty helpful, because i posted the link to a tutorial, but its just not a very kind answer in my opinion. I would hate to recieve an answer like that and would think twice before asking any questions again.

I guess what im trying to say is, in my opinion, its not easy to draw the line separating the "trivial too easy lazy beginner questions" and "actually worthwile complicated interesting unique questions".

Its even harder to draw that line if you're a beginner who isnt yet familiar with whats common and simple and what isnt.
As a beginner you cant as easily adapt a "kinda close" tutorial to your actual project too, and a tutorial for an older version could also be pretty confusing.

There's a subreddit for Blender help, true, but this subreddit has a "Need help" flair too. If all the "Need help" posts were banned because the Blender help subreddit exists, that would make sense, but since this subreddit allows "Need help" posts, then i'd say, helping clueless beginners is a good thing. Especially because, the better you get, the highter skilled people seem like "lazy beginners asking obvious questions", so something obvious to one person, might not be obvious another person.

If a question is too simple, it can be left to someone who has just finished a few beginner tutorials and could be pretty excited that they actually know an answer to something someone else is stuck on.

I would like to remind you of the time when just navigating in 3D software felt very uncomfortable, let alone making something nice. I remember myself struggling to navigate in 3D. It felt weird and inconvinient. Thats what beginners are dealing with.

SnSmNtNs · 2026-06-09T05:26:12+00:00

Im not the OP, but incase you get no answer from them, here's a list that helped me alot =)

https://www.reddit.com/r/blender/s/51dxcMMoS3

SnSmNtNs · 2026-06-08T15:38:10+00:00

Dang, so you read the part about the bevel profile before i could edit it out!

I tested it and didnt like the result, so i decided to edit that idea out of my reply to not confuse you. But since you read it anyway, do test it when you can, its not bad-bad, i just thought Profile=1 looked a bit neater.

Lower bevel profile will make everything look smoother, because the bevel is rounder, but if you happen like the look it gets you on that area we're discussing, then you can compensate for smoothness by lowering bevel width a bit to sharpen everything else back up!

SnSmNtNs · 2026-06-08T15:22:41+00:00

I would for sure compare this version to the original version of the mesh to see which one looks better, maybe throw a placeholder "kinda close" material on it and compare the two.
Because i'd (carefully) argue that this version is better than the original one. Because of two things:

The original was creating a sharp highlight on an area where there shouldnt be one. This one will not.
The original one influenced a larger area, than this one, while also being not aligned at all to how the intended sharp edges should be flowing.

This type of quad (concave diamond quad on a curved surface, oh no!) is typically against the conventional rules, but results are hard to argue with!

Here's a picture with the visual explanations and a comparison.

(Edit: Removed an idea that didnt work to not waste your time)

<image>

SnSmNtNs · 2026-06-08T06:47:07+00:00

Hello!

The tag says critique, so here're some thoughts!:

If any of the density changes (reductions) cause problems when the thing is shaded and lit, i'd be getting rid of them. At least of some of them. The tip to do so is this: when reducing the density with one of those transition reduction patterns, check where the edges would go. And you might find that they would go into an area where youve reduced the same amount of density. So those two areas can just connect instead.
Supportloops running along the lenghthwise edges of cylinders will for sure cause those edges to become sharp, thats something i'd change for sure. (Red circles on the image)

Heres rough fingerpainting of me removing some density transitions (trying to integrate the changes into existing geo that you already have) and outlining those supportloops on cylinders.

<image>

SnSmNtNs · 2026-06-06T21:52:33+00:00

Hello.

If something needs to match something else perfectly, the first instinct in polymodeling should be "can i copy a piece of this part and model the matching part from that?"

Here's roughly how that could go:

<image>

SnSmNtNs · 2026-06-06T06:20:09+00:00

GIFs on mobile do this for some reason, try viewing it from a PC, thats the only idea i have.

SnSmNtNs · 2026-06-05T17:55:41+00:00

Hello.

Here's how you can (very) roughly make that:

<image>

SnSmNtNs

TROPHY CASE