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3D modeling has always interested me. At heart, I am a 2D artist, usually pencil or pen & ink, but over the last couple of years I've gotten more involved in learning 3D artwork. This is a brief overview of my intro to 3D.
To be honest, I was one of those people who tended to look down on 3D as "cheating". The turning point was when I was reading about Daz Studio in an article published in ImagineFX, a magazine for fantasy and sci-fi artists that I read regularly.
Daz Studio is a free 3D program for Mac, and Windows. Essentially it's like having a digital photo studio on your computer. You can set up a whole scene, place the objects where you want, set the lighting and then render the scene into a file like a tiff or a png, etc.
At this time, I was still feeling kind of elitist toward the whole 3D idea, and so I only planned on using it to set up scenes that I was going to draw, to work out perspective issues I was having and such. The only problem was, seeing the images that members were posting in the Daz Studio forums, I really wanted to make some cool 3D art like them.
I quickly became frustrated though, since at first I did not realize the difference between 3D posing apps and 3D modeling apps. Daz doesn't let you create the items in your scene, you only place them and pose them. Once I figured that out, I started looking around for a free 3D modeling app. That's when I found Blender.
Blender is a free 3D modeling and animation package available for Mac, Windows and Linux. This software is extremely powerful, there are animated, pixar quality films made solely with Blender (http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/) (http://www.elephantsdream.org/), plus people are making video games as well. Really the possibilities are limitless. Of course, you have to learn it first, and that can be a problem.
Blender is not an industry standard 3D modeling application. Once you see the interface for the program, you can understand why. A common complaint is that it kind of looks like a Star Trek starship bridge or something.
I was coming from a 2D background. I'm a Certified Expert in Photoshop, and I use Illustrator and InDesign on a daily basis at my day job, but the 2D Adobe paradigm doesn't really help you with some of the concepts in 3D. It can really seem pretty alien.
When I started Blender, I began with the online tutorials that I could find, but some of it was of hit or miss quality. Then I bought "Introduction to Character Animation" by Tony Mullen and started working away on that. Between that book, the forums and a few online video tutorials, I was able to finally gain a decent understanding of the concepts of 3D. I'm not at the level I want to be at yet, but I'm still going strong at it.
For now, I'm using Daz Studio to realize my ideas. Previously I would feel like I had cheated if I used a 3D model that someone else created. Now, though, I think that as long as I can realize the image that is in my head, and I put in the work on it, then I don't have a problem with that.
I've been honing my technique in Daz, working on the lighting and material and shaders, trying to get the most dynamic image as possible. However, I'm not quite good enough to get the image I want without "post-processing" it in Photoshop. Also, the limitations of my hardware preclude me using some of the most dynamic lighting setups.
That said, sometimes the performance of Daz Studio feels really sluggish, that "working underwater" slowness. I wish it were faster, but I can't really expect more than that for a free piece of software. If it was a big issue, and I was doing 3D full-time, I would either pony up for a commercial product, or triple my efforts to learn Blender as much as possible.
It's funny to me, though. I've never ever seen a program where the progress bar goes BACKWARDS. I guess that means it's undoing all my work instead of saving it? Hilarious.
But anyway, because of the limitations of my hardware with regards to render options, I usually export my render, then bring it into Photoshop to make it more vivid and add effects. Some things I make in Blender and either bring into Daz or combine with my Daz image in Photoshop.
I have a lot of ideas for scenes that I can set up, but you need objects and models for these things. And that's where the rub lies. Daz Studio is free, but they make money by selling you the objects and models that you will need. Most of these are fairly cheap, especially if you join their "Platinum Club" for a monthly fee ($7.95/mo. or $99 annual - as of this writing).
Another great thing about Daz is that they have a free download every week. Plus, there are a whole bunch of websites that offer free 3D objects that you can place in your scenes. Obviously some are of better quality than others, but for free you can't really complain.
I do this for now, but as I buy these models and objects, I'm steadily working on learning more Blender so I can make my own objects and not have to rely on the work of others. My goal is to eventually move everything into Blender where I can create, pose, light and render the whole shebang.
Blender just came out with a new version that has changed some of the rigging/animation methods, so even though I haven't really learned it all yet, I now have to re-learn a bunch of it.
For now, regardless of the software I use, I'm just looking forward to making some really cool pieces with 3D.
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