What's Your 3D Modelling Workflow?

Unity Engine
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Hello all!

I am a beginner in the whole 3D modelling scene (however I have access to any program I want because I’m a student) and I am wondering, what is everyones choice of 3D workflow?

I’ve heard of people using Cheeta3D, Blender, 3DS, heck even Sculptris. How do all of you do it?

And also, how did you get started?

Personally, I am just getting into it. I followed a few tutorials on Blender and actually got stuff done but Blender is horrendously ugly IMO and I’ve been able to achieve more in my first few minutes of 3DS than my first few hours of Blender.

I am now hoping to stick with 3DS, however there’s a lot of debate around the 3D workflow and Maya seems to be pretty cool and so does Cinema4D…

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Personally, I have traditionally used 3ds max, which used to be the best modeler around. Autodesk has left 3ds max in a dark dusty closet lately, given Maya a lot more love these days, and the recent versions of Maya have caught up with max in the modeling department, as well as being an overall great animation and general pipeline tool. Check out Modo too.
Ultimately if your goal to model things for a personal project or game, your choice is irrelevant as all of those softwares can do the job and have great learning resources.

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My workflow changes a bit depending on what I’m modelling. Generally, if it’s realistic and organic (but often hard-surface too) I use sculptris to knock out a concept sculpt to build in all the basic forms and shapes. I then import that into Blender and do a quick bit of retopology and make a properly subdivided high poly model. I then retopo that again properly as a low poly mesh and bake the details down in xNormal and then texture in Photoshop.

If it’s stylised or just a low poly with no normal map, I’ll generally poly model in Blender alone.

It really is worth sticking with Blender to learn it. Sure, it defies industry convention in several ways, but I think that’s a very good thing - considering Max has been the standard for over a decade (more?) I think people should consider change. Having selection and moving vertices etc (via the widget) on the same mouse button is stupid in my opinion. There are a lot of things I could go into, but I’ll refrain!

My biggest nag with max is the navigation and button-based tools. Blender is really, really fast because every action is hot key based; you can do basically anything without knowing where the cursor is, you just know you have to move it, but not to a specific place. This for me is the best thing about blender. It has a barrier for learning, but once you’re past that the UI and way of using tools actually makes a lot of sense and it comes into it’s own.

But then… I guess 3DS Max is the standard for a reason (though I would hold age and familiarity as that reason) so it makes sense to learn it, I suppose.
I’m also a student, and planning to go to University (if you’re in the US I think you call that college), so I thought I should learn either Max or Maya, as they seem to be the standard. I hated using Max with a passion, particularly its navigation, but found Maya much better in that respect. However, I thought its modelling tools were a bit weak, and I hate the Autodesk way of moving vertices etc with the arrow axes widget. I think I will have to reluctantly give Max another go, and see if I can better customise its navigation.

I hope I didn’t sound like a fanboy, I’ll happily admit Blender has a lot of downfalls, but the industry needs to start finding a better reason not to use it now that it’s grown so much. I know a lot of people who’ve made the switch from Autodesk (Maya in particular) to Blender and say they wouldn’t go back. It really is quick to model with as well.

Sorry for the essay, but I thought I may as well make one big detailed post than explain myself in several more.

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All in all it’s a bit of personal preference. I used to use 3ds max and then started learning Maya. Now I’m using Blender and I’m finding it’s interface to be a happy medium between max and maya (with a couple of hiccups of course). But I’ve been using the Paint branch of Blender and I’ve found it to be a great tool by itself for low poly hand painted stuff.

For high poly stuff I tend to model out a block out in blender, use the dynamic topology sculpting to rough out the shape, retopo with better edgeflow for sculpting in Blender, send it over to Zbrush to finalize the sculpt, make the game res version in Blender and then bake the textures in Xnormal and finish up the textures with a mix of Krita and Blender.

For Blender I really enjoy it’s painting tools (in the painting branch) and the mix of using hotkeys and the nondestructive modifiers (like max). Retopology is a breeze in Blender which is why I have 2 steps for that rather than using a quicker and less clean method like zremesher in between the rough sculpt and the clean sculpt phases.

Currently I don’t see too many downfalls with Blender other than the lack of editing normals and the vary different workflow Blender has for viewport shaders but for flat shaded games that’s not really a problem.

Soon I may just fix that problem by getting Substance Painter though since it’s not that expensive compared to other software for texturing and it’s painting with materials to create the albedo, roughness and spec maps at the same time should be a great time saver.

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Damn, there’s definitely a lot of variety between each people.
Personally, my statement still stands. I have learnt so much more in 3DS Max and it was all so much quicker and rewarding that I might just have to stick with it.
I like the mouse stuff btw, I’m more of a mouse guy.

Due to being a mouse guy I’m definitely going to have to give Sculptris a shot and make it low poly and rig it in 3DS.

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You have to consider, once your’e not a student anymore, or you want to make some money from your games, you’ll have to buy 3DSmax for the full price.

It’s also quite a time since 3DSmax saw a significant overhaul. All you get since years are just minor updates. Some people believe that 3DsMax gets abandoned like Softimage sooner or later, in favor for Maya.

So if you really want to go the Autodesk route, I’d suggest to go with Maya.
It has not the best modeling tools compared to Max and Blender, but the animation and rigging tools are better than 3DSmax’ if that matters to you.

Also, if you’re serious about 3d modeling, you should get a drawing tablet. Otherwise you’ll have a hard time to sculpt stuff with a mouse.

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The student stuff doesn’t concern me now as I still have 3 years left of normal school, and of course 3 years of the license. After that I plan on taking a course in Computer Science which is another few years on top so I’m pretty much set ahaha.

I’ll start following tutorials in Maya as well. I now know pretty much the raw basics of how 3D works (materials, textures, polygons, faces edges vertices, etc) through Blender tutorials I followed. With that I can’t imagine trying out different programs and finding which one “clicks” being hard.

Thanks for the help!

And the tablet can come later, I really just want to nail down the basics ATM since I’m not very serious at this point in time.

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Eek! A mouse guy! :wink:

Most people can’t do any sculpting with a mouse, and a tablet becomes a necessity; I’d include myself in that bracket. Don’t leave it to that much later, they’re handy for all sorts of things but getting a good workflow from the start can stop bad habits from forming.

You and I might be set with free software for a while, but not for work, it’s entirely non-commercial (I’m sure you know that) and watermarks all your work (I bought an extended student version to stop that). So it’s good for learning but not much else. I’ve also heard many people saying Max has been left behind a bit lately, so it might be wise to go with Maya.

You’d be surprised how hard it can be to settle on which one ‘clicks’ better with you. I hate Max’s interface but thought it’s range of tools was great, but hated the way they worked. I really liked Maya’s interface and navigation, but thought it’s tools were much weaker.

At the end of the day, it is almost entirely preference, so carry on with Max if you want to! It gets even harder to choose once you go deeper than the basics.

I’m sticking with Blender but learning Maya before Uni to get ready for the industry-standardisation nightmare I’m sure I’ll face!

Now I’m used to Blender I can’t imagine why people use a mouse-driven interface, it’s incredibly slow. But I understand that must work for some people, so fair enough!

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Holy damn I did not actually know about the watermarking and non-commercial. I just assumed it was a full license D:
Back to Blender for me then aha.

Which I don’t mind because I seriously just fell in love with Sculptris. Made a character head in 2 minutes that I was actually proud of. Look out for my next game called Nipple Man, working on the cartoony character now.
Will make low poly and rig in Blender it seems.

Thanks for all the help guys!

EDIT: And I definitely like the idea of using a tablet. What’s stopping me however is that I’m a high school student with no cash, I can’t draw so half of it’s intended purposes are gone and I actually like my mouse aha.

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You can build your own one

But jokes aside. If you want to sculpt, you’re better off with a proper drawing tablet. The Wacom Intuos costs around $80. Beg your family to get that money :wink:

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Oh damn. I remember about a few years ago I was intrigued by them but was like hell no because they were like $300 or something.

I guess it’s time to start applying for a casual job. Gotta save up a Mac and a tablet aha. Oh and new drum cymbals but that’s unrelated to the topic at hand.

Also, how hard do you think it would be for a person who can’t draw (my drawings look like absolute garbage) to start with 3D. I mean, I can’t get two dimensions down how will I handle three? (Especially since most people use concept art :/)

Oh and that tablet is beautiful. I’m guessing that’s one of the higher end ones?

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It’s always desirable to have basic drawing skills at least. Anatomy, color theory, perspective composition etc.

It makes your live so much easier as 3d artist if you have some fundamental knowledge in the classical art disciplines.

Here are some links you might be interested in to sharpen your 2d skills.

http://www.ctrlpaint.com/ (really good for beginners)

https://www.youtube.com/user/Sycra (lots of useful video tutorials)

https://www.youtube.com/user/idrawgirls (also lots of useful tutorials and drawing process videos)

http://www.artstation.com/ and http://drawcrowd.com/ are both good inspiration resources.

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Myth time again …

You know that you can use hotkeys in Max too? Just that you need one click where you need 4 in Blender. And that you can use a graphical menu for not so often used items without bigger hassle. No need to learn and to remember 300+ hotkeys. (regular 170 official or so, Plus the hotkeys from the official plugins that comes with Blender. Plus the features that needs badly a hotkey and which you have to set up by yourself. Like mark and clear seam, or switching between point, edge and face select. Which is black magic because there is no useful hotkey left, and the hotkey manager is pain in the ass. )

Blender is a good start because you can do everything needed with it. No need for other software really. Which is a good thing at the beginning. And when you are at a low budget then Blender is your best bet.

The bad thing is that it has a bad UI, and that it is not really good at something. That’s where you start to use other software to get the job done. Sculptris for sculpting for example. Or 3D Coat for sculpting and texture painting. Or a better unwrap solution like Unfold3d. Or a better bake solution like Xnormal, or …

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Oh hey! Ive seen you on another thread before from like 2010 where there was an argument about using Sculptris for Unity and the guy had no clue about topology and what not.
Whats your stance on the topic now considering all the retopology tools available like Topogun?

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Yo Tiles, I gotta stay I still think Blender is fast using hotkeys. There was no attempt at distinguishing it as better than 3ds max. The post was about Blender being functional and working well as a free alternative.

And you don’t need to learn 300+ hotkeys. If you need that many hotkeys in your workflow I’m afraid that would be a very complicated and disorganized workflow. And you can easily set a sort of temporary hotkey using the spacebar command.

For changing selection modes you can make a hotkey like in this tutorial.
http://cgcookie.com/blender/2010/05/17/custom-hot-keys/

And the hotkey manager has a search menu which makes it pretty much a breeze. It’s honestly not that much different than making hotkeys or making adjustments in other softare. Heck I remember having to do some Mel Script in Maya just to get some of the comforts of 3ds max when I switched to that back in version 8.5

The UI isn’t the worst of the worst and I actually prefer how it uses mainly words in its buttons than maya’s cramped image buttons.

Also I find Blender’s UV Unwrap tools to be fantastic so I don’t see why I would need to use something else, though I’ve honestly never heard of Unfold3d.

For baking though most professional artists I know use an external baker anyways save for maybe setting up color masks before taking it into Substance or dDo. Though traditional XNormal is quite common to use even for Maya and Max users. At the end of the day when you get to a professional level you tend to adjust and improve your worfklow as much as possible and generally if that means using more software that’s not a bad thing if it means you cut down on time due to streamlined tools and interface and specialized software. FBX and OBJ formats are very stable for moving back and forth between software and lots of tools have plugins that allow 2 different pieces of software to talk to eachother making things faster as well.

Some examples of this are the GoZ plugins including the one someone made for Blender, the Xnormal plugin for Blender and so on and so forth.

For topology it’s still just the edge results that matter. People use lots of different workflows to get to that end result. I use Blender with a mix of modifier stacks and vert extrusions. Others find Bmesh in Blender faster. Other prefer topogun or 3dcoat and others have plugins for max or maya or will use ZRemesher in Zbrush with well placed guide lines and clean it up a little in their 3d modeling software.

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I don’t know Topogun, sorry. And i also have stopped using Sculptris since quite a while. It is still better than Blender sculpting, better performance for example, but it is a bit limited. I use 3D Coat nowadays. It’ s not ZBrush. But it is a good sculpt modeler, has great retopo, has paint abilites, and a good unwrapping. You could create a whole character without leaving it. And it has a great ratio between what you get and what you pay for.

But it is still slower than other tools because the graphical UI is too cluttered and not user friendly. And it is slower because lots of things requires lots more clicks than in other software.

I have a job for you. Try to find clear seams. That one is in edit mode under the unwrap options. So you can surely find it with your favourite search tool …

I have another job for you. Try to find duplicated hotkeys.

Still think the hotkey manager is super cool? :slight_smile:

Never heard of one of the most common commercial solutions? So how can you judge?

Follow active quads is a cool feature. The angle based unwrap algorithm is nice. And Smart UV project is okay. But the rest is far away from fantastic. The primitive mapping methods like cubic mapping are basically fubar. And the job is not done with marking the seams and clicking the unwrap button.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to talk Blender bad. I hate this black and white thingie anyways.

Blender is great when you look at the price. Blender is also my number one recommendation when you are short of money. And even i use it regularly. But it has quite a few flaws. And the industry big boys are the industry big boys for good reason. So when your goal is the industry you better go with them.[/quote]
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Blender is far from perfect so its not black and white. But you seem to go into every thread and make it sound much worse than it actually is. And in my entire time working on 3d art and discussing stuff with professionals on Polycount I have never heard anybody mention Unfold3d. I don’t think many people have until it was recently integrated into Maya either and even them, I know more people that used Roadkill with Maya than they have with Unfold3d.

So I would say it’s hardly one of the most common commercial solutions. Most people I know simply use the unwrap tools of their modeling app with possibly some small plugins to expand the tools. For clearing seams you can just hit ‘a’ to select all and then use the Clear Seam button, or if that takes up too much time you could make a hotkey for that as well but generally that isn’t a command that you will be doing over and over in repetition anyways. And it didn’t take me any time to find clear seams. I just searched for the term “Seams” chose the option available and checked “Clear” in the options in the left side. You can skip that by making a hotkey that ends with (clear=True) at the end of the python identifier.

As for duplicates you can filter the keybindings by key rather than by name and it will show you all combinations that include a key so you can check for overlapping.

Furthermore I don’t find my workflow to be any slower with Blender than if I used other tools. If anything I’d consider it faster. Especially compared to maya since I can use modifiers for a less destructive workflow. This is especially true when I model coats or anything with thickness. If I decide later that I wan’t the coat to be thicker, I can adjust the modifier easy enough whereas it would take a little more time or a less accurate method to work in Maya. It wouldn’t be much different in Max though since it also uses a modifier set up.

Also keep in mind that any UI can be cluttered if you have it all visible at once. I keep my workspace clean by having different layouts based on the work that I’m doing which makes things much easier. It’s the same way I worked on Maya or Max. By having a modeling layout, a UV Unwrap/Texturing Layout and then an animation layout, which are all easy to access from the top Info bar I can keep things managed in a clean way.

In all honesty, from my experience using Lightwave, Max, Maya, Modo, Truespace, Zbrush and a bunch of other software over the years I can honestly say that Blender isn’t bad with it’s interface and it’s not that foreign.

If you want a foreign interface that can easily be cluttered if you don’t know what you are doing, look at Zbrush. Yet once you adapt to using it, working with it becomes second nature and you can work quite fast with it. In that sense I would say that a professional 3d artist will know the fundamentals and should be able to adapt to any software in a pretty short period of time. So with that said yeah Blender is far from perfect but I feel like you are making a mountain out of a mole hill when it comes to the flaws you state that Blender has when compared to other software.

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Nice try to trivialize the problems. But for me the problems in Blender stays a mountain, not a mole.

At least we are at the point where you agree that Blender is not perfect :slight_smile:

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I never said Blender was perfect. The other software isn’t perfect either though but from my experience I found I enjoy using Blender the most and I haven’t hit any real problems other than with viewport shader and vertex normal editing. If anything I feel like Blender is higher quality than it has any right to be and it’s usefulness justifies it’s use compared to alternatives that require payment for 3d modeling and animation software.

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Agreed. No Software is perfect. And when Blender is the best solution for you then i don’t have a problem with that. Everybody has to decide by himself if a tool fits his needs.

I have simply a different opinion here. Which is minimum as valid as yours. For example the slow and cumbersome workflow in polygon modeling is something that nags me in Blender. Especially because i know better solutions.