Thinking Outside the 2D Box

A Little Bit of Context…

If you’re here reading this, you’re probably in the same position I was in a few months ago. You are interested in making the leap into 3D art but don’t know quite where to begin. I was in a similar situation, having only done 2D art for practically my entire career, it can definitely be intimidating to want to explore an entirely different medium. 3D

modeling softwares seems much more complicated than drawing programs and there is a whole other dimension to consider. I hope that this dev-log and personal anecdote of my journey from 2D to 3D can help you in your own journey in discovering the joys of 3D art!

My 2D comfort zone..

Over the summer of 2022, I got hired as an intern at a research center as a 3D animation research assistant. I was a little surprised to have been offered the job as I knew nothing about 3D art, much less 3D animation, much much less innovating in either of those fields. I was puzzled as to why I would’ve been hired if my portfolio contained no 3D art or animations and was just a composite of my 2D work and game design. Upon meeting with my supervisor over my first week at the internship, he mentioned to me one of the main reasons I was hired and stood apart from an animation student. The project I was hired to work on was a realistic VR game with motion capture animations that I would be working on. Since I studied game design, I possessed game engine knowledge and therefore was much more valuable than someone with just knowledge of 3D art. It was easy for me to learn and pick up 3D art and animation with the foundation of game engine knowledge I had. Being able to animate and create 3D assets with a game engine in mind, I was a great asset to my team!

So What??

I identified the problem to be that I can be considered somewhat a beginner in 3D modeling and especially when it comes to modeling for games. It can be scary to get into a complex medium and even harder to consider creating optimized models. I don’t really know the best methods for making optimized meshes and making sure my models are ready to be textured and animated down the line. It would be in the best interest of myself as an aspiring 3D modeler to improve my skills and continue to learn during this project!

Upgrades People, Upgrades!

Before the start of my internship, I was panicked because I had little to no prior knowledge when it came to 3D modeling. I quickly dove into tutorials and the software Blender to try and prepare myself as much as I could before my first professional gig. There were a multitude of tutorials out there and it was very intimidating to sift through them to find a helpful one that wasn’t the 100th Blender donut tutorial. However, during one of my many purses through social media, I saw someone who had made an adorable 3D red panda in Blender. Comments were asking the creator where they should begin if they wanted to start making 3D art and the creator posted a follow up video with some of her favorite Blender tutorials. I decided to look into them and found a channel with tons of tutorials for both beginners and experienced 3D artists. There was also a website referenced which contained labeled diagrams with any object you could think of to use for reference while modeling.

Low Poly Animals by Grant Abbitt

Dimensions.com - Database of orthographic diagrams

The Low Poly Animals video was the first tutorial I followed that was very basic and touched on a lot of tips that I would continue to use in my 3D art. Blender and any 3D modeling software can be very intimidating with all the different tabs, buttons, and features, and this video does a very good job of guiding the viewer through each step. It shows the process from gathering reference images to creating the basic shape and texturing the objects.

My first model!

Above is my first 3D model that I made following the tutorial. It’s by no means very good or detailed, but I was so happy to have created something, it made me feel like I could do 3D modeling. There were a couple more videos I watched from this channel for reference as I decided to just jump in and start playing! When I just went off to do my own thing using the base knowledge I had learned, is when I really started to have fun and fall in love with 3D modeling. I would look up random diagrams on the dimension website and just try to model something for fun. It helped me practice a lot and if there was something I didn’t know how to do, it was simple enough to look up a quick tutorial! I had so much fun just trying to make random objects and tried new things outside of my comfort zone to continue learning and expanding my skills.

A Gameboy I modeled for practice.

A pop can I modeled for practice.

These were a few more models I made when I first started modeling. I really enjoyed playing with lighting, materials, and render settings!

I continued to model for fun during and after my internship and created more and more complex scenes and objects. I learned that I loved to create environments and scenes and decided to focus on that.

A cozy café environment~

Light At the End of the Tunnel

I think having engine knowledge helped me a lot in terms of having a solid foundation and base knowledge from my first year modeling class. It was intimidating to jump right into a brand new software while keeping designing for a game engine in the back of my mind. At the beginning of my 3D modeling journey I tried to focus on just playing around with the software and creating rather than concerning myself with creating optimized objects. This helped me to just get used to the software and start developing my own skills and style.

This year, I started my capstone project with my team. Going into it, the team had briefly discussed doing 2D characters with 3D environments for a 2.5D style game. I was a lot more comfortable and familiar with doing environments and hadn’t really done any character modeling before. However, we realized it’d be a lot of work for our 2D artist to do all the textures, UI, concepts, etc. as well as 2D sprites. We also found a website that auto rigged humanoid models for 3D animation. That is how it was decided that I would also be taking on the responsibility of modeling the characters for our game.

I was rather nervous as I hadn’t done practically any character modeling before and only a little bit of environment creation for fun. My team was very supportive and gave me tips as we went along to create optimized meshes and increase workflow. When I’d make a mistake or something needed to be changed, my team kindly let me know and gave me tips to fix any issues. I made lots of mistakes but was able to learn and improve my skills from them. My modeling has already come a long way from having very little experience because I was able to just dive into it and start creating! Learning from videos and tutorials online can only do so much, actually getting into it and not being afraid to mess up is important to learning crucial skills.

Learning and Loving

I was very lucky during my capstone thus far to be in an environment where I’m not afraid to mess up and make mistakes. My team supports me and gives me advice which I can take graciously. I used my prior knowledge about game engines to keep in mind when I was creating as well as tips from my team to make sure my models were optimized and lightweight. During capstone, I reviewed videos and tutorials in order to help me continue to expand my knowledge on making sure my models were optimized for game and texturing. I’m overall still learning, even during my capstone project, I’m slowly learning new tips and tricks as I go. My models up to this point are already much better than when I first started and I can only imagine they will continue to improve in quality and optimization! Even while I am amidst this project, I still continue to learn and improve. One should not be afraid to try out new things and that making mistakes is important for improvement. I encourage all the 2D artists out there who have an interest in 3D modeling to go ahead and just dive into the software and just have fun with it! That is, where I believe, the most learning comes from. So go step outside your comfort zone, you may come across something you never thought you’d enjoy.

A light load.