bts of my first blender project

so many of you saw this on my IG story, but I did a project recently while on vacation. I landed in SF and essentially realized I was going to have to deliver a full 3D video without my fancy GPU and usual software. I only learned how to navigate the program, re-texture basic shapes like planes for screens and giftboxes, animate the camera on a spline, and render. I had no time to learn how to model in the program so I mostly sourced pre-existing models from cgtrader.com and learned how to decimate them to work well in the scene. 

even then, it took me ages to get this out bc the client was especially anxious. They had never worked with a 3D artist so they demanded a checkin every other day. It would have been nearly impossible if I had not relied on blender’s real-time rendering engine. Everything looked especially nice bc I turned on the bloom, which makes every light glow-y. The humans walking around in the final shot were lowpoly humans I found online (you know where) which I ran through mixamo. I had to learn how to render glass for the snowglobe and learn how to do a basic basic basic physics simulation for the snow (I stopped following this tutorial once I had falling snow particles, I didn't care for making it realistically pile up). 

finally, all the assets I would have gone into Marvelous Designer and made each garment but due to my software restriction, I was able to source (from cgtrader) simple 3D t-shirts & pants that I re-textured into the client’s requested products.

Some takeaways:

I love cgtrader lmao.

Don’t re-invent the wheel. I used to recreate things meticulously and it’s really not necessary. I would say if you’re delivering something that looks real, there’s a chance the asset exists online for $3 or free. If you’re going for a stylized effect, definitely model it yourself.

Know a little about everything.

I really booted up this program and with only a general idea of how the 3D pipeline works, was able to put this project together in my friend’s kitchen. I was part of a 3D undergrad program that taught us that we each had to be specialized and skilled workers to join the Pixar machine. That’s true if you want to work in a big game studio, but if you’re freelancing… *SIGH* for better or for worse, you’re wearing all the hats. I’m thankful I didn’t let my ego win and try to model all of this from scratch, I never would have made it. The only things I modeled were the geometric lights in each room (basic shapes), the ornaments on the trees, the wall/ceiling/floor box and the rugs. Everything else was kit-bashed and re-textured.

Google every question.

I honestly started this up and thought “damn I need hella buildings” and googled: blender buildings and found this plug-in that allows me to automate low poly architecture in like 5 clicks. I had to watch a youtube tutorial of how to do it and learn how to even install a plug-in for blender but it paid off. You would be surprised how often I google a specific thing or problem and someone on the internet will have already answered it. <3

Anyway let me know if ya'll have any questions!