Becoming great at anything requires constant practice and that is especially true with 3d modeling. If you're here it's probably because you want to become a better digital artist. I myself want to improve my 3d modeling and texturing skills and that means I need to model a ton in order to become better.
Building a consistent habit is the path to becoming great and with that I wanted to provide a challenge to anyone else here who wants to join me. The challenge will be to model one new 3d model daily for 30 days.
The goal of this is not to create amazingly realistic models, but to get you practicing your modeling skills daily. You are not competing with anyone here but yourself.
Each day this post will be updated with the object to model based on that week. Below are the rules and guidelines to make this more interesting:
Themes
To make this more interesting, every week will focus on one theme. Each theme will represent a set of 7 objects that are relatively easy to model, but each have unique elements to them to challenge you in different ways.
The themes for the next 4 weeks include: Home, Weapons, Props, Nature
Rules
Submissions
Post a rendered image of your completed model. While texturing won't be required, it is highly encouraged.
HOME (June 1 - June 7)
For this week we'll focus on objects found around the home. Typically these objects are relatively easy to model and reference. You are free to get as creative as you want with these as long as you modeling what is requested for that day.
June 1 - Sofa
June 2 - Lamp
June 3 - Book Shelf
June 4 - Coffee Table
June 5 - Lounge Chair
June 6 - Shag Rug
June 7 - Floor Speakers
Week 1 is Done! Congrats on making it through the first week of this modeling challenge. On to week 2.
WEAPONS (June 8 - June 14)
For this week we'll focus on creating hand held weapons. Think melee weapons. These usually have a mixture of primitive and complex shapes. You may use sculpting during these models, and some may actually require it to achieve the look you want.
June 8 - Axe
June 9 - Combat Knife
June 10 - Spear
June 11 - Shuriken
June 12 - Spiked Bat
June 13 - Sickle
June 14 - Nunchucks
PROPS (June 15 - June 21)
This week will be focused on props you might commonly see in games or background scenes. These can be reused to add "filler" to an environment. These props mostly reside outside.
June 15 - Barrels
June 16 - Tires
June 17 - Filled Trash Bags
June 18 - Concrete Barrier
June 19 - Shipping Container
June 20 - Dumpster
June 21 - No Object
June 22 - No Object
Vegetation
This week will be focused on organic plants and objects you'd find out in nature. Think of these as natural props.
June 23 - Grass Clumps
June 24 - Rocks
June 25 - Flowers
June 26 - Bushes
June 27 - Hollow Log
June 28 - Vines
June 29 - Trees
CHALLENGE COMPLETED
This officially ends the challenge, technically it's 29 days but we have another challenge starting up on Monday so use Sunday as a way to gather reference photos and start your next modeling challenge with vehicles!
Thank you for everyone that participated in this challenge. Some objects were easy, others were challenging and I hope you learned some new tips and techniques. This challenge was about keeping a habit going and learning some new techniques and use different tools to create something you may not have otherwise. It was great seeing all the new renders on a daily basis. Good or bad, you've created something and that's what matters. See you all in the next challenge!
thecabbagedetective Looking good, Aaron!
Did you say, that you had problems, because of you, not being good at particle edit?
You are probably one of very few, to use particle edit for a carpet!
You can use textures to control Density, Hair Length, and whatever...
If you set your hair particle system to: 'Advanced', you can use physics, like boids to control the hairs.
In the Children section, you can set different kinds of Roughness and 'Kink'.
It definitely takes a lot of experimenting with different settings, but doing this with particle edit is really unusual...
That being said, I think that you're result is great! It looks really natural!
I don't know why the shiny part has streaks in it... eh, but I'm kinda pleased with it so far.
There are my floor speakers, definitely something I have never tried to make before. Still definitely need to learn a lot about lighting and shadows.
Here's my floor speaker. It's the cheapest one I could find on Amazon. 
Here are mine. I didn't know what floor speakers were until today.
Last post for week 1, hooray! I probably spent too much time getting this to be technically correct from a modeling perspective, but it was fun to model.
Week 2 has now begun, the 1st weapon object to model has been listed.
Thank you for your comment.Is always interesting to get some other thoughts.
Having a real object would be the best.
I use several references,mainly this one speaker reference
and some close ups. Don´t know if it is a render or a simple photo with white background.
I liked the simple style and the golden touch;)
This time I spend more time in lighting to give it a touch of high quality.
Lighting is also on my list but not on top
I don't know if it's going in the direction of photorealism.I am still fully concentrated on learning the modeling techniques.
Then step by step to other themes.
Great speakers have been posted.
This weekend will be difficult for me to finished the dailys weapon.
And if I want to go into sculpting now---hmm---We will see. I look forward to your results.
Have fun.
Had so much fun with texturing and lighting and got it finished surprisingly fast
I spent more time on the scene than the axe, but I am really an environment artist I suppose.
This week will be interesting, especially since I don't know how to sculpt or anything about weapons. Definitely discovering how much I still need to learn.
Man, I wish I could join this right now, but I'm working on a farm this summer. I might be able to do this after summer is over.
spikeyxxx totally understand, designing and modeling a good looking weapon, and giving it great textures that compliments it and takes it to the next level takes more than a day... even longer of you're going for game ready. I like where it's going though, the shapes are appealing 😊
@cgcookiedough If you all like these types of challenges we could host a new one every month. I'd like to have different types of CG challenges such as texturing/animation/vfx then rotating through again with modeling depending on what you all like.
Alright day 1 of week two is completed:
I also added quite a bit to the background which is a pegboard. I'd like to have each weapon on display on this pegboard for a final render. Looking back on how the axe sits I realize this would probably fall off to the left in real life, but lets just say it won't.
If time permits I'd like to bring this into Substance Painter and make it a bit more unique. For now I just added a few textures. By the way for those of you who want to use similar textures I'm using these:
https://beta.gametextures.com/shop/58837
https://beta.gametextures.com/shop/59510
I use GameTextures for all the texturing and if you sign up with a free account you can download 3 texture packs a month which is awesome.
williamatics Yeah just let me know what you all are interested in. Ideally this is something that can be done daily in order to build a habit and get better day by day. Here are a few future challenges I have drafted up:
30 days of Texturing
For this challenge you would only be focused on texturing objects, so you'd be learning how to properly use shader nodes, UV unwrapping and sourcing proper image textures (or creating them). This could involve using assets already created through this challenge, and/or sourcing them from something like Sketchfab.
30 Days of Animation
For this we'd (CGCookie) provide a rigged character and everyday a new animation would be created. One week is movement, one is interaction, another fighting, etc.
30 Days of VFX
This would be a bridge between Blender and Game dev. Essentially creating 30 different visual effects such as weather, magic, explosions, etc.
30 Days of Game Assets
This would be somewhat of a combination of the first three challenges (modeling included) in which you create props and such for use in games. Focusing more on making functional objects and taking note of poly count and proper texturing.
So with these 4 additional challenges we'd basically have 5 months of challenges lined up. I'm sure we could include more and cycle through these twice a year.
jgonzalez I love all of them except the game asset one, which is fine because other people like making game assets, and I don't mind taking a break every once in a while.
"At night, a faint glow could be seen moving between the bodies. Everyone knew to stay away."
Modeled in Blender, textured in Substance Painter. The wireframe model in the screenshot is the same model as in all the screenshots as I have no idea how to actually texture high-res geometry. Baked down from a high-poly model, the tri-count is only 1,204 so you could throw this straight into a game.
I don't think I'll participate in this challenge, I just came across the thread and thought an axe sounded fun. Seeing some very cool stuff in this thread!
