Hello, I've been learning Blender for over 5 months now. And I have gone through a lot of tutorials in CGCookie and YouTube for that matter. I have a solid understanding of the basic tools in Blender And how they work,
But the subject which I'm still really confused about as an Intermediate Is 3D Topology, I know how to model and block out whatever shape I have in my references.
But I'm not sure how to make my "Edge Flow" go around one part of the mesh and not the whole thing, I want to add geometry and details in one area of the mesh instead of adding loop cuts all around the object and making my mesh inefficiently high poly.
I'm aware that I could use the inset tool on some faces of the mesh which will create a "Pole" And have my edge flow around it, but in some situations, that's not going to work very well and It's inefficient. I would love to see a course covering the fundamentals of topology for the Intermediate blender artists, So they could work more efficiently and have a better understanding of topology which will improve their artistic skills.
With all that being said, Are there any plans for releasing a course covering the Fundamentals of Topology?
Thank you
- Yousef
Just in case you have missed these courses:
https://cgcookie.com/course/introduction-to-retopology
https://cgcookie.com/course/mesh-modeling-fundamentals
https://cgcookie.com/course/mesh-modeling-bootcamp
And for hard-surface modeling:
https://cgcookie.com/course/introduction-to-hard-surface-modeling
From my own experience: practice makes perfect. The more you model the better you understand the form of an object. You literally start to see the mesh and combine the whole as a sum of many different pieces.
A little piece of advice: try to model different things (organic/mechanic) and don't use some fancy add-ons just for now. I know they can save you a lot of time (specially the ones like Extra Objects or Bolt Factiry). But you have to practice on such things first.
Hey Michael, Thank you for your input on this. I've just checked out the courses you've mentioned I'm already 70% on Fundamentals of Mesh Modeling, and 40% on Mesh Modeling Bootcamp, I guess you're right Practice makes perfect, which means I have to keep rewatching the videos and then keep modeling more and more object and practice on my own until I can have a solid understanding of the topology and how edge flow actually works.
It's just that, I really love hard surface modeling and weapon/gun design in 3D concept art, I'm really inspired and motivated to learn how to create a Sci-Fi weapon and that's the main focus when I got into 3D, I got the inspiration from playing video games and I've been stunned on how good and detailed it looks and I've always appreciated the artist's works on that.
Sometimes when I try to model something that I think It's easy, It turns the other way around and It doesn't look the way I want it to be, and then I become discouraged or disheartened. Which makes me just CTRL+Q to quit blender and watch some 3D tutorials or 3D speed art to get my motivation back, It's really hard for me to even as an Intermediate, But I'm never planning to give up, I'm trying harder to push myself into it.
Thank you again, Michael
That's a great spirit, bozurk. I am myself trying to develop my skills and establish myself as a pro in the 3d-world. And to achieve that -- in my opinion ofc -- it is very important to have a clear goal. You love video-gaming -- that's great. Try to create a simple (but solid) game that works.
I am going a bit off the subject but still: try to set yourself a clear goal, a result that values all your efforts. If it is too big for you or too complicated for you now -- split it in segments -- if those segments are too big -- split them too. And then just keep pushing and keep moving along that road piece by piece or leap by leap.
Each milestone you pass brings you closer to your goal and fills you with confidence and satisfaction.
So you keep that mindset and keep going!
I agree with michaelmirn Mesh Modeling Bootcamp is fantastic for topology intros. Learning the cookie and the face bust is probably one of the basic intermediate steps for intro to topology. Another good practice after doing that is trying to implement all quad junctions in various ways and learn/practice placement of 5 sided poles and learning to move them around for better topology flow.
One really good practice is to grab a free sculpted object and try retpology on it like the Orb-Robot example.