I wanted to track my progress so I wrote this. I am a complete beginner right now, I hope things will change. This is the low poly rocket from the course for beginners.
I did the Fundamentals of Digital Lighting course and this is my exercise submission.
I did the Fundamentals of Blender Materials and Shading course, this is the result. I think I could have done better but I am not sure how.
I acquired a new pc, so I finally did the sculpting fundamentals course without losing my mind.
This looks really cool! There´s a bit of lumpyness going on here and try, try to smooth it out and the sculpt is perfect :)
I tried to reduce the lumpiness by using the smoothing tool, but for some reason, it didn't work
I did the Jellyfish course, it was interesting to learn about cloth dynamics in this manner. Although the foldings of the jellyfish in the bell aren't that good, I am happy with the result.
This is the sculpture not topologized from the introduction to character modeling course. This is not good, the wrinkles in the clothing are not particularly good and details are not particularly refined. I could not make the cloth simulation for the sharp work so I cheated and took the pre-made sharp from the course finished model.
I made this treasure chest from this course. This was very useful, in particular, the part about UV unwrapping and texture painting was eye-opening, I feel like I found a big missing piece for the blender puzzle.
Very nice! A nice lighting would really do wonders for that chest and make it pop.
I did the sculpture of this sea monster based on the artwork. I wanted to color it but the topology I did wasn't that great. As you can see there is some difference between the two images, in fact, I made the head too bulky and the longest tail too short.
That is looking great.
I would save a copy of that file and mess around on a "safe-copy" a little with a large brush size and the grab brush (or snake hook but be a little more careful) with some decent strength. You should be able to pull that inflation down and make it match more closely to the reference image.
Playing on copies of files provides lots of opportunity to learn without too much worry of destroying your hard work.
I did this simple fish, I sculptured it first, then topologized it. I tried to color it, however, the result isn't great as you can see. I am not sure how to make the fins semitransparent, do you have any advice on how to improve the color and the material?
Keywords here are Translucency (Translucent Shader) and Subsurface Scattering.
Your model looks great! I'd recommend you to watch Jonathan Lampel's Fundamentals of Shading Course.
ddariusjohnson You my friend have stumbled upon the next mountain in blender: textures, materials, and shaders.
Grant Abbit has some great Youtube Videos on painting on top of models. Your painting is not that bad actually. I'd probably use some kind of brush texture to get that "choppy" look on the transition from the black to the silver.
I personally love the add-on called bpainter. It has some great texture painting settings along with a ton of other functionality: Looks like I fell down the rabbit hole on this one hahahaha.
You canadd more than 1 material slot onto your object (meaning you can use more than 1 material). Then you go into edit mode and select the faces you want to assign the other material slot to. The fins would be a good candidate for another material slot. You could try playing around it a translucent bsdf, transparent bsdf or glass bsdf shader and maybe mix in the texture shading to it.
You can also make use of the noise node to get some color reflections off of the skin (they are subtle). I know it is hard to say without showing but maybe something like this:
Having a 2nd material would look something more like this. I am not saying I am even close to being a node expert but this is just more to represent that you can make the effect of 2 material slots on 1 object.
I tried making the fins with the glass shader but, of course, they look like glass, I think I need practice with shaders.
Spikey is probably correct with the transparent bsdf shader (usually he is correct with most recommendations haha). Jonathon's material/shader course is pretty sick I hear. I haven't gotten into it yet but I imagine you will become much more comfortable with shaders and mixing them with your texturing.
I did this tiger shark and I tried to color it using procedural textures, It is not perfect, also I am noticing right now that the model at the bottom is not done well and the tail isn't as pointy as in the reference.
