• Kent Trammell(theluthier)

    Excellent! CGC is a great place to learn exactly that

  • Omar Domenech(dostovel)

    Ok so not 3 days

  • Karen Trevino(ketre)

    I made a text based game with a partner. And got into trying to learn Unity which when I saw all the characters etc. I then found out about Blender. I tried learning solo for a few years but, I think I've been more confused on alot of things. So I am here to learn!

  • Kent Trammell(theluthier)

    That's a cool thing about CGC and 3D: Ages range from early teens to the 70's. We're all learning togther

  • Omar Domenech(dostovel)

    3D.... three days....

  • Omar Domenech(dostovel)

    So the answer to how long have you been doing 3D is 3 days...get it

  • Omar Domenech(dostovel)

    You'll be the neighbourhood's coolest grandma then

  • spikeyxxx

    Age doesn't matter here, just having fun!

  • Kent Trammell(theluthier)

    That's amazing, Karen! What first inspired you to want to learn 3D?

  • Karen Trevino(ketre)

    just so you all know I'm probably old enough to be your mother / grandmother. I've been wanting to do this for so long.

Get instant access to this Live Stream.

Let's start a summer Blender project 🏝

Simplistic stylized environments are great, visually appealing projects. There is so much to learn in this workflow!

This tutorial series originally aired as a livestream for CG Cookie members - now, it's unlocked for anybody to watch.

Want more Blender training? Browse our collection of 30+ free Blender tutorials.

We are going to create our tropical Blender island

We will start by creating stylized tress (this video, part 1).

In part 2, we will create simple plants to add to our scene (watch part 2 here).

In part 3, we will create our beautiful sandy stylized beach (watch part 3 here).

Finally, in part 4, we will bring it all together and create our whole island scene (watch part 4 here).

Today, we are making these palm trees!

Here's the result of the 4-part tutorial series

Building simple, stylized environment assets

Above all, this style is super FUN to create. Their simplicity is not only appealing to look at, but it also enables for faster creation compared to their photo-real counterparts.

Link-based Blender workflow

Environments are perfect for using Blender's linking system. The idea being that we create individual .blends for each asset then link them into a new .blend where we assemble the overall environment by duplicating the linked assets and placing them appropriately. The benefit with this is that any changes we want to make to the individual asset .blend files will be applied to the assembly containing links accordingly. It's a crucial function for working on complex scenes like this.

Eevee for large scenes

More often I see Eevee being used for singular objects like characters, vehicles, or small contained environments (sci-fi corridors and single-rooms). So we're going to figure out how to make Eevee work for large-scale scenes.

Want more Blender training? Browse our collection of 30+ free Blender tutorials.

Materials Modeling