Looking for simple Blender projects to improve your modelling skills?

Whether you're just starting out or looking for quick Blender exercises, we have some freely available projects right here on CG Cookie.

Let's Build it in Blender Season 2 may be a couple years old, but it is still such a fun, easy-to-follow project that you can do using the latest version of Blender!

Chunck Trafagander will be your guide as you hone your modeling, texturing, and lighting skills—all while building something cool!

Kinda Fast, Mildly Furious - 5 Beginner-Friendly Blender Tutorials, 1 fun project

Follow along with Chunck's Let's Build it in Blender series Season 2 - available free on on youtube channel. These projects will help you:

• ✅ Refresh your modeling and topology skills
• ✅ Play with some simple modifiers
• ✅ Work on some basic to intermediate procedural textures
• ✅ Render a finished hover car!

All of these videos come with a downloadable .blend resource for logged-in CG Cookie members - yes, you can be a free member for these ones!

Quick Intro: What is the “Let’s Build it in Blender” Series?

If you're new here—welcome! CG Cookie is your home for structured Blender learning. While we offer in-depth courses to our members, we also run a free YouTube series, Let's Build it in Blender, featuring fast and fun projects for artists of all levels.

Your host is Charlie “Chunck” Trafagander, who will show you what to do (and just as importantly, what NOT to do) as you build each project.

➡️ Watch all Let's Build It in Blender episodes here.

Now, let’s dive into some awesome projects! 🔥

Project #1: Modeling a Car Body in Blender

The first episode takes a front, side and top elevation and takes you through the steps of box-modeling a car chassis. This project is great for learning:

💡 Box Modeling with a mirror modifier

💡 How to use reference planes 

💡 Adding Bevel and Subdivision modifiers for smoothing

💡 Stylization using a lattice

By the end of this tutorial, you'll have a completed stylized car body to work with!

Project #2: Model Car Hover Boosters in Blender

In this episode, Chunck adds some tires which will transform into hover boosters. This tutorial is ideal for learning:

💡 Block out and refining geometry using modifiers

💡 Animating a heirarchy of objects

💡 Offset keyframes, and adding Animation modifiers

This is a great way of building on the core concepts from the first episode, and add in some simple, procedural animation - an introduction to some of the tools you have at your disposal for making basic animation look cool!

Project #3: Modeling a Baby Cactus in Blender

Practice some low poly, spline, lattice and array modeling techniques to create a small cactus.

🌵 Basic box modeling

🌵 Using a range of modifiers to model

🌵 Being mindful of heirarchy

Project #4: Transforming A Car into a Zombie Destroyer in Blender

In this episode, you'll use the base chassis to add extra assets that will transform this stylised hovercar into a zombie destroyer. You'll learn:

🧟 How to use existing geometry to create extra assets

🧟 How to use NURBS paths to create beams

🧟 How to snap geometry to faces to align assets to topology

Some additions might be best to revisit tutorials such as:

Stealing and duplicating details is a repetetive process, so parenting and using constraints is how you'll get everything working correctly.

Project #5: Texturing a Zombie Destroying Hover Car in Blender

Let's now learn how to create a range of procedural materials and shaders to finish this project off! You'll learn how to:

🖌️Create some basic procedural textures

🖌️Create some materials using downloaded textures and control roughness, metallic and normal aspects of your shader

🖌️Use Texture coordinates, mapping and ramps and create custom masks

🖌️Mapping textures to create stenciled logos

With everything completed, you should have a pretty cool little project to be proud of!

Looking for More Blender Projects?

If you've completed these beginner projects, why not take the next step? Check out these additional Blender learning resources:

📌 Press Start Course: A free beginner-friendly project to help you build your first full 3D scene.

📌 Blender Basics Guide: Learn the core principles of modeling, texturing, and animation.

📌 CORE: Fundamentals of 3D Mesh Modeling: model basic objects with ease and have a good idea of how to approach more complex ones.

Happy Blending!

-Paul Caggegi