As I’ve gotten back into modeling some of my own 3D content, I realized how it has given me more freedom of expression. A lot of my renders lately are of the roleplaying characters for my girlfriend and I to create snapshots of stories we’re co-writing. We tend to have very specific ideas about the look of our characters and the things they might own; so being able to create simple things myself has allowed me to reach my goals for my images without having to be limited by the content that others have created.
For example, our characters recently got married in-game. So we wanted the images I created to have wedding bands. But she’s particular about wanting to have silver/platinum and simple, but not entirely plain. While there are a lot of ring collections available from marketplace sites like Daz 3D or Renderosity and even freebies from places like ShareCG, nothing was quite what we needed and I didn’t feel like spending $10-12 for a collection of rings that were “close” when I could create some myself.
It took me a full evening to create the rings we wanted, but most of that was actually about getting them to work properly as props attached to the character’s hand rather than the modeling itself.
Wedding rings worn by Conall and Simi
Another example was a simple picture frame that I needed. The story is that they are fans of Tim Burton’s “Nightmare Before Christmas” and so we needed a picture to hang on the wall with a frame that was appropriately just a little unusual. It took me less than 20 minutes to come up with this as opposed to buying a collection of frames or spending an hour searching for a free one.
Picture from Nightmare before Christmas framed and hanging on the wall.
As a final example, the crib below is based off a design that Jenny really wanted to use for the baby. This project took longer because of a couple of false starts on my part. I could go into my mistakes and rework at length, but in the end it was mostly about knowing when to do the UV mapping of the parts of the crib. It also represents the first time I created something specifically to use Daz Studio’s dForce cloth simulation (the canopy is modeled from a basic cone shape and the dForce simulation makes it drape properly).
Baby crib with a lace canopy.
My point to all of this is that none of these objects existed exactly in any 3D market or freebie sharing site anywhere. Learning how to model them myself allowed me to create exactly the items I needed for my image instead of just browsing through my collection of 1000s of pre-made items to find something that is “close enough”. Not having to compromise (and yes, being a bit proud of rendering with something I created myself) is a good feeling as an artist.
I encourage anyone who wants to take their artistry from composing the objects created by other people into a realm where you’re creating images that conform exactly to your vision to learn at least the basics of modeling. You may not ever want to get to the point where you’re creating your own clothing or modeling an entire forest. But the freedom you gain from knowing you can create your own lamps, picture frames, dishes, even furniture is a wonderful new experience!
Karl's Journey 