3d Art takes time and personally speaking caring and providing for four children has made extremely aware of this fact. Whether you do 3d art professionally or as a hobby doing things in the most efficient way can greatly increase your output letting you to simply accomplish more and stay motivated.
As such I’ve put together a list of 10 things I think all 3d artists should consider looking into, and possibly implementing to increase their efficiency. In no particular order these include.
- Don’t 3d Model Everything
- Using a Base Mesh Isn’t Cheating
- Utilize Procedural Modelling and Texturing
- Prepare with References Before Starting
- Use a Pen or Tablet Display
- Have Multiple Monitors
- Upgrade Your Hardware
- Shortcuts Can Waste Time
- Use the Best Tool for the Job
- Customize Your User Interface
In this article we will look at each of these points and how they can help make you a more efficient artist.
1. Don’t 3d Model Everything
This is a fairly self-explanatory point but something I’ve personally struggled with A LOT.
Once you understand how to 3d model there is nothing to be gained by modelling pointless assets that you can pick up cheap, or even for free from Marketplaces. These include stuff like chairs, plants, rocks and all the little details that can take considerable time modelling yourself.
You should always be conscious you are not using someone else’s work without permission and give credit where credit is due, but don’t waste your efforts. If you’re a hobbyist you can and should go wild with this.
It’s not cheating. If anything you are doing yourself a disservice by modelling everything yourself. You will spend a disproportionate amount of time modelling and not honing your skills in other parts of a 3d pipeline, such as lighting, composition and rendering, all of which are equally important skills to improve.
There are a lot of assets available on marketplaces both free and paid so give it a try. These include Turbo Squid, Flipped Normals, CG Trader and Unreal Marketplace.
Mixamo have a selection of models and animations available for free that you can use commercially. Please check out my article on this here.
Unreal Engine allows you to use any model or texture from the Quixel Mega scans library for free, if you use it in Unreal Engine. There are simply lots of options out there.
2. Using a Base Mesh Isnt Cheating
Learning Anatomy is great and I encourage you to do so, but creating a new base mesh every time you create a character can get time consuming.
Having a good base mesh to start from can save hours. There is a case to be made that modelling something over and over will improve your skill, however you can still do this by adding further detail to a base mesh.
After much reluctance I’ve recently started working with Daz 3d and in my opinion it’s an amazing piece of software.
Daz 3d specializes in creating 3d characters and has a really useful character builder and poser. It is free to use and the meshes for these models can be exported to Blender or Zbrush for further refinement.
Daz 3d also has some really great affordable additions you can purchase to further refine your characters best of all if you are looking to use Daz commercially you can.
3. Utilising Procedural Modelling & Texturing
Probably some of the most amazing advancements that I have seen in 3d is the development of more and more procedural techniques to model and texture models.
Programs such as Substance Painter for texturing and Houdini for just about every aspect of 3d can do a lot and save a lot of time.
Procedural modelling and texturing is a method of outlining a set number a rules on how to perform a task.
In Substance Painter for instance you can use what are referred to as Smart Materials. These are materials that get applied to your model based on rules. This allows you to dictate where scratches should occur or color applied.
For example you can have a different color applied in cavities as opposed to the higher edges so you can simulate where dirt might accumulate.
The best part of procedural modelling and texturing is its non destructive. Anything you do to the model is not permanent. You can easily revert back to earlier steps and your work is not wasted. This makes it really great to iterate to get your 3d model looking exactly how you want it to fast.
4. Prepare with References Before Starting
No matter how many times I was told this in the past it took me a long time to take to heart. I had an idea of what I wanted to model in my head and I would always assume that was enough.
It turns out it is REALLY HARD to replicate something thats in your head. Taking the extra time to research what you are modelling, gathering reference images on the look, and the kind of style goes a long way.
While it takes time up front it saves time in the long run when you attempt to muddle through something straight from your head.
The best program by far to help with this is Pure Ref. With Pure Ref you can create boards of references and save them out so you can reference them at any time. Best of all it’s FREE!!!
5. Use a Pen or Display Tablet
If you are performing tasks such as sculpting or texturing then by far one of the best investments you can make is a pen or display tablet.
The precision and ability to use pressure sensitivity to dictate your stroke makes things a lot easier and hence improves your efficiency. It is possible to use only a mouse but it can get a bit cumbersome after a while.
You can find my list of recommended tablets here but my personal favourite is the Wacom Intuos Pro Medium. It’s a quality pen tablet that has lasted me years and it’s still going strong. It can be a bit of an investment straight up but well worth the money.
6. Have Multiple Monitors
Most 3d programs have countless buttons and viewports, having multiple screens can greatly help with this especially if you are following my earlier tip of always using references.
I find having and extra monitor a great resource to have. I can have my reference on one screen and my model on the other. This saves the flicking between windows backwards and forwards letting you focus on your art. Its HUGE time saver.
As a side note big monitors are also great the more room you have on your screen the easier it is to use. A lot of the 3d programs with many viewports and menus.
7. Consider Upgrading Hardware
This in most cases is easier said than done. Computer hardware is expensive, but if time is important to you there is nothing like being able navigate a multi million poly model with ease or have almost instant real time rendering.
It can really speed up your workflow. If this is an affordable option for you then I highly encourage you to investigate.
One thing to be be careful of is that you are specing your computer based on the software you use. Different software utilizes different hardware. For example Zbrush almost solely utilizes your CPU as I demonstrated in this article.
8. Shortcuts Can Sometimes Waste Time
I have a confession to make I HATE RETOPOLOGY!!!
I will avoid it with a passion at all costs. I will try multiple auto retopology methods only to fail. I will then try to overcompensate by subdividing a model to insane poly counts, just to get the poly density I require. This then just makes it even more difficult to model.
If I were to simply spend the 15 to 30 mins to reptolopgize manually I would have saved hours of pain.
It’s the little chores like this that we sometimes try to avoid which actually makes 3d art a lot harder. Other common tedious task to consider might include the following.
- Not rigging our character so as to pose them and instead just trying to move limbs yourself.
- Avoiding switching programs even though it would make a task easier.
- Not taking the time to apply seams and arranging UV’s correctly. Instead upping texture resolution to insane sizes
Take the time to do the painful tasks and save yourself a lot of trouble messing around with workarounds.
9. Use the Best Tool for the Job
Blender is a great program and is capable of almost everything, but like a lot of tools its not always the most efficient. More specialize programs exist that can greatly speed up certain aspects of a 3d pipeline.
For example Blender can sculpt and can do so reasonably well. However it can be argued that Zbrush which is a program used almost exclusively for sculpting is better. It is specifically designed for the task and can do it much quicker. This is due to its larger toolset and its algorithm that allows multitudes more polys to be displayed on screen without performance degradation.
Another example of this would be in texturing. You can texture in Blender and it has a reasonable toolset however Substance Painter can by far do the job a lot quicker and easier. Its specifically designed for texturing.
This does not mean you shouldn’t use a program like Blender it has a lot of powerful tools. Just be aware there is nothing that stops you from referring off certain 3d tasks to other programs to get the job done quicker.
A great tool if you are specifically using ZBrush is the GoZ plugin. It allows you to seamlessly transfer your model between Zbrush and most of the popular 3d programs. It can save a lot of time having to import and export models.
10. Customize Your User Interface
Customizing your user interface can save a lot of time. Digging through menus constantly to find certain functions you use a lot can get tedious. Having all your more popular functions all in one place can greatly increase productivity.
This also includes the adjusting viewports, menu sizes and so forth. Most programs will allow you to save these settings out so you don’t have to change them every time you open up the program.
It can take some time to setup and perfect but in the long run it is really useful.
Conclusion
Hopefully I have provided you with some really useful tips that you can look at implementing into your 3d art creation. I’m always looking to do things more efficiently, not only because I have a busy life but it can really sap your motivation when you don’t achieve what you set out to do. Thankyou for taking the time to read and good luck.