Boost your 3D prowess by following these great 3D tutorials.
Working in the 3D industry, it’s easy to become blinkered to your own studio’s tools, procedures and processes. But there are many different ways of achieving the same result, and new techniques and tools coming onto the market all the time.
Check out these top tutorials, all posted on Creative Bloq in 2017, and you may well discover new ways of doing things that save you time, energy and budget.
Developing a digital double is one of the most intricate and challenging tasks that a 3D artist can ever face, but with increasing demand for this kind of service within the industry, it’s a good time to delve into the practice to see what’s involved.
In this walkthrough, Aybars Turan explains how to create a realistic likeness using ZBrush and Maya, beginning with a base mesh.
There’s nothing that can bring a game, TV show or movie to life better than an impressive explosion. And the good news is that software is becoming increasingly sophisticated in helping 3D artists create them.
In this tutorial, Syawish A Rehma shows you how to craft a convincing-looking explosion using Maya’s nParticles and FumeFX.
One of the biggest problems with archviz is that however well developed, your models can end up looking overly geometric, clinical and bland. A good way to add a touch of humanity is by incorporating some plants and trees into the scenes.
Get the Creative Bloq Newsletter
Daily design news, reviews, how-tos and more, as picked by the editors.
Here, 3D World magazine editor Rob Redman reveals how you can make use of Cinema 4D's MoGraph tools to create 3D foliage quickly and easily.
When you’re creating a furry creature, you don’t just want it to look good: you want people to want to reach out and stroke it.
In this video tutorial, with supporting files, Jesus Fernandez walks you through his process for creating an irresistibly furry creature in 3D using Maya, ZBrush and Redshift.
Humans come in all shapes and sizes, and once you’ve mastered basic anatomy, improving your people-sculpting skills is all about becoming adaptable. ZBrush is a great tool for this because it provides you with the kind of freedom required when shaping forms.
Jakub Chechelski demonstrates by walking you through a sculpt of Olympic swimming champ Michael Phelps.
Animation graduate Martin Nabelek has been getting rave reviews for his 3D sci-fi short OFF, which was made with a very tight turnaround. Here he shares his top tips for improving your own 3D workflows.
It’s great to see so many 3D programs on the market, but switching between them can prove clunky and tedious in practice. Jason Knight mainly works in Cinema 4D, but often move his characters in and out of DAZ Studio.
Here he presents the best four-step process for doing so: the result of countless hours of trial and error.
Who doesn’t love the free 3D software suite Blender? In this tutorial, Pierrick Picaut shows you how to use its Dynamic Topology system to create stylised wooden and stone tileable textures from sculpted surfaces.
Combining both 2D digital painting and 3D sculpting techniques, this walkthrough by Riyahd Cassiem demonstrates how he used ZBrush, KeyShot and Photoshop to build a cool Darth Vader figure.
Using ZBrush and Quixel, this detailed tutorial by Tyler Smith walks you through his pipeline for designing, sculpting and rendering a fantasy creature.
Like all sophisticated 3D software, Maya offers a quite staggering range of tools, commands and options. For many, this can be bewildering and off-putting, so one solution can be to create your own custom UI.
This tutorial by Rob Redman shows you how to do so.
When you’re giving your 3D model facial expressions, it can sometimes be more efficient to create a few blend shapes than trying to make weight maps work properly for every situation.
This quick step-by-step by Rob Redman shows you how to do it.
Tom May is an award-winning journalist and editor specialising in design, photography and technology. Author of the Amazon #1 bestseller Great TED Talks: Creativity, published by Pavilion Books, Tom was previously editor of Professional Photography magazine, associate editor at Creative Bloq, and deputy editor at net magazine. Today, he is a regular contributor to Creative Bloq and its sister sites Digital Camera World, T3.com and Tech Radar. He also writes for Creative Boom and works on content marketing projects.