I want to take a look back at my 3D art journey. This journey has been quite small so far as opposed to my digital or traditional art. So let's jump into it.

2015

It has all started in the year 2015 when I discovered Blender.

The completely first thing I did (looking at file dates) was this simple render of a cup based on some tutorial on Youtube - I think it was this one here. This was followed immediately with some wineglasses and text rendering tutorials.

Completely enamored with Blender, I've quickly (like 2 days later) jumped into sculpting heads. Being a little pessimistic about creating realistic heads, I've started with some Diablo/Balrog-like demon head - the file being aptly named dynotopo_for_the_first_time.blend. Right after that, I got a little more adventurous with a stylized head - trying to recreate Anna from Frozen.

Additionally, I got quite ambitious right away with hard-surface modeling - thinking I can do something "simple" like a large Boeing airplane realizing I don't have the appropriate depth of knowledge of how to approach such a subject and quitting quite early. Jumping back into head modeling (not sculpting this time) I've created an alien that was supposed to bear semblance to Cara Delevingne - scary stuff.

After that, I've quickly made another jump to a completely different genre of 3D modeling, archviz. I've followed some tutorials on light portals and thought I could do some form of a room with natural lighting. Soon realizing that this won't do.

After seeing Mad Max: Fury Road in cinemas, I've decided to try and recreate Max's Interceptor. This was the largest and most motivating project for me.

2016

The year 2016 was my most prolific year so far. I've got comfortable with Blender and wanted to create EVERYTHING! At that time, I've also gotten into creating games in Unity, so it went hand in hand together.

Trying to recreate my personal room during that time. I've modeled my desk with my unnecessarily large TV, Playstation 4, Mac Mini on which I've been doing all this modeling. Also, I've revisited some projects from last year. Trying to place the newly created couch in the "couch room" and also trying to "fix" my Cara model with hand painted textures, faking light highlights in eyes thinking it's going to save me.

Thankfully, after the Cara catastrophe, I've opted to follow a tutorial to a T. Additionally, in my Multimedia uni class, I've decided to try and create a face rig which was driven by keyboard - creating a woman avatar I've called Clara - I think in my roundabout way an "improvement on Cara - see? It has one more letter therefore it must be better!"

The final result was a controllable face in Unreal Engine 4 where user could type for Clara to speak it. Look at this other post

BMW M3

Another larger project was another car, BMW M3 GTS and some of its variants. It all started with a quick model:

2017

Maya

In 2017 I took classes in Maya.

First, we had to create an air traffic control tower of our choice. I made the LaGuardia airport tower, let's be honest, I thought I'd be an easy one to do due to its very cylindric shape but I also found it visually pleasing.

Funnily enough, I found Maya so unstable and novice unfriendly that I made a deal with my professor that I will do the majority of our second project in Blender and then do materials, rendering and animation in Maya.

As the second task, I've chosen to create an Poe Dameron's X-Wing from Star Wars: A Force Awakens. I dedicate a whole page to it here - X-Wing in Maya.

Bachelor's Thesis

My bachelor's thesis was to make two games, one in Unity and one in Unreal Engine to compare them with a focus on how usable are they for teaching purposes. As I was pressed for time, I've created very rudimentary assets during this time which are showcased in these two projects:

• Unity game
• Unreal Engine game

2018

In 2018, all my modeling was focused on a single game for our VR classes (technically called MVR - modeling and VR if I recall correctly). At that time, I've discovered Substance Painter which I utilized a great deal to create more convincing assets for my game. You can read more about it: here - The Portraitist Game

2019

As 2019 was my last year of university, I didn't manage to do much modeling, only proper project I found was this head sculpt.

2020

The Donut 🍩 got ME! After a long hiatus I wanted to learn what's new in Blender (post 2.8). I've quickly realized that a lot has changed since I last used it. Therefore, I've decided to finally do the donut.

2021 - 2023

In 2021 I've mainly focused on creating digital art and drawing. I have a retrospective in the works about that too! Coming soon...

After that, life just swoop me up and I hadn't touched 3D modelling during that time. I think I didn't want to see a 3D modelling software after work much being a Maya tools programmer in SCS Software during that time.

2024

In November 2024, my love for 3D modelling kind of rekindled.

I've followed a very nice tutorial by Grant Abbitt on GameDev.tv which I've obtained on Humble Bundle because I always adored those cute isometric room scenes and thought that it would be right in my alley to get back into it.

The Future

I've also purchased a very detailed course on car creation by Chris Plush on CG Masters which I plan to run through to finally be able to create hard-surface models as I always envisioned.

More importantly though, I have been learning Blender's API recently and I am trying to combine my knowledge as a hobby artist with my professional knowledge as a programmer to create some hopefully decent tools.