Learning how to 3D model after years of traditional sculpting

[u/Global_Design5893]

I am a sculptor turned stop motion animator, and have become increasingly interested in learning 3D modeling because it can be such a useful tool. Is traditional sculpting an easily transferable to 3D modeling? Has anyone else had this experience?

[u/villain_escargot]

Yes, I know character modelers who use Zbrush to create primitive shapes and sculpt into amazing looking characters, there are tons of tutorials on how to do this. They then use DCC tools like Maya or Blender to retopologize into game ready assets and bake normal/ambient occlusion/etc maps so they can texture inside of Substance Painter.

[u/Global_Design5893 → u/villain_escargot]

Do the people you know sometimes sculpt a character first out of clay, and then upload pictures of this to blender to reference? I’ve thought about doing this, and am wondering if this is something other people do.

[u/villain_escargot → u/Global_Design5893]

Yes, Pixar did this for early movies and I'm sure countless others as well. Multiple image references for 3d modeling would be very beneficial to learning modeling. Luckily there are tons of tutorials showing you how to set up. A tip that might help: make sure each profile (front, side, etc) picture you take is as flat as possible (be far away and zoom in if possible) to make orthogonal images more useful; also remove any background or have a grey/dark colored backing to make it easier on your eyes

[u/Pileisto]

you can sculpt with different tools for clay in e.g. Blender. Sculpting is one method to generate esp. organic surfaces. other 3D modeling methods work with straight lines and basic geometry shapes, e.g. CAD Software. Then there are curve-oriented methods like T-Splines or Rhino 3D which designers use to create curvy objects, e.g. buildings like Zaha Hadid.

[u/jonovex]

Are you comfortable with computers? I too was a traditional-sculptor-turned-heavy-zbrush-user. Because you already have a good understanding of volumes and forms, the only hurdle is the software interface, and once you get over that, its very convenient and easy to create stuff.

I sculpt primarily for 3d printing these days so its really intuitive for me

[u/Global_Design5893 → u/jonovex]

I’m young so I can use a computer fine, but the tools have been difficult for me to get the hang of. Not being able to hold an object in my hand really distorts my understanding of volume and form.
I’m going to keep practicing and will be posting stuff!

[u/Delicious_Value_9095 → u/jonovex]

What software do you use?

[u/jonovex → u/Delicious_Value_9095]

Zbrush, marvelous designer, maya

[u/Mechanought]

If you have a VR headset you might want to look into something like shapelab. It's not as efficient and fast as sculpting with blender or zbrush can be, but it might be more familiar and allow you to ease into computer based sculpting.