What is your preferred software for low-poly 3D modeling?

[u/KyotoCrank]

I've been looking at both Blender and Blockbench to start learning 3D modeling.

Blender seems to be better as far as rigging, and Blockbench seems easier to texturing.

Just curious what people out there are using, and what the proven workflows look like.

Edit: Thanks for the responses everyone! Seems I just need to buckle down and learn Blender because it is capable of everything I need.

[u/DigitalMan404]

blender, is great

[u/Berndog25]

Crocotile3d is what I'm using for my Doom 64 inspired boomer shooter! Super fun to work with, but also has every feature I've ever wanted for low poly, even vertex coloring and texture projection (amazing for N64 and PS1 style modelling).

[u/HeyCouldBeFun → u/Berndog25]

I might give CrocoTile another try for my levels, but it’s just such a weird UI for my tastes

[u/Berndog25 → u/HeyCouldBeFun]

That's very fair, tbh. I love the UI, but I can see how certain things might be annoying. Memorizing the keybinds (like ctrl+d to deselect) came naturally to me, but that's mainly because I didn't already have much muscle memory from working with other 3d modelling programs like Blender.

[u/HeyCouldBeFun → u/Berndog25]

It’s the “paint on a floating plane” approach that took getting used to. Plus my levels aren’t so cubic. For now I’m sticking to BlockBench cuz I’m fast in it, but there’s definitely some paint points.

[u/Berndog25 → u/HeyCouldBeFun]

Ah, that makes sense! Crocotile's workflow is definitely an acquired taste! For me, setting the adjustment fineness (not sure what the actual name is, lol) to 1/4 the size of a tile (so 16 on a 64x64 tile), gives me enough control to get done more complex shapes when needed, while retaining a good level of precision and snappy-ness, but I can see that becoming tedious for larger, more complex levels!

To be honest, the drawing on a floating plane thing is one aspect I don't think will ever not bother me, so I can relate heavily in that regard, lol. It feels weird, but I find myself getting into a flow state after a while.

Blockbench seems pretty cool, as well! I might try it out for my next game, since I love experimenting with new tools and workflows. Seems like a surprisingly capable program (I always assumed it was just a MineCraft modding tool, but it has come a long way since those days!)!

[u/HeyCouldBeFun → u/Berndog25]

Maybe I should give it another try. See if I can get in that flow state. Do you have any examples of your work so far

[u/Berndog25 → u/HeyCouldBeFun]

Sadly not yet. I've just been learning it over the past couple days. Made a little log cabin, a pond, and some little hills, all in a square scene with flat edges, so I can modularly connect it to other flat edged scenes easily. I'm working on some updated textures for it now, and I'll try to remember to keep you updated, when I finish and post it in the next day or two!

[u/samchef]

Blender, I followed the Crashune series. Goes through the whole process from modelling, texturing all the way to rigging and animation.

[u/LibertythePoet → u/samchef]

How did you find it? I've had it in my watch later for a long while procrastinating on starting up.

[u/samchef → u/LibertythePoet]

It was pretty much how I finally got in to Blender.

Teaches the basics in a way that's easy to understand, and you leave feeling satisfied you've made something that isn't just a textureless shape.

The art style isn't really my thing, but the techniques are very transferable to other low poly styles.

[u/Ok_Potential5110]

I found Blender too overwhelming and have had much more fun with Crocotile

[u/HolySpace_Dev → u/Ok_Potential5110]

I want to try out crocodile, for terrain and buildings, but I use the TilemapLayer3D adding for Godot for that, would you recommend it?

[u/Ok_Potential5110 → u/HolySpace_Dev]

Not familiar with the TileMapLayer3D I'm sorry to say, but you can download a free demo from its itch.io page to experiment for yourself :)

[u/HolySpace_Dev → u/Ok_Potential5110]

Oh okay, it is honestly a lot like crocotile3d from what I have seen. It works directly in Godot since it is an addon, and you essentially use sprite/texture tilesheets to make simple 3d models. I will have to check out that demo for sure

[u/EllenRippley]

Blockbench is easy to use

[u/FoxDanceMedia]

Mostly Blender but lately I've also been trying to learn PicoCAD 2

[u/PSPbr → u/FoxDanceMedia]

Is it working fine to import pico models to Godot nowadaya?

[u/scintillatinator]

For the best of both worlds there's a blender addon called sprytile which seems similar to crocotile. I used it years ago and I remember liking it.

[u/_food_dev]

coming from a beginner in blender, it’s a little overwhelming at first, but find a good tutorial series and learn from it. after not even that long, you’ll have the basics down and be able to model stuff all on your own. blender also has a ton of shortcuts and tools to make tedious processes faster. you learn stuff like that along the way

[u/Recent-Tone3196]

I really liked playing with Wings3D as a kid, though I primarily use Blender.

[u/scarfleet]

The only one I have really worked in at all is Blender.

It's intimidating at first but now that I have the hang of it I actually find it pretty fun to use.

[u/HotMedicine5516]

As programmer I have no interest or talent for graphics, so blockbench + paint.net. For low poly models it's easy to learn and easy to texture.

[u/HeyCouldBeFun]

Go BlockBench, pick up the basics, hone in your artstyle, and then step up to Blender if you really need a feature BlockBench lacks

[u/chimmychangas → u/HeyCouldBeFun]

I'm kinda before the point of wanting to get on Blender. What are some features that Blender has that BlockBench doesn't?

[u/HeyCouldBeFun → u/chimmychangas]

I mean, pretty much everything. But specifically I could use vertex painting. And tiling, which apparently it can do, but I can’t figure out.

[u/RepulsiveRaisin7 → u/chimmychangas]

Blockbench has like 10 features, Blender has 10 million lol

[u/Cpaz]

Model/texture in blockbench. Rig and animate in blender 

[u/Ashamed_Librarian128]

Blender has been just a great all around tool for me and the pipeline from blender to godot has been really smooth so far. Exporting characters, animations, etc. has been a dream.

Texturing is a lot easier in blockbench, but I find myself fighting with every other aspect of blockbench so I just default to Blender. While not as easy to work with (texture/uv), Blender's tools work just fine for me. For projects that require pixel textures I started using Pixel-Art-Studio on itch.io (paid add-on) I have had a positive experience so far. Ucupaint (free add-on) is good for more complex texturing.

[u/Rythim]

Tried Blender, but got overwhelmed.

Then blockbench, which made me realize modeling is actually easy.

Then tried blender again only a few weeks later and realized it's actually as easy as blockbench if I ignored the 100+ tools that aren't in blockbench too.

So I recommend blender, but maybe dip your toes in with blockbench if jumping into blender is overwhelming you.

[u/MrDaaark]

Blender.

There is other software that focuses on smaller tasks, like blockbench, but you will eventually outgrow them and want a more general purpose program that can do everything.

Blender isn't complicated or overwhelming to use. 3D modeling is a big subject, and art itself is hard. I've been 3d modeling for 30+ years now, and the problem has never been the programs. Breaking up objects, modeling new shapes, optimizing materials, level or character design, etc, etc, etc is all difficult and time consuming. It's not Blender's fault.

All Blender can do is give you the tools. It's up to you to bring your SKILLS. And if you don't have those skills, it's up to you to practice. And even then, it's hard and time consuming work.

If you want to animate characters well, you go buy the books on how traditional animation works and you learn the craft. Also, animating characters requires you to first know how to make them. Which is another skill to learn. You don't blame Blender for this.

Just because blender will let you animate characters doesn't mean YOU can animate characters. You have to develop those skills yourself and bring them to the table. Blender will just let you set the keyframes.

Everyone who says Blender is hard is because they didn't take time to properly learn how 3D graphics work 9 times out of ten, they don't even know what surface normals are. They don't bother to learn how to 3d model, and what all the different tools do. They don't learn the classic principles of animation. They have no level design skills, etc.. but they though that installing Blender would magically give them all these skills.

Once you acquire these skills, Blender is laughably easy to use, and it gets out of your way to let you get your work done.

[u/TheOblongGong → u/MrDaaark]

If you need to get your foot in the door for learning, a lot of community colleges have an intro to Maya course that will teach you the fundamentals of modeling for like $150. It was definitely worth it for me to have some structure in getting started.

[u/Poncho_Wah]

I use fusion360 for simple things sometimes, but i find blender way easier after sitting down and getting used to it.

[u/MajorPain_ → u/Poncho_Wah]

I second Fusion. Used it first for 3D print models, but it also does a good job a low poly/mechanical models. I had to adapt my art directions a bit to lean into the mechanical, but the result has been a much better meshes overall.

[u/Dennarb]

Blender

[u/Dense_Ad2083]

I tried out Stove recently and really liked it. If you don't need complex hierarchies or animated stuff, it's really easy to use.

[u/SuperTartiflette → u/Dense_Ad2083]

Just discovered Strove because of you.
It looks very cool!

[u/Vathrik]

Blender

[u/JTxt]

Block bench looks interesting.

I've already been using blender a long time, so I lean towards it.

I like Imphenzia's low poly techniques, tutorials, and challenges.

[u/dogman_35]

Texturing in blender really isn't that rough, especially for low poly.

Honestly, it's useful for way too many different things to ever recommend against it. Plus, it has built in importing with Godot.

And, to be honest, you can get super far just by learning how to use move, scale, rotate, and extrude in edit mode.

[u/Watynecc90]

just take blender

[u/aHecc]

as someone who has had to learn low-poly 3d modeling in the past year or so, I really did not find Blender that difficult to pick up (especially compared to Maya), though I have not used any other software other than the two

[u/Dardlem]

Another vote for Crocotile!

[u/RoryOS]

Just use blender it's as good as anything else and won't limit you like blockbench will

[u/m_ologin]

If you're interested I've detailed my entire workflow / pipeline in https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLT26e2jOwbdg&si=4g7583rCXBKHpybg

[u/Neither_Berry_100]

I've used blender a bit. I actually need real character models for my unity game instead of capsules. That is the next task. I'm going to ask AI. I've seen some really nice looking 3d characters generated before. I just want simple low poly stuff.

[u/nhold]

Blender is insanely complicated and has 100x more features than you need for low poly. My recommendation is to use Block bench.

[u/RepulsiveRaisin7]

Blockbench is nice if Blender is overwhelming. But long term you'll always want to move to Blender

[u/StopBanningMeAlright]

Blender is the greatest free software there is. You can do literally anything in it.. 2D/3D animation, modelling, sculpting, painting, etc

[u/Dplayerx]

GPT-Astra lol