Staying at home has given me a lot of time to think about my personal design goals. One thing that became clear to me over this time was that I didn’t want to be stagnant. I want to be someone who never stops learning and exploring topics that I’m passionate or curious about.

In this article, I pick up Blender — a free, 3D software with a suite of tools used to create animated films, visual effects, motion graphics, and much more.

I want to share my design process; what I’ve learned along the way, and how I might apply these skills to make them relevant — hopefully I can inspire others in some capacity.

The Significance of a Donut

With every new skill, you learn to walk before you can run (generally). To start, many Blender artists recommended the popular donut tutorial from Andrew Price, the Blender Guru. So, for the first couple days, I learned how to make a donut.

This tutorial helped establish a solid foundation of techniques and core concepts. Mainly; creating and applying materials; an introduction to sculpting; applying the subsurface division modifier (makes things smooth).

I studied the rationale behind every step, memorizing the result of each tool or technique used. To create my own future projects, I would most likely need to refer back to these concepts.

You don’t need to know everything. There’s really only 20% of the features that you use, 80% of the time.

Learning new design software can sometimes be overwhelming, especially when there are so many tools and buttons present on the interface. It’s one of the reasons why I was hesitant to learn at first. But this tutorial made me realize I don’t need to know everything — just the tools, that I’ll use the most.

Becoming a Sponge

For the next few weeks, my approach was to be a metaphorical sponge. I searched YouTube for tutorials on visual effects and styles — trying to learn anything I could.

Below, you’ll find some of the renders I made from following these tutorials; things I learned; a link to the tutorial.

Anime-style Water Caustics

This was my first introduction to nodes.

Nodes allow you to make changes to the appearance of materials applied on a mesh. Using a string of nodes can help you achieve more complex materials. For example, some people get really creative and make materials like this.

This render consists of two planes — by modifying the texture’s X and Y coordinates you can simulate movement in the water (top plane) and reflections of light on the ocean floor (bottom plane).

Glass Dispersion

This tutorial shows you how to create a shader to simulate the way light disperses through glass (think Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon). The concept is to separate the red, green, and blue (RGB) channels; shifting them slightly, so that light passing through the glass is spread into RGB colours.

Animating in Blender felt similar to animating with prototyping tools. Instead of artboards or frames, Blender uses keyframes (applied to properties) to define each transition. Transitions are automatically filled in between each keyframe, behaving just like Figma’s Smart Animate feature.

Iridescent Fabric

I’m a sucker for shiny things — if you’ve ever collected trading cards, you’d understand the rush of dopamine from getting a holographic card. So when I first saw this iridescent effect being used in a K/DA music video, I knew I had to try and recreate it.

To get started, I learned how to create “fabric” from this tutorial. Applying a displace modifier to a plane and changing the texture type to marble, results in smooth cloth-like folds.

For the iridescent effect, I followed the concept behind the shader tutorial and tinkered with the node values until I got a colour palette that I was visually pleased with.

*uploaded to Imgur due to file size.

Make Things for Fun

As I got more comfortable with Blender, I wanted to try making my own renders without referencing tutorials.

I had the freedom to create anything I wanted. So, looking around, I chose to create things I’m interested in. Being interested in what I’m creating, means I’m more likely to stay invested and not abandon the project.

It’s really important to have fun, no matter what you’re doing. If you don’t find joy in what you’re doing, it’s a lot easier to experience burnout. And when you’re burnt out, you just don’t feel like doing anything.

Prototyping Tools

I do mostly everything, in Figma: presentation slides; animations; prototyping, etc. It’s my favourite design tool, so I thought I’d model it.

As a hobbyist photographer, I remembered learning about the standard lighting setup, three-point lighting. For this render, I was able to experiment with lighting using this principle.

The key light illuminates the subject; the fill light balances out the shadows, and the back light is used to create contrast, separating the subject from the background.

Video Game Cosmetics

One of my favourite pastimes is playing video games. I’ve been playing Valorant recently, a free-to-play game published by Riot Games.

To keep the game free, Riot Games designs and offers “skin bundles” — replacing the in-game models with unique animations and styles. I thought, why not try to conceptualize my own?

This render is inspired by the expression glass cannon. Using the glass dispersion shader from before, I re-skinned one of the in-game gun models. For the background, I layered one of the maps behind the gun model to match the perspective of the player.

Type in Motion

Inspired by the music video from before — I animated type with Figma, using one of the iridescent experiments as a background. This was my first time having a use case for GIFs in Figma and I think it turned out pretty well.

Daydreaming Shiba Inu

I have a Shiba Inu named Katsu. This ones for him, he’s a good boy.

I made this using mostly — modeling techniques from the donut tutorial. While experimenting, I found the shrinkwrap modifier, which allowed me to layer the white and red parts onto the orange mesh.

Applying 3D to Your Workflow

You might be wondering, “how might these skills be relevant to anyone other than 3D artists”?

Here are some of the ways I can apply 3D to my workflow:

Storytelling

In any business, storytelling is one of the most important aspects.

Stories are relatable — they give life to a product and make it engaging. Without stories, all we have are facts. And facts speak to your mind, but stories speak to your heart.

This render is for fun and in no way meant to shame Adobe or Sketch.

To illustrate my point, I went back and made some changes to the Figma and Sketch render. I added Adobe XD and moved the subjects along the Y-axis, giving them their own visual hierarchy.

Placing elements in this manner, tells the viewer a story, and having the freedom of an added dimension can make your work more compelling.

Custom Product Marketing

I made this quick mock-up as a concept for a fictional credit card.

3D illustrations have been widely used for product landing pages because, as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Sure, there are tons of stock mock-ups you can use, but I think having the flexibility to tailor your product is an extremely powerful marketing tool.

Studio-like Product Backdrop

One of the most useful things I’ve learned throughout this journey, is how to make a product backdrop. If there’s ever a need for product photography, this is a great alternative if you don’t have access to a studio.

Here’s a step-by-step:

The Extra 10 Percent

I call that the extra 10% — we’ll ask ourselves at the very end, is there anything that’s an extra 10% that we can do? — Zach King

I came across this video where VFX artist, Zach King, brings up “the extra 10 percent”. After filming each set, they (the team) ask themselves if there’s anything (small) they can do to improve the work.

Inspired by this, I went back to revisit the sprinkled donut.

Although the changes I made to the donut weren’t entirely small, you get an idea of the work ethic behind successful people like Zach King — and it motivates you to push things just a little further.

Closing

Truthfully, I gave myself a month to learn 3D, but spent about half that time actually doing anything. Some animations would take hours to render, and during that time, I’d just leave my setup and go do something else.

I took things at my own leisurely pace — playing video games, watching shows on Netflix, spending time with family, etc. What I’m trying to say is, please remember to take breaks! It’s important to look after yourself especially during these times.

I had a ton of fun learning something new — hopefully I’ve inspired some of you to pursue the things you’ve always wanted to learn.

Special thanks to these 3D wizards who helped guide and inspire me through this learning journey.
Blender Guru ✦ CG Cookie ✦ CG Matter ✦ Dedouze ✦ Kristof Dedene

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