It’s no secret right now that the cost of living has skyrocketed, groceries, rent, and loans take up 95% of our paychecks with the other 5% on a pack of soda. The debate now becomes whether or not you skimp on a gallon of milk in exchange for a month of Maya. So, instead of risking your own health and safety for an overpriced product, let’s see what we can create without spending a dime. Mostly, at least, as long as you have a PC and an internet connection.
Blender 3D
You probably saw this one coming from a mile away, but that’s because it’s a perfect tool if you’re looking for a 3D modeling, animating, and sculpting program. While ZBrush and Maya offer more automated features that make a modeler’s life easier, Blender will have you do most everything by hand. This could be seen as a con of Blender as it creates a steep learning curve, but it teaches you good etiquette and how to do it yourself instead of relying on the click of a button. As always with a program like this, you will get as much as you put into it. Study it more and expect great results. Pick it up and expect to be a pro without learning and you’ll not see the greatest of results.
Something New
If you’re looking more so for stylized entries, I highly recommend looking into a programmer by the name of Ephtracy. This developer has made two programs known as MagicaVoxel and MagicaCSG, which look to inspire different ways of modeling. MagicaVoxel allows you to create models block by block, similar to how you could in Minecraft, and export them as an OBJ file. I’ve made some models with MagicaVoxel myself and they can be seen on my 3D Models page.
MagicaCSG is the newest tool Ephtracy has created and it allows you to create the opposite of voxels: smooth faces. It’s a very unique form of model creation, prompting you to use various blobs to combine into a beautiful model. It was released back in 2021 and upon first glance hasn’t had any updates since. But if you take a look at Ephtracy’s Patreon you can see that a new update is gearing up for release with a lot of new features. Go support an indie developer and check them out!
Gimp
While not a software used for 3D modeling, it’s able to achieve photo editing skills that will greatly benefit your models. It’s fully up to you whether or not you want to use Gimp with your creations or not, but using the model/texture painting on Blender leaves more to be desired. If you’d like to use a different brush, blur, or copy and paste any images onto your model, this would be the program to do it as opposed to Blender.
Krita
My wife is the real 2D artist and this was her absolute favorite free program to draw in. If you’re looking to make more than just simple textures in Gimp and want something you can feel more free with, Krita is the perfect tool. It’s currently still being updated as of 2024 and looks to be supported long-term, so give it a go!
Ideation
Once you’ve chosen which program you’d like to proceed with and whether or not you’d like to install an image editor, you can go ahead and take out a piece of paper. If you have a tablet or Cintiq, you can go ahead and create a new file in Krita or whatever program you like. Whether you draw digitally or on paper, I’d recommend drawing on graph or dot paper. This will make it so that when you’re using it as a reference image you can line it up to the grid in Blender.
For those on paper, download a free app from Microsoft called Lens which will scan your document. Snap a photo of your document in the app and it will flatten it, then export it to your computer. You can do this by uploading the image to a cloud such as Google Drive. If your phone supports USB-C, you can also use a thumb drive to transfer its contents.
Channels and Sites
Working with a new program is going to be challenging, and with any other program, there will be a learning curve. Blender a little more. That being said, I’ve made a lot of progress in my Blender journey and wanted to share how you can find resources to teach you about the programs. The first one being Bing.
I’ll admit it, I hate the AI craze, especially how Microsoft is beginning to cash in on the AI Art crowd. But Bing has also somehow managed to become a great search engine when you’re looking to ask it a question. It’ll create a mini personalized wiki page for you while citing its sources by underlining the text. I strongly recommend visiting the sources of these websites as it will give the authors who wrote the information some clicks.
When it comes to videos, you’ll want to use Google as opposed to just using YouTube. Yes, Google owns YouTube now, but I’ve found the YouTube algorithm to be very problematic compared to the standard Google search engine’s algorithm of selecting “videos” on search results. The nice thing about googling your questions and sorting by videos is you’re not just limited to YouTube, you can find professional tutorials from other websites!
Lastly, if you’re feeling like a risk taker, you can try to go on Stack Exchange or Reddit with your question. I’ve done this before and it’s a mixed bag. On one hand, you could get the best advice in your life with the program while on the other you could have someone wish you, your family, your dog, your neighbor, your neighbor’s dog, and your whole extended family to die in a nuclear blast. There’s no in-between.
Keep It Up
What I consider to be the most important of all when handling these programs is to stay focused on your goal and keep finding solutions for your problems. Yes, you will find many problems when you start modeling in these programs, to say you won’t would be a lie. But do not just give in to your inner critic. Keep progressing. Have fun.
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