- Joined
- Feb 13, 2022
Welcome to 3D / CGI Art General
I'm surprised we haven't had a thread like this yet, so what better time than now for any 3D artfags to discuss and share their Computer Generated artwork and tools with others.
Let's get the basics out of the way first:
Blender
This is pretty much the go-to program for any beginner 3D artist. It's free and open source and very feature-rich that offers a multitude of use cases for 3D design. There's a million tutorials out there to get you started on how to use it. Good for hobbyists who want to dabble in 3D while not having to pirate or shuck out $1,000+ for any paid 3D Software from tech giants. There's also an endless surplus of add-ons you can add to make your workflow easier if you so wish.
Website
Download
Support
Community Help
Add-ons
Source Filmmaker
3D animation software developed by Valve in order to make movies inside of the Source game engine for games like TF2 and Half-Life 2. Only reason I'm putting this here is because it's the only other popular and free option for 3D animation besides Blender. A lot of funny or garbage stuff can be found out of this tool, but in rare moments you'll get a gem like Emesis Blue made entirely within it.
Requires Steam to run it.
Steam Page
Website
Tutorial Playlist (made by Valve employees)
FAQ
Steam Community
Wiki
FreeCAD
CAD stands for "Computer-Aided Design." It's a way to digitally create 2D drawings and 3D models of real-world products before they're ever manufactured. This is for more serious real-world applications regarding size and dimensions when modeling a product. You can use something like Blender for models, but this is geared towards actual industrial engineering design.
Website
Download
Wiki
Community Forum
Autodesk Maya & 3DS Max (and really everything else from the Autodesk suite)
They are not cheap at all (nearly $2,000 annually for each), this is for people or companies that are serious about getting into 3D graphics as a career. Piracy is an option, but always take into account other things like if your PC is powerful enough to run these programs and "is the familiar workflow really worth it to keep using these programs? Or should I cut my losses and start new on Blender?"
Maya Page
3DS Max Page
Tutorial Catalog
Obscure 90s 3D Software
I know something like this would be achievable in Blender/Maya depending on the lighting, version, render engine, etc. But I figured I'll go ahead and cover this too as it's something a lot of 3D artists have a fondness for and want to replicate. I'll just copypaste this megathread (A) from r/retrocgi that should cover all there is to know about 90s CGI and what you should use:
There's a lot more 3D programs I could link but let's be real, they're all basically the same and are expensive as fuck. There might be 1 program better suited for a specific task than the other, but by that point it's all in a matter of preference and computing power. It's like choosing between what drawing app do you use or what DAW do you make music in.
As for me personally, I've dabbled a bit in Blender in the past but never really got super serious or far into it. Mainly following a beginner tutorial, mess around with placing objects and sculpt dumb bullshit before shelving it until the next time I feel like I want to pick it up again. This was basically most of what my learning "efforts" amounted to:
(Sorry if the OP looks a bit disjointed, I tried using the "horizontal lines" to better section off each part, but they're the same color as the message box when you hit post, Josh fix it NOW
)
