Book Image

Low Poly 3D Modeling in Blender

By : Samuel Sullins
Book Image

Low Poly 3D Modeling in Blender

By: Samuel Sullins

Overview of this book

Step into the world of low poly 3D art with Low Poly 3D Modeling in Blender—your entry point into Blender and mastering the fundamentals of 3D art. This beginner-friendly guide ensures that you’re fully prepared for the creative adventure that follows. Through a step-by-step learning process starting with the principles of low poly art, this book gradually immerses you in the intricacies of modeling. As you progress, you’ll gain hands-on experience creating diverse projects ranging from designing a simple 3D crate to rendering complete low poly scenes. The book covers a wide spectrum of topics as you navigate Blender's interface, mastering essential modeling tools and exploring both basic and advanced modeling techniques. Advancing to the final chapters, you’ll find ways to breathe life into your models with material creation and gain practical insights into modeling a variety of low poly objects. From end-to-end scene construction to configuring Blender for rendering high-quality images, you’ll be equipped with the foundational skills to propel your career in 3D modeling and explore the boundless creative possibilities that Blender offers. By the end of this book, you'll have a solid understanding of Blender, 3D modeling, low poly methodologies, material design, 3D rendering techniques, and the broader world of 3D art.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
1
Part 1:Getting Started with Low Poly Modeling
5
Part 2:Modeling and Shading for Low Poly
9
Part 3:Creating Your Own Assets
15
Part 4:Building a Complete Low Poly Scene

Understanding materials

Before you can understand materials, you need to learn a little about how 3D rendering works in Blender. The whole process is done by a complicated piece of software called a rendering engine. There are two different rendering engines in Blender: one is called Eevee, and the other is called Cycles.

The rendering engine does all the hard work of rendering. It calculates what your 3D scene looks like from the point of view of a camera. It simulates the effect of light emitting from a source (like the default one we always delete) and calculates how that light would bounce around the scene, what it would illuminate, and what would remain in shadow.

But light reacts differently with different objects. For example, light hitting a smooth, shiny mirror reflects perfectly off of it, but light hitting a piece of stone reflects differently since the stone is rough. See Figure 6.1 to know the difference:

Figure 6.1: Shiny versus rough material

Figure 6.1: Shiny versus rough...