The Infamous Blender Default Cube

3D Design

Separate from my CAD work in engineering, I decided to start learning the 3D software Blender in the summer of 2025. The decision to start learning stemmed from a somewhat long lasting desire to learn 3D as a supplement to my 2D design skills. Especially for character modeling, skill in 2D often helps a great deal when proportioning in 3D.

As additional motivations, I felt inspired by the fact that my created models could be used in game development, and also took interest in the fact that they could eventually be viewed in VR. 3D design skills are moderately more applicable across a variety of different industries (video, game design, and engineering to name a few), so given my own personal interest it seemed like a no-brainer to start learning.

My First Render

I began my journey in Blender where many do, using Blender Guru's donut tutorial. This tutorial teaches you the basics of modelling, setting up a scene, post processing, and rendering. Through this tutorial, I was able to create my first models and full scene over the course of 3 days (while taking thorough notes to remember tips and hotkeys). The completed scene can be seen on the right.

My First Ever Blender Scene

Intermediate Projects

Having completed my first big project and having learned the ropes, I decided to attempt a few smaller projects to make sure I had a decent handle on things before tackling something bigger again.

The first thing I decided to make was a looping candle animation. This project involved some simple box modelling and sculpting, as well as a chance to mess around with materials and the image compositor a little more. It was also a good opportunity to learn about a few of the tricks that can be used to make a convincing effect out of something relatively simple. In this case, the flame effect was made by a simple sphere deformed into a sort of egg shape, then applying a noise texture to the surface of it as a displacement map. From here, the noise texture's coordinates can simply be animated from point to point to provide a flickering effect, and when paired with some lens flares from the compositor, it provides a convincing flame effect.

candle-eevee-2.mp4

Following this, I decided to model a mushroom. I figured it would be a relatively simple task that I could tackle all on my own, and for the most part it was. My only difficulty while working on the project came from modelling the fins on the underside of the mushroom cap, which I tried modelling a few different ways to get a look I was happy with.

After I finished the actual mesh of the model, I decided it would be a good opportunity to look into some more stylized shading techniques that could make the visuals more interesting. I ended up finding a tutorial for a cartoon-looking shader that included sharp color boundaries and some colorful dynamic outlines for the object that I personally think look really cool. The outline effect is accomplished by procedurally surrounding the object with another surface (shrinkwrap modifier), inverting the normal of the surface so that they all point towards the original object, and then making the back face of the surface invisible (backface culling). This way you only see the outer skin of the shrinkwrap modifier in the places where it curves around the back of the object, effectively giving the object an outline.

For my last interim project, I made a miniaturized character sculpt to gain more familiarity with Blender's sculpting tools. This project was mostly about learning to shape objects the way I wanted and pulling off a pre-determined visual style (in terms of the physical form and proportions, the materials and lighting were still an afterthought). I started with a 2-axis orthographic sketch that outlined the proportions which helped in creating the basic shape of the model. From there, the finer shapes and details were sculpted in. As for style, I chose a kind of goofy simplified/miniaturized look that I thought would be interesting to try and convert from 2D to 3D.

I opted not to retopologize this model yet as I preferred to save that for my next project.

Isomorphic Sketch

Rendered View 1

Rendered View 2

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