Tutorial? Anyone?

Learning something completely new you have never done before is not always the most straight forward process. While working on the 3D avatar for my personal assistant I started to pick up 3D modeling and some very basic drawing skills. Well, mostly 3D modeling, drawing is on the back burner right now. The thing is once you hit a roadblock things get frustrating really quickly.

Overall I really do not want to complain too much. There is a reason professionals spend decades mastering the craft. Most do so by going through a traditional education and years of working on door knobs before even being close to designing a character. To set this into context, my last artwork was in 11th grade titled "eagle in starless night during lunar eclipse". You might have guessed it correctly, a black piece of paper. This is roughly the level of artistic skill I went into this with.

And I do not want to pretend I developed much of an artistic skillset so far. But over hours and hours over many weekends I started to develop a feeling for Blender. And I got pretty good at moving vertexes, edges and faces around.

The tutorial series I started to work with was very mechanical in its approach, with fit me pretty well. I am certainly able to think and orient myself in a 3D space. (Thanks video games, good job!) Starting with a sphere and moving vertexes until it roughly matched the reference image was doable once I understood the basics. And these basics get you a long way.

What was the first real challenge was the grab and smooth tool. Whenever I heard the words "and now we will use our artistic vision to sculpt" I know I am in for a few hours of frustrating "close without saving" and starting over.

A major issue was that for some reason my tools behave differently - at the exact same settings shown in the video. Or that some settings are never mentioned but assumed to be enabled or disabled. I got a little help working through these issues and got to a point where I can actually make changes to the model using those two tools. Do not ask me what the other 500 do, I simply tell myself they are there for shits and giggles because someone wanted to add another icon.

Now understanding the tools is one thing. But getting a graphic tablet and being able to use a pen to operate them was a small game changer. Even a touchpad (on a Mac, not whatever other laptops call a touchpad) was a better experience than using a mouse.

If I learned one thing teaching martial arts is that understanding the "why" behind something goes a long way. You can go through the motions of a kata, but once you have a small demonstration how these motions translate to an actual punch, throw or counter things often click and get a lot easier.

As a side effect I started looking at ZBrush. It appears like most people use five different tools to sculpt and animate a character, but most seem to agree that ZBrush is the standard to use. I might one day take a look and simply write the $450 off as a business expense. It seems far more approachable and maybe a nice evolution once I get better at character modeling. And other than Maya - which was recommended a few times instead of Blender - it seems far more approachable and make more of a difference for what I want to do at a lot lower price point.

So far it sounds like things are going decently okay. Enter: Hair.

How much I hate it. Maybe my "personal style" will be that all my characters are bald or wear a hat. While working on the hair for my avatar I ran into a roadblock. I try to go for a more stylized version like Overwatch or Fortnite. Finding good tutorials for this style is not that easy. And most assume you know how hair works. No one actually explains how it works though!

Hair is stupid. It does not work. It does fifty different things that even when you seem to have understood them are near impossible to apply. And that is before you deal with "order vs chaos" which makes the hair look more realistic.

The last few weeks have been miserable and the worst time I had with Blender so far. So what do we do when things get hard? We stubbornly study hair, start the eighth collection for a fresh start and keep going. My mom did not raise a quitter.

This is universally the same for anything you learn in life. At some point things will get hard. And frustrating. And you want to throw your monitor out of the window and start woodworking. It can be a new programming language. 3D design. Learning an instrument (Do not ask me how often I played the intro of Enter Sandman back in the day). Poetry? I assume some people try their hand at that. Not sure why, but enjoy if that is your jam.

There is no participation trophy. You either work through the obstacles or you quit. If you truly do not enjoy what you are doing anymore that is a perfectly valid and fine thing to do. No one is forcing you to be miserable and neither should you force yourself. Quitting got a bad reputation. But if the alternative is hating every waking hour of your short time on this dirt ball moving around the sun, it seems like the better option.

I have seen people quit for a variety of reasons. When things get hard and outside of your comfort zone it often seems like a good idea. But remember why you started doing it in the first place.

Launching a side project is a great example. Some passive income, maybe a business allowing you to live off of it. Back in my day we called it "a business", today when you do not want to be a hyper scaler it seems to be called "a lifestyle business". (How stupid this is, is a topic for another post.)

Writing the code might be fun for you. But you will also have to do sales, customer support and marketing. Quitting because you do not enjoy these things likely means your project never makes it. Maybe is uncomfortable, but there will hopefully be a point when you are profitable enough to hire someone to do the parts you do not like. But once you push through the uncomfortable part you have a far higher chance reaching your goal.

I will continue to be frustrated and start over a few times. I am getting better. Closer to what I want the hair to look like. At least to the minimum viable version of it. Turns out there are things a tutorial cannot teach and simply must be practiced. I assume there will be some revisions in future as I refine my skills. No one said learning new things will be easy. I am looking forward to getting to the other parts of the 3D project that all sound like a lot of fun.