With 3D being an ever-changing landscape it can be difficult to know where to start. After 10 years in the biz I am lucky enough to claim some of the worlds best 3D artists as mentors and friends. Through this post I wanted to share some of their wisdom with you.

I asked them two questions:

1. What do you wish you knew when you started 3D?

2. What top tip can you share with us?

TOP TIPS FROM THE WORLD'S BEST 3D ARTISTS - PART 1

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Ismail Rebbane

What do you wish you knew when you started 3D? One day, not long ago, I decided to start a website to share what I learned. To my surprise, it was me who started learning! The best way to learn is by sharing what you learned. It just forces you to document everything in a simple process, It works like magic, try it.

What top tip can you share with us? As you already know, CGI, in general, is cool! Just by watching a new show reel that just comes out, or a software update can lead you to change your focus on a new topic! One of the things I regret is that I didn't focus on one area, I was learning VFX, sculpting, scripting, Visualisation etc.. you name it! The result was mediocre work. It's only when I started focusing on one industry that I improved. For me it was 3D Visualisation. You can always learn more topics, but one at a time.

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Klaas Nienhuis

What do you wish you knew when you started 3D? I didn't really start in 3D. I did it on the side and then that part of my work grew. I find it pretty difficult to find a good piece of advice. For me, being very specialized has worked out great but only with a solid network to collaborate with. I think I wish somebody had told me to put more effort in a good network of friends and businesses while specializing my skillset.

What top tip can you share with us? The second part is easy, my top tip is to learn programming. Even if it's just a little bit. The stuff you can do with simple one-line scripts in 3ds Max is way more powerful than having a big toolbox of downloaded scripts.

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Neil Poppleton

What do you wish you knew when you started 3D? Its all about enjoying the learning experience and ride.

What top tip can you share with us? Be good at time management etc, but the best tool I have used almost every week for the past 17 years is PSD manager. A golden tool.

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David Houston

What do you wish you knew when you started 3D? When I started out I wish that Pinterest was available, it's such an invaluable resource for collating project information, research and advice from other artists. Being able to share resource globally helps a great deal in planning and developing a project from a lighting and composition perspective.

What top tip can you share with us? My best tool I use and probably my biggest hack now is a script called find and bind, it aligns any sun to the hot spot of an HDRI in an instance. It also allows you to physically rotate the dome light and that automatically shifts the light position in both your dome light map and also your environment map.

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Patric Verstraete

What do you wish you knew when you started 3D? The best way to start in 3D is to get as much software as you can and play around with it until you find the one which is best for you. I didn’t do that, I started with 3ds max. At that time it was 3ds Max 6 with the disks! So it was really hard to make progress because there weren’t any tutorials, or very few. So I started to learn it by myself.

Then go onto the web and join forums, find tutorials, get in touch with people and share your work and ask for feedback. It is important to get extra comments on mistakes that you don't see, and last but not least, never give up!

What top tip can you share with us? Some plugins that everyone needs in 3D Visualisation ...

Forest Pack: Forest Pack does away with all the hassle by providing not only the scattering tools but also large libraries of photo-realistic trees and plants.

Rail Clone: Generate complex parametric objects including fences, stairs and floors faster than ever before.

Vray render-engine: I started off visualising using Mental Ray, but once I gave V-Ray a go, I never looked back.

Of course, there are many scripts available, but the most important to me are ...

Floor Generator: This plugin will let you create individually boarded floors, perfect for wooden floors.

Image Composition Helper: Automatically visualise the Rule of Thirds inside the 3ds Max Viewport to instantly improve the look of both your 3D static renders and animation.

Relink Bitmaps: Easily relink missing files like bitmaps, VRayMeshes, Mental Ray proxies and VRayHDRI when they change directories or when you move computers.

Keep your eye peeled for Part 2,

Render On!

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Jake Denham ⭐

3D Artist | Official V-Ray Mentor

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