if you have any tips please post here. I have made decent 3d models before, but they take longer to make then they should. check them out: my acc please follow while you are there!
When I first started modeling in Blender? I watched every tutorial. Struggled through UVs, topology, edge flow… Some of my models looked like candles left in the sun. 🕯️
What I really needed — more than another 20-minute video — was one finished pro model I could open and dissect.
Not a render. Not a breakdown. The actual .blend file.
But back then? Nothing like that existed.
So now—after years of client work, after building the core loop technique (the one I teach on my channel: clean face/body loops, zero creasing, works for realism or cartoon)— I thought: Why keep it locked up?
I put together 20 production-grade .blend models —
✅ Built exactly with that core loop method
✅ Fully textured in Substance Painter
✅ Clean, organized, no hacks — just how the pros structure things
$4.99 isn’t a price. It’s a filter: If you’re willing to spend the cost of a coffee to actually open the files and learn — they’re yours.
Because the difference between “homemade” and “pro” isn’t talent. It’s mesh flow. And you can’t see it in a thumbnail. You have to open the file.
👉 Grab the Pack Here: https://dub.sh/TQX_BUY_2025
Happy modeling.
Instead of another “watch course X, then course Y” reply, here’s a slightly unusual story about how I learned Blender. My journey started with… tiny paper notebooks with plastic tabs. First I decided I wanted to do level art – not “anything 3D”, but a very specific role. Then I wrote down the typical problems a level artist has: modular modeling, clean pivots, instancing, Outliner hygiene, sensible naming, fast variant creation, scene dressing so a simple modular set suddenly feels like a full world. On top of that: knife tool, edge loops, mirroring, pivot point, snapping, fast rotate/scale – all from the keyboard, without diving into the UI.
At some point I basically started to ignore the UI. My goal was to do as much as possible from the keyboard, almost without the mouse, so I could focus on the art and cut out repetitive, pointless movements. Add face orientation and flip normals to make sure my meshes don’t end up with holes in the engine – I was terrified of that, so that shortcut became the very first entry in my “Blender bible”. That’s how I hunted for shortcuts in Blender. Each one went into the right notebook tab: a short line “what happens when I press this”, plus a color and category. And something funny happened – writing it down once was enough. My brain took a snapshot, and I never really had to study those shortcuts. That’s how I ended up with 100+ shortcuts in my muscle memory without classic memorising.
For the first years, YouTube tutorials were actually second priority. Notebook first, video second – more like a reference than life support. Over time this obsession with “small percentages” started to stack: an addon that gives +1% speed here, a tool that saves 10% clicking there, then a better naming system for models when exporting to an engine (suffixes, prefixes, category tags in the name). Up to 2023 I was testing tons of addons, sometimes hiring programmers to build custom ones, slowly shaping a workflow that compresses my movements in Blender as much as possible.
Today, after ~10 years with Blender, I’m writing my own addons with the help of AI: four small “control panels” that bundle everything I need as a level artist – from modular grid and mass-variant creation to automatic project housekeeping (batch renaming, suffix/prefix schemes, grouping assets for the game engine). And honestly, 2025 felt more like a x2–x10 jump than a tiny tweak. Small improvements simply stacked into a much clearer, calmer workflow.
If you’re just starting with Blender, my suggestion instead of “watch this course”:
If this sounds interesting, reply here – I can share how I structured those notebooks, or what exactly I packed into my level-art / modular-modeling addons. Happy to tune the advice to your role instead of giving generic Blender tips.
emaceart.itch.io <--- My itch page.
For me, during my first year the most important thing was also taking notes in a notebook and studying models on my own. (Even if I didn’t always read my notes later, the act of writing them helped me remember things better and gave me time to think about what I was doing and why it worked that way). I downloaded tons of meshes just to open them and check how they were built, how the topology flowed, why certain decisions were made. That kind of “silent studying” taught me more than any tutorial.
The second thing that made a huge difference was choosing a clear style and role I wanted to focus on. Once I knew what kind of art I wanted to make, learning became much easier — and collecting thousands of reference images became part of my routine.
Even today I still learn something new with every project.
My biggest mistake early on? Lack of planning. If I didn’t first define exactly what I wanted to build, I could spend dozens of hours in Blender with no real result. That was my biggest struggle for the first two years.
3d models are worth doing well. It's possible to make nice renders but have wildly inefficient meshes and that is not good when it comes to game development, especially for web or mobile where optimization is critical.
Some optimization notes:
1) If a surface is not going to be visible to players, it doesn't need to exist. Delete it.
2) Do whatever you can do with textures, using the textures and not actual geometry. No reason a small detail like a groove in wood, an indentation, crack, nail or screw should be actual geometry, it's best kept as a normal map when your objective is a game engine.
3) Yet, not every PBR texture is always needed for every surface. Some objects really will shine, reflect in spots and need a reflection / specular map, but often there's no logic in doing that, same for any other maps irrelevant to a particular object. Similarly, know that you can use alpha channels to add some small and seemingly complex object detail that is not actually modeled, but it isn't always needed so if it isn't, ditch the alpha channel.
4) Organize UVs in ways that make the most of the UV space and emphasize the surfaces of objects that are most likely to be seen by players. That is, eye level stuff deserves a bit more space. Backs or undersides of things deserve less.
5) Consider size and distance. How much of the screen would the item fill given its size relative to players, and how far away will it be from them? Allocate texture resolution accordingly so things generally look good but don't require vast piles of texture files.
6) Physics meshes are not visual meshes. Make physics colliders simpler than the object's appearance to make processing faster.
7) Detail maps and decals layered here and there can add a percieved detail across massive surfaces like walls - detail maps are a texture layer that faintly tiles, like grainy patterns, and is blended into the rest of the surface and the main image texture. Can provide a vague sense of detail with less texture data. Decals like cracks, stains and so on can be placed here and there to break up any visible tiling.
8) Consider wear, tear, and realist damage. Few things in real life look perfect so the grungy battered and weathered details on a surface add a sense that that surface is real.
The methods described here are typical aspects of my process. I have hundreds of models with many more arriving soon. Thousands of texture maps, well over a hundred decals, overlays and VFX clips. They all go on sale over many holidays. Bundled for under $2 total. They tend to be hyper focused on efficiency over sheer resolution particularly with the models, but that's one of the best strengths of them. They're actually potentially useful for webGL, mobile games!
matthornb.itch.io <--- My itch page.