People sometimes ask me what's the best way to get into 3D rendering. While I try to offer some advice, reality is that nothing will ever beat downloading a software and trying.
In 2017, an artwork by Docop inspired me so much that it made me want to try 3D for myself. I didn't know a thing about it. At this point, the only thing I did was collages - and clearly not in an amazing way... So, I quickly searched for "how to make a 3D render" on Google and found out about SFM. After a bit of tinkering (by which I mean a good 5 hours), I had my very first render. It's the second panel of the artwork on the left.
Turns out, 3D rendering was mostly intimidating. Doing it for real wasn't as difficult as it looked. Spawn an environment, spawn a character, scale it up, click on its bones and move them... We've all been kids, we've all played with action figures. This, was exactly the same. I pressed "Render" and a few minutes later, there it was. Proud of my achievement, I didn't stop there and decided to continue playing with SFM till I had made this comics.
It was... not great. However, it didn't matter in the slightest. I had made it. That thing that seemed utterly impossible the previous day, I had actually made it. I uploaded it on Deviantart, thanked Docop for the inspiration he gave me and... didn't touch a 3D software again for a little while.
See, as much as I was proud of what I had made, I also felt SFM was not the right tool. The render didn't look as good as what someone like Docop could make with his animations. "How did he manage get that render to be so smooth?" was a recurring question for me at this point. So I asked him, and he helped me. I discovered Blender. I started learning again, just like that very first night I played with SFM.
You never stop learning with this hobby. You always want your next render to look better than the last. So you keep training, tinkering, reading documentation. You discover new methods, new software, new ways to make your stuff better - but to get there, you need to start from scratch.
So, what do I want to share with this post? If you ever thought of trying 3D rendering, or collaging or drawing, start doing it. You're not gonna be great at it the first time around. However, that's okay, because no one ever created their best work on the first try. Yes it's hard and yes it takes time. But it's worth it, because once you know enough, you can create whatever your imagination can think of.
And for people like us with an impossible kink, it's genuinely one of the greatest thing in the world.