/3/ - 3DCG

Ok anon,

here's the thing. A lot of the advice that has been given so far is mostly valid, but it's a real hodge-podge going into details and doesn't address the main issue. The important thing is, before you model anything,
you need to know how to start a project and how to follow a work process, i.e. how to go from idea to final scene.

Let's say you want to make a medieval/fantasy themed forest village. The first thing you do is determine what style you'd like to use: Stylized, like Zelda Breath of the Wild, or realistic, like Skyrim? Based on that,
you start looking for reference material. When collecting reference material, you ask yourself the following questions:

- What games are out there that I can use as a benchmark?
- What is the current standard of visual fidelity? What are the technical limitations?
- What about design/visual style? How do others create a certain look? Can I find inspiration in real cultures that existed? What can I do to create my own style?
- How do certain buildings and objects look in real life? (Instead of using your imagination, find out how things really look like. You'll avoid making things that look wrong)

After collecting reference material, make a quick checklist of the things you want to use, and you can start with greyboxing. Greyboxing is the process of setting up your scene and adding simple, untextured shapes
that will represent the final objects. At this stage you can determine how things will placed, if things are missing, or you have too many of something. More importantly, you can now determine how to re-use objects.
Think modular. For example, a building can be a separate ground floor, second floor, balcony, porch, garrets, chimneys, eaves, etc. Those parts you can re-use to create many similar, but different, buildings quickly.

part 1