I had someone a while back ask me why in the world would I tell people that are just starting out to use existing 3D models in their project.

I’d like to go over what constitutes an existing model. In my eyes, “existing models” include any models that are previously generated by yourself or another resource. They can be in any 3D model format and downloadable from a website or local server.

Benefits and drawbacks of using existing models:

Drawbacks -

Harder to control the accuracy when you’re not the one making the model. – tolerances can be all over the place and scale is never the same from one model to the next.
Textures are usually in need of assistance. for remapping as they were intended to be used.
More often than not, the model is broken into mislabeled groups and require a slight bit of rejoining of meshes.

Benefits-

Time savings. – Once a model is built, it is good to use over and over in multiple applications.
Reference. – Artists draw and model from reference. Having the actual model to learn from is priceless.
Free models are awesome. Sometimes when fleshing out an environment, I’ll hop on the sketchup warehouse to search for furniture to use in my scene versus spending hours building out all the little things. This goes back to the time savings.
Some of the places where you can get preexisting models.
Models that already exist are for sale on multiple sites such as Turbosquid and Evermotion.
Free models can be found all over the web. certain sites like the Sketchup warehouse has hundreds of thousands of models for you to download totally free. The only drawback is, in a lot of situations, you get what you pay for. So be a little particular when deciding what version of that phone or vehicle you want to download.

If you’re doing a model that has a lot of hardware, I recommend going over to McMasterCarr and downloading your models directly from their product pages. You can do a search for “3D models” right on their home page to find what they have available.

Here are the links to those sites:

TurboSquid

EverMotion

Trimble 3D Warehouse

McMaster-Carr

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Click here to download the model and underlays.

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If you can identify the intent of your project before your start, it will save you time, energy and result in a better end product.

A few key questions to ask yourself include:

• What is your intent when you are modeling?
• Are you modeling something that is for visulaization purposes? Like renderings and illustrations?
• Are you modeling something that is going to be manufactured? Like a 3D print, prototype or something like that?
• Are you modeling for fun and practice or are you doing it for a job?
• If it is for visualization purposes, can you add onto the visuals in photoshop to save time?
• Is it is something that is going to be fabricated by one method or another and how much detail does the person fabricating the final form need? And are there pre-existing variables that you’ll need to model around?
• Is your computer the last one to touch the model before it goes out the door? If not, what does the next person need from you when it is their turn to work on the model? Are they working in the same software? If not, what sort of files can they open?

If you get yourself into a situation where you are creating models for both visualization and fabrication, step back and asses how you might be able to time it so that the two methods don’t conflict and actually compliment one another.

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great day.

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I’m also really happy to announce Foundations, a collection of the lesson-focused videos that have been featured on the site. You can find it at the store page. In the meantime, keep on practicing and have a great day!

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No tutorial video this week. I’m currently packaging up the new product “Foundations” which I’ll be posting information about shortly. Secondly, this week I’ll be changing over to the new look for the site! This means either Wednesday or Thursday, the site will be down for about 3 hours while I change over. Please bear with me while this happens. Very exciting stuff.

I didn’t want to leave you hanging so here are a bunch of my favorite 3D modeling themed videos from friends and contacts.

Enjoy!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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and the INSANE breakdown of the previous:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Have a great week everyone!

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