Introduction

This course will cover a fun and creative way to learn hard surface modeling in Blender by creating a beautiful SciFi weapon from scratch. You will learn how to block out the model, detail it, use hard-surface techniques for clean composition, and apply materials to give it a beautiful final render, all done completely within Blender.

Who is it for?

Quick answer: Everyone

This course is ideally for those who at least know the basic tool set within Blender (scaling, extruding, moving, menus, etc). Master or advanced knowledge of Blender is absolutely not required. However, if you are a complete beginner or are brand new to hard surface with no prior experience, I would suggest enrolling in our SciFi Crate Design in Blender course first (which can be found on our Udemy page here as well).

What will the course cover?

• Hard Surface Modeling

• Boolean and Bevel techniques

• How to clean up shading errors

• How to fix artifacts and mesh distortions

• Vanilla (no addons) Blender workflow

• Boolean cleanup

• Topology Fixes

• Subdivision Surface workflow with booleans

• Materials

• Lighting

• Composition

• Rendering

Amongst other topics, these are the primary points of focus. Specifically, you will learn not only how to model, but also how to clean up common issues involving bad shading and mesh artifacts. The ability to model and then clean up these errors is essential, and this course will cover everything you need to know for hard surface modeling.

Overview

We'll start by setting up the correct proportions using a reference photo. Although this is a SciFi model, it still needs to make sense, so we're going to make sure we get the trigger, barrel, grip, and things like that in the correct locations. After that, it will all be smooth sailing into making our own unique design.

Next, we will discuss how to properly use booleans and modifiers to create our own visual aesthetic without the need for a lot of geometry. Along the way, we will encounter common modeling problems and shading errors, which we will fix on the spot. We will also move our focus onto how to practically use bevels in our workflow, to avoid shading errors and artifacts in the first place.

Lots of people are also intimidated by subdivision surface modifiers with booleans. Don't be. The concept it actually quite easy once you wrap your head around the concept. We'll have several examples of combinations of subsurf, booleans, and bevels all in one object, with absolutely flawless shading.

Our personal favorite part of this course is working with materials and rendering the model after it's complete. Composition is something that needs to be considered, as it can be the difference between your model looking out of this world and beautiful or cheaply made. The course will cover how to use proper material settings, HDRI lighting, reflectors, and camera angles to achieve an aesthetically pleasing render. Best of all, no more waiting hours for your render! We'll show you some tricks that we both use personally to render our images in mere minutes.

We will also have an EXTRA section covering additional compositing in Photoshop. It is not required but will help your render 'pop' a bit more for your portfolio.

You'll also be protected by Udemy's 30-day money back guarantee for a stress-free purchase, so if this course isn't for you, you do not have to worry.

Conclusion

Whether you're a seasoned hard-surface modeler, or a beginner in Blender or modeling in general, this course will present a series of important and practical modeling techniques to get you up to speed in 3D modeling quicker than most YouTube tutorials may be able to do. We believe that courses geared too much towards one skill level results in a disconnect of information and learning, so we've made this easy enough to understand for beginners, but technical enough for advanced users to pick up on. This course will make you confident in 3D modeling and hard surface and you'll leave feeling ready to tackle your own modeling projects.

Remastered Content

As part of the SciFi Weapon Design in Blender - REMASTERED content, we have added two additional environment modeling tutorials for both weapons.

The first gun tutorial utilizes the Hard Ops and Boxcutter addons, Decal Machine for detailing, and the Definitely Eevee Materials System for rendering.

The second gun tutorial uses the vanilla workflow, with the exception of the Definitely Eevee Materials System for texturing.

We also use the Kit Ops 2, which can be downloaded for free.

Q&A

Q: Does the course use any paid addons?

A: No. This course uses the pure vanilla Blender toolset. We will, however, be using some free addons to help expedite our workflow. These addons will be covered at the beginning of the course and are not complicated at all.

*Update: The remastered content utilizes some paid addons, referenced above.

Q: How many weapons will be created in this course?

A: There will be 2 weapons created in total, one by Josh Gambrell and one by Ponte Ryuurui.

Q: I'm a complete beginner at Blender with no prior experience. Is this course for me?

A: We would suggest enrolling in our SciFi Crate Design course instead. The price is the same and is also on our Udemy page and is geared more towards absolute beginners with no prior experience.