Hey everybody!
Mike here with Ember Studios.
In the year 2021, millions of people are continuing to learn and grow the skills that they picked up during the COVID-19 pandemic. We live in an amazing time when seemingly infinite education and resources are available online, often for free. This post is going to be a breakdown of some of the most useful 3D resources and tools available to us today!
If you don’t have a lot of money to invest right now in 3D, that’s okay! We’ll be exploring several free ways to get started. Right now, the barrier for entry into the 3D world is lower than ever!
We’re going to divide this up into a few categories:
- Software
- Plugins
- Assets
- Free Training
- Premium Training
- Other
Now I’m going to head this off right off the bat: Of course I’m biased! After trying a lot of software, I settled on what I liked the most, so you’ll find I’m a little bent toward Cinema 4D in this article, but that’s not the only piece of software that will be getting some love, so keep reading!
3D Workspaces
First let’s tackle the overarching programs that let you do 3D work in the first place: The 3D Software. I mean the program you fire up when you need to get a project moving, not the plugins or extra apps that help you along the way.
ZBrush
ZBrush touts themselves as “The World’s leading digital sculpting software,” and they’re not just saying that. If you do character or creature design, ZBrush is an essential piece of your toolkit. They come with a vast array of sculpting brushes as well as the ability to import your own, and ZBrush really shines when you get in with detailed brushes to create truly unique and high-quality models.
ZBrush is available either as a perpetual license or a subscription, and can be purchased here.
Unreal Engine 4 (&5 soon!)
By now, you’ve probably seen or heard about the real-time power of UE5. TV and film studios are quickly transitioning to the workflow of getting their 3D environments in-camera thanks to the power of virtual handheld cameras. I recently had a conversation with an industry expert who has worked in VFX on project such as Deadpool and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button- I was taking advantage of the opportunity to ask for career advice. When I asked if he had any tips or pointers to growing in the industry he said “If you don’t know Unreal yet, learn it.” Needless to say, this is advice I’ve taken to heart.
On top of that, the best thing about UE4? It’s free! All you need to get working is an Epic Games account- so while you have some down time you can play a few rounds of fortnite too!
Blender
Do you want a full-featured, powerful piece of software that stands up next to any other mainstream 3D workspace that’s also *check’s notes* free? Blender is an incredible program and the price point is just another benefit! It’s certainly the best free program out there that can do awesome fluid simulations. Some people may scoff at the fact that Blender costs nothing, but it truly excels at everything that’s been implemented. Don’t sleep on Blender!
Cinema 4D
Now we’ve really gotten to the stuff that gets me excited. C4D is my workspace of choice and it is great to handle most tasks (and there are incredibly powerful plugins that can pick up any slack.) It ships with a standard and physical renderer and it also can be packaged with Redshift, which has recently also been acquired by Maxon (the company that makes C4D.)
With its new “scene manager,” c4d has indicated they understand that node-based work flow is incredibly powerful and they want to provide that option for their users so they can get used to it before they move over completely.
Honorable Mentions:
Houdini
Houdini is incredible at running simulations of all sorts. It’s a bit hard to learn, but one of the most powerful workspaces out there.
Adobe After Effects
If you need to comp your work because you used several passes, or if you need to include your 3D as part of some real-world footage, Adobe After Effects has great comping tools and even some C4D integration!
Redshift
When it comes to rendering engines, you can’t go wrong with Redshift. This renderer is fast and looks great! It comes bundled with Cinema 4D through the Maxon website and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was quickly integrated completely by the software. Redshift does struggle, in my experience, with volumes, but other than that I’ve really been loving it!
Plugins
Everyone’s favorite things to blow their production budget on, plugins can transform your 3D workspace into a powerful and specific toolbox to make your scenes look exactly how you want them to.
Drop to Floor
Drop to Floor is a plugin that is simple: It takes your selection and makes it touch the floor. No more guessing if there is any intersection between your object and environment. When I start a scene, I like to set it up so that the world 0-point is at the very bottom. With Drop to Floor, this is very easy. Let’s say I want to showcase a product- I can create a plane primitive to act as my “presentation” area, then use Drop to Floor to perfect align the object with the plane which is great for preventing intersections and making shadows and Ambient Occlusion as realistic as possible!
Insydium Fused
Insydium Fused is fairly new to the market, but the flagship products it comes with are not. With Insydium Fused, you get the incredibly powerful particle engine X-Particles, their proprietary rendering engine Cycles 4D, and two newer tools- TerraformFX and MeshTools, a landscape generator and geometry manipulation suite, respectively.
You can hardly throw a stone without hitting a YouTube tutorial that seems to treat X-Particles as if it’s part of Cinema 4D’s first-party tools. The particle and fluid simulation features are just unparalleled. Thanks to the ExplosiaFX feature, I am able to run physically accurate fire and smoke simulations right inside of Cinema 4D without having to jump into Houdini or Blender to recreate the scene with any colliders and export a VDB, which I then had to scale and reposition and hope it all lined up correctly. (I’m serious, this was my old workflow.)
X-Particles is worth the price itself, but the new TerraformFX and MeshTools really take the value of Fused and push it all the way to the limit.
Greyscalegorilla Plus
I bet you’re surprised you got this far into this article without seeing Greyscalegorilla. Don’t fret- this isn’t the last time you’ll be seeing it on this list.
Since this section is about plugins, I’m going to highlight two of them that I use on almost every project!
HDRILink Plus is an invaluable tool when it comes to setting up your lighting environments. It comes with hundreds of quality HDRIs for giving your scenes realistic lighting. With 3 clicks, you can have a perfectly lit indoor, outdoor, or studio scene set up and ready to render.
Signal Plus is another GSG+ plugin that has saved me hours. Obviously with intense animation scenes, I need to use keyframes and adjust everything to perfection, but if I just need to do a simple logo reveal, or HDRI spin, Signal Plus is the first thing I reach for. It’s perfect for simple or looping animations and is very easy to use!
Assets
For those who are using 3D software to create art or need some quick assets to put together a scene without having to manually model and texture everything, having assets that are ready to go at your fingertips is very important.
Quixel Megascans
Quixel Megascans is a massive library of scanned models and textures for your 3D work. They are constantly adding new textures, surface imperfections, scanned 3D models, and atlas maps to take your renders (or game environments) to the next level. If you use Unreal Engine, Megascans is a free tool for you to use within the software! They have a plugin you can install in your 3D workspace of choice, and import anything with one click.
Greyscalegorilla Plus
GSG+ makes another appearance here, and they have certainly earned the second mention. Their Plus membership comes packed with hundreds of pre-built materials, HDRIs, and surface imperfections. They also have a library of Dust alembic files to give your scene much more depth. One of my favorite things about this set of assets is that they save me time- and save my clients money- by allowing me to skip basic texture creation. I recommend that you still get in and tweak things to be perfect for your render, but you don’t need to reinvent the wheel every time you need a simple metal or plastic for a starting point.
Flippednormals
While I understand that Flippednormals is a marketplace, they really are a cut above the rest. Their brush packs for ZBrush are worth the spot on this list alone, and the quality of their stuff is just great. I recently bought a pack of “wings” creature elements to build some VFX shots and I was blown away at the quality, especially for the price. (Check out that pack here, shoutout to the creator, Bernhard van der Horst) A quick look around their website should give you a solid idea of what they’re about- only the highest quality.
KitBash3D
KitBash3D is one of those resources that you just kind of sit back and go “woah.” They sell collections of models, connected by a theme, that are meticulously created and almost seem like 3D scans. These models are usually an assortment of buildings, as well as small items you may find in the thematic area. They have a free pack that you can download and see just how amazing their stuff really is, so go check it out!
Training
All of the tools in the world won’t help you if you don’t know how to use them. Today, we have access to world-class training that we can consume in our living room.
Free Training
Not all resources will cost you money. In fact, there are plenty of free resources out there that are better than some paid ones. It’s all about finding the best teachers out there.
Greyscalegorilla
They’re back! This time, for free! The Greyscalegorilla YouTube channel is a treasure trove of free project-based training. This isn’t watered-down stuff that’s only been created to frustrate you into buying a paid course, these are full high-quality tutorials of the same caliber that you’ll find on their paid service. You can learn a multitude of skills and build your portfolio up by following along with them.
Pwnisher
Clinton Jones, Pwnisher on YouTube, left his job at the production studio “Corridor Digital” to pursue his dreams of making a feature film. In the meantime, he’s been making in-depth tutorials for incredibly useful skills such as rigging an existing model, creating HDRIs, or building your own textures using photographs. On top of that, he does a 3-5 hour livestream on Saturdays (not every Saturday) where he models and textures and answers viewer questions.
Blender Guru
Andrew Price, also known as the Blender Guru, has some of the most viewed 3D tutorials out there. As of this writing, the first video of his beginner Blender series where you model a donut is creeping up on 10 million views. If you’re a 3D artist of any kind, it’s worth downloading blender and working your way through his tutorials, they are full of wisdom that can be generalized across to other platforms!
YouTube
In general, if you know what you want to do but not how to do it, there’s almost certainly a YouTube tutorial out there for it. There are so many talented creators, designers, and artists who just want to share their skills with the world and help you improve yours. This is usually my first stop when I hit a roadblock.
Premium Training
I define premium training as any training that you pay for. Not all premium pricetags come with premium quality, so this list will help you stay on track with great training.
Greyscalegorilla Plus
For the final time, GSG+ makes this list. They have “short” tutorials similar to the ones they have posted on YouTube, but also “long” ones that provide comprehensive looks at specific tools. I made my way through the Redshift one and added a ton of baseline knowledge to my workflow!
Cineversity
Cineversity is a “behind a paywall” training platform for Cinema 4D. If you’re new to C4D you HAVE to check this stuff out. Their “Getting Started with Cinema 4D” course from EJ Hassenfratz took me from installing the software all the way through finishing my first render (that I still think looks good, by the way!) Having recently acquired Red Giant, they have also been incorporating some tutorials from Seth Worley and ActionMovieDad, both of whom are excellent VFX artists in their own right.
Extras
There are a few tools that don’t quite fit any of the above categories, but are invaluable when working on a 3D project.
Parsec
Parsec is a remote computing option for someone who has a work computer that they need to access from home. It lets you control your computer with almost zero latency and non-degraded performance. This is perfect if you have a desktop PC at home, but you want to work on a heavy project during downtime at a coffee shop. You can take your laptop with you and “Parsec In” to your beefy home computer to put some final touches on a scene and start the render before you even get home. The minimum spec requirements are low enough that any functional laptop can get the job done.
PureRef
The final item on this list is PureRef. PureRef is a “reference” photo software with a ton of versatility. You can drop photos inside it, organize them, then overlay them so you can check your 3D work against the real-world items you’re attempting to recreate. It can even be set to stay on top of your workspace, even when it’s not selected, which makes it a very handy tool. Working off of references is very important and PureRef really improves the way you can incorporate them into your workflow.
So what do you think?
Now that you’ve seen my picks for the top 3D tools in 2021, what do you think? Do you agree? Did I miss anything? Are you going to jump over to one of these places and start improving? Let me know! I’d love to have a conversation- michael@emberstudioscreative.com
