Like a lot of people I seem to know, I have varied interests…maybe too many as I have trouble sticking with one thing for long. I credit my day job for the fact that I know what I know about development, and while I enjoy development, I don’t know if I’d know what I know were it not for the fact that I have to practice what I know on a daily basis for the sake of a paycheck. As I cycle through my interests annually, some usually stick around longer than others. I do my own freelance development on my own projects but because it’s what I do for work I find that I slide off those projects pretty quickly. I’ve tried translating that interest into game development, but there’s math involved so I have pretty much put that on the furthest back-burner I have available. The one interest that I return to often — and which I seem to focus on with great intent when I inevitably do — is 3D modeling and as I was recently working on my usual “test projects” and making an attempt to finally learn about materials, shading, and procedural texturing within Blender, I wondered if the intensity I was investing on this means I really missed the boat in terms of vocation.

Of course, back when I was of an age where I might have otherwise been able to study 3D modeling, 3D modeling was kind of crap. This was the Age of DOOM, when high-end graphics was still being invented, with very little of it in the public domain. I had used a program called Bryce 3D which was a fractal modeling app that did OK for the time but couldn’t ever really be used to produce anything other than set-pieces for personal edification.

The real top-shelf software at the time was 3D Studio Max, but that cost thousands of dollars and in the early days of the Internet, there weren’t a wealth of resources that I could turn to in order to learn it (and I did get a copy because warez existed).

This was all about the time I was starting my air-quotes career air-quotes, first as an IT tech for a health insurance company, and then as a web developer. I had more important things to worry about such as getting health care, starting a 401k and, not too long after, getting married. Plus I live in the North Eastern U.S., which is not known as a hub of anything CG related, so my prospects were practically non-existent and besides, I was happy to work on my own projects at my own pace without pressure to produce anything for anyone. Now, though, with time on my hands, somewhat of a budget, the Internet that’s filled to the brim with expertise, and open source, professional grade software, I can actually make a real go of learning now what I couldn’t learn back when I might have otherwise been really interested in pursuing.

Mind you, I am not saying that my levels of intensity have turned me into some kind of 3D modeling virtuoso; I know that I know more now than I did in the Bryce days, or when I started looking at Blender back when it sported that atrocious grey UI, and while my skills have improved, I’ve still got leagues to go before I can produce anything that I would ship. 3D modeling is not just creating shapes, stretching and squishing them, carving them up, and arranging them in a way that makes the greater purpose recognizable. There’s the aforementioned texturing. There’s lighting. There’s composition. Doing all of this myself means I have to learn a lot about a lot, like the physics behind how light works. I have to cultivate a more artistic eye to know when something that I think looks good is only because I’ve been looking at it for so long, and doesn’t actually look as good as I think it does. I will also eventually need to know what all of the checkboxes, sliders, and drop-downs do for my in Blender, what each node does and when and how to use it effectively in the shader editor, and how not to let geometric mistakes send me into a rage where I delete the whole project and start over from scratch.

The amount of effort I put into 3D modeling each time it comes back around surprises me. I don’t have any intention of creating “game ready assets” at this point, mainly because I am not sure how long it would take me to get to the point where I’d feel confident doing so. I used to draw a lot when I was a kid, and I was pretty good at it, at least in relation to other kids my age, but I haven’t done anything “artsy” in years. 3D modeling is kind of filling that void, I think, to create a visual product. That’s part of what I like about app development. I also like the creative process behind things like writing, or TTRPG adventure creation, but as I get older those things get more difficult for me to stay focused on, and my interest in doing so has waned as a result. Modeling is something I can do to give something to someone en toto as output. It doesn’t need to be explained, it doesn’t need to be experienced in some other venue, and it doesn’t need to be consumed over a period of time in order to make an impact.