I originally started learning Blender probably over a year ago, but never finished the snowman. I tried getting back on that horse last winter, but only made it through repeating the introduction to the UI and the basic tools to deform a cube over two days. But this week I got once again interested in texture painting rather than 3D modeling, and though I couldn’t find any good introduction or explanations for the kind of things I want to do specifically, enough little pieces of understanding some basic concepts fell out of the tiresome process that I thought I actually do already have all the pieces to at least get a rough model thrown together that I could do some painting practice on.

My plan was to see what I can accomplish with what I already know and only looking up what menu items or shortcuts I need to select to get the tools I already understood in 12 hours. There was a lot of trial and error throughout the morning, but after six hours I had this model finished, and never having done anything with texture painting before, I got this completed after only 9 hours.

And I think for the purposes of making assets for a game with the graphics style of Quake and Metal Gear Solid, this is already perfectly serviceable. There’s actually way too many polygons on this model.

I’m feeling really good about this. If this is any indication, I think with some practice it should be quite possible to eventually create a mid-scope asset like this with the right level of detail for Iridium Moons in two or maybe three hours. Making one after work and a couple on the weekends, and that would add up to quite a lot over a year.