3D Art - as addictive as FL Studio!

Well, It's been a while since I've posted anything, I'm really trying to learn the "back office" of music which I'd been dreading for a long time, seems like everytime I learn of something new, It's a long and involved process that could take years to learn, I gotta find a good team of people so I can stick to writing new songs!

You're probably thinking, wtf does this have to do with 3d art?

Well I stumbled across it out of necessity really, I asked a lot of 3d artists for band artwork, and they all told me the same thing, it shouldn't take you too long to come up with pretty damn good quality artwork with todays software on your own, for free (or relatively cheap anyway) in a reasonable timeframe.

Amie is normally the creative one, drawing most artwork by hand, I ended up designing our logo in google sketchup off her initial design, little did I know what this would lead to.

A few months later I stumbled acros Daz Studio, a great program! I highly recommend you at least try it, I don't own advanced yet, but I found a workaround (thanks to the helpful people at the daz forums) that I think really pays off.

That workaround is Figures, Characters and Avatars by Les Pardew - A great book to say the least, If you're new to 3d programs and you want something simpler than Blender to start out with, I can't recommend this book more, I haven't even finished reading it yet but the quality of the material I've read so far is excellent, this is besides the point, I'm aiming at people who want a fast way into powerful 3d programs, and this book comes with exactly that.

On disk it includes an older version of Daz Studio, Carrara 6 Pro and Hexagon, you don't get an advanced copy of Daz Studio, but you get Carrara 6 Pro! and even if this book came without Hexagon (awesome, but a buggy 3d modelling program) you can still essentially do anything your imagination could come up with (I won't go into complications like CPU power etc).

You also get extra 3d content on the disc but if your not sold on getting Carrara 6 Pro + Hexagon then that probably won't matter.

If you want to step into 3d art, I can't recommend this company more, the price of these products is reasonable, but getting them all bundled on a disc free with a book that'll really help your learning curve, unfortunately the book focuses on Daz Studio, but if you want a great tutorial to go along with Carrara 6 Pro I suggest the Carrara 6 Pro VTC Training CD by Mark Bremmer, He also has some downloadable stuff at his webpage (the nuclear explosion is quite impressive) at http://www.markbremmer.com/ (go to Carrara 6 pro tutorials, dark arts, free scenes).

Modelled and rendered in Carrara 6 Pro

The amount of free content available if you don't want to build your own is just amazing!

Built brick by brick :) in Carrara 6 Pro.

The apartment here comes on the Disc too, Some ofthe scene props used were freebies from http://www.sharecg.com/ (you'll find tonnes of cool, well designed 3d content here)

My First Render in Carrara 6 Pro, A little bit of post-work in GIMP (Photoshop alternative).

You can really have fun with things like the hair shader in Carrara, I made this carpet really quickly and it doesn't look half bad :)