■1: A better Pinterest, Hard surface Sculpting, and Reality is cooler than you think

Reality is cooler than you think

If I hired you to render a phone screen with smudges, your workflow would probably be

1. Download phone model

2. Download smudge map

3. Apply as roughness texture

And it would look like this:

Reality is much cooler than that. After eating a greasy meal with my hands, I smudged my phone.

How cool (and nasty) is that? You get anisotropic streaks akin to brushed metal, and you get dispersed light reflections. I took a video if you want to see how the reflections move.

We often assume we know what something looks like, but we really don’t. Reality is so much cooler than we think, if we bother to look.

Tutorial: Hard surface sculpting

Hard surface sculpting is a workflow I often forget exists. It’s perfect for those models that aren’t quite boxy, but aren’t quite smooth either. PzThree gives a great overview here.

Inspiration: A better Pinterest?

Cosmos.so is not better than Pinterest, but it’s a very good addition.

One of their key features nowadays is the ability to filter out AI-generated content.

There’s a certain style there. One I like a lot.

Tip: Text editor

Blender has a text editor. Great for making to-do lists and communicating to your team about the current file.