Why you should try 3D modelling if you hate drawing backgrounds!

[smokesalty]

Okay, I'm aware this isn't for everyone but I'm gonna throw some of my arguments as to why you should.

(I personally use blender bc I don't know sketchup and the license confuses me) EITHER WAY-

1. You save time with line art and colouring. I am able to get much more pages out because all I do is render my backgrounds for the angles I need and plop them on my page, easy!
2. If you have a very specific background or location you can really personalise it. For me, I needed to create an entire cult commune, and you can't exactly find that in the 3D assets store. It's also fun to have backgrounds be very specific to characters or worldbuilding.

(example of mozzie man's bougie ass office:)

3.It stays on model. (I'm also horrible with perspective so thank god)
4. You can add a lot of detail. Since you're not redrawing everything, you're allowed to add details in and it's not an absolute pain to deal with.

ANyways major con is it takes forever to do. Depends on if you want to take the time to learn it (I recommend it, but it depends on you I guess)

What are your thoughts?

(also the stinky little medical room I included in episode 2)

[TheLemmaLlama]

you can't exactly find that in the 3D assets store.

This is the main reason I've been skeptical of 3D modelling ... but you're saying you can personalise things? That would be pretty cool ...

[smokesalty]

I mean if you're making the models yourself, you make the decisions for what you want to be in the background. There are absolutely assets that you can customise in the assets store, but if you're doing it yourself you have full control. However, it takes a long time since you have to individually model things yourself from scratch.

For me, I needed a very specific look (and the location has a floorplan that needed to be adhered to) so i said f it and did it myself.

For more generic backgrounds, I'll happily use the assets store.

[novabycreativerobot]

We were doing this initially but ultimately decided against using it. There are pros and cons really, but it didn't really fir our workflow mainly because:

1.) It takes a lot of effort to stage effective 3d sets and overall is just a complete waste of time if you're not going to dedicate time for it.
2.) The number of panels used vs the time we used to create the set itself is not worth it. Unless your story revolves on a single place or gonna be used by an extraordinary amount of time.
3.) We manually paint our lighting so control over lighting without switching back and fort to blender/3D in clipstudio is a hassle and big waste of time.
4.) Layer control. Painting on a clipped layer is a lot faster than using selections.
5.) Creative freedom over spacing in scenes.
6.) The 3d set becomes a creative constraint.
7.) it also becomes a style constraint. (if you're downloading assets over the internet, chances are you need to modify them as some of them will be too detailed some of them will be not. Also the'res a concern over style, color etc.
8.) color corrections
9.) etc

that's why we only use 3d as guides now. If ever we're going to use 3d again for our comic. We probably need a separate person to handle it as time and output is both important for the comic.

[smokesalty]

fair enough. Prepping 3D backgrounds takes a lot of time, and it can be a hassle.

I think this worked out for me because most of my story happens in one main location, so I end up reusing assets quite often. For me, I was happy taking much longer to make all of my background because I knew it would speed up my process later on.

[rumpenstiltzkin]

I use 3D to make a base for my backgrounds so I can easily get the perspective and switch angles easily but I dont really have 3D in my art, I use it as a guide more and draw over it so it fits my style.

But even if it takes a bit of time to build your scene in 3D, if its a scene/building/room that shows up a lot you will have saved time for it in the long run to easily use it for different perspectives and angles

For someone like me who absolutly hates drawing backgrounds and esp doing it in perspective, its a life saver!

Here is an example how I use it

[Llyrel]

I build stuff in Sims 3, but mostly to be used as reference rather than actual backgrounds. I tried Blender and even made some 3D models in the past, but I find it waaaaayyy too complicated and time consuming to make fully rendered 3D scenes in there. However, as a hardcore simmer (), I'm very familiar with The Sims 3 as a tool to build sceneries, pose characters and take screenshots and use that to my advantage when it comes to my comic.

Here's a panel from the page I'm currently working on:

And here's the screenshot I took in The Sims:

As you may notice, I didn't really trace over the house, but instead I used Procreate's perspective guides to create a similar view. I don't hate doing perspective, but it IS time consuming to draw things completely from scratch with no reference whatsoever, so 3D models are a life saver for me in that sense doing the drawing myself helps keeping the style consistent, but at the same time, having a reference available is great to make sure I got proportions right and didn't forget anything

[system]

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