Sculpting can also create fantastically detailed objects easily – a little too easily, if your computer isn’t up to handling such complicated meshes! Being able to iterate on our mesh constantly, using our brush-based tools, means we can quickly detail our objects When to AVOID sculpting? It is ideally suited to creating organic shapes – characters, monsters, clothing, these sorts of things are best created with sculpting tools. Sculpting tackles the things that modeling doesn’t. And because our brushes are fundamentally soft in nature (like we’re working with clay), capturing sharp corners and hard edges is difficult. Editing individual components can be difficult. This also means it is very fast – instead of selecting verts and moving them individually, like modeling, we are pushing our model around with a brush, making changes very quickly. It is one of the most artistic feeling forms of CG art. This makes sculpting extremely quick and intuitive.
We don’t interact with the actual mesh, instead we deform it with our brush tools. Sculpting relies on a brush-based user interface. In many ways, sculpting is the opposite of modeling. Anything that is softer, rounder, and in general, grown rather than made, is difficult to model. Conversely, modeling is generally terrible for organic objects. Creating well-topologized meshes is a must for tasks like character setup. So if our mesh is more than just a statue, modeling is almost certainly called for. The trade-off here is slowdown – selecting and moving individual vertices is tedious! We can control absolutely every aspect of our model at the vertex level. Parallel lines, 90 degree angles, and hard edges are what modeling excels at. When to use modeling?īased on its strengths above, modeling is great for a few specific tasks.įrom a creative standpoint, modeling is ideal for creating hard-surface objects: machined, man-made things. This allows us to make very specific changes to our model – at the cost of a slower workflow. In addition, we have the precision of selecting individual components of our mesh. We can very efficiently manipulate large areas of our model, by quickly selecting edge rings and edge loops. Quadrangles form the basis of our modeling toolsets. The basis of every 3D package, modeling means we’re working with polygonal shapes. We manipulate objects on the component mode, moving around verts, edges, and faces to create more complicated objects. And these differences can make or break our project. Both modeling and sculpting create the geometry we need for our characters, environments, and props.īut if we really pay attention, the differences that pop up are really quite striking. On the surface the tool sets seem the same. How do you know when to use modeling vs sculpting? What objects are best handled via modeling, and which are best handled via sculpting? They seem very similar… but using the wrong approach means uglier art that takes longer to create! Modeling vs Sculpting