COMPLETE Beginners Guide to Hard Surface Modeling (Blender Tutorial)

In this video, I'd like to present a complete, easy, and fun way for beginners to get used to Blender and hard surface modeling techniques. Hard surface modeling is actually really easy once you learn the tools, and this tutorial will show you everything you need to know in Blender.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MY FAVORITE BLENDER ADDONS:

SOCIALS:

CONTACT:

**Some addons listed above may contain affiliate links, giving me a small commission from any sales made. I only promote addons that I use personally.

[loofa]

Default Cube thanks you for not deleting it right of the gate like so many of its fallen brethren.

[TheBrandenBoy]

For the folks using Blender 4.1 auto smooth is no longer in " Data " under normal. It is now found in Modifiers > Normals.

[roberto]

9:31 If you can't seem to understand why ALT+S doesn't work for you, like it didn't for me for 20 minutes is because you first have to select the object and go to wireframe mode. After that, go into face mode, click one of the faces and press A, that will pick all of the faces. You should be able to scale it evenly using the ALT+S hotkey

[mogawa]

This was extremely helpful to me.
Main points that I got from this
1. ctrl+shift+b
2. bevels
3. harden normals
4. clamp overlaps
5. separating parts

[frakmar]

I didn't had the bool tool plug-in and was confused about it. If you go in "get extension" right above the "plug-in" tab in "preferences" you can find it and download it ! Great video :)

[TheFordrt]

Fantastic explanations Josh. Your speed, focus and direction was perfect.

[joelmulder]

This has got to be the most relaxed blender tutorial ever. Fantastic!

[garymcderp]

A cool trick to get rid of problems especially when beveling is to go into Edit mode, select the entire mesh by pressing A, then M, and select ‘Merge by distance.” At the bottom of the screen you should see Blender saying it removed a number of vertices. Those are the problematic vertices you don’t see especially when the clamping is on but they are there. This gets rid of them.

[otherworlds]

For anyone having weird geometry issues that persist even after Josh's fixes, the edges of your cutting object might be too close or even overlapping the edges or bevels on your primary object. Try either moving the cutter or scaling it down along the x, y, or z axis to spread them apart. That's what fixed my issues.

[rblxSivert]

If you struggle to cut the object, for those using Blender 3.3.x.x, you have to enable the Bool Tool in order for Ctrl + Shift + B to work :)

[elizabethhamilton]

Josh, thank you! I've been using Blender for a few years but this tutorial added a real "polish" to my understanding. You are an excellent content maker and teacher. Thank you for emphasizing visual design as well. I'm going to grab your pdf!

[thebenwoir]

What I enjoy about this tutorial compared to ones done by others is that you have that one thing enabled to let us see what keys your hitting and such which I find helps and that you explain things more simply. Thankyou for this tutorial

[TacoBear_Studios]

Hello Josh, I have been working on and off in blender for 2yrs, I am new to your channel, I just love how thorough but to the point your teaching and explanation have been, for example your explanation of the Normal - auto smooth function was excellent! No filler or drawn out detail or theory, just straight to the point on what it is and what it does, Subscribed.

[vashSJ]

as someone who is just starting in Blender, and i know i have to focus on modeling first. PERFECT VIDEO AND CHANNEL

[ChristopherAppel-ch]

First, thanks for the demonstration of your workflow. I wanted to echo the question several have already asked about clean geo using a fast Boolean workflow. Coming from 25 years in 3DS Max modeling for games and VFX, I have steered clear of Booleans, because they create messy geometry and actually can break some of your hard surface quad modeling techniques. In Max, and some other 3d software, Booleans are a shortcut that makes long delays. Blender keeps the Boolean workflow in a nice modifier stack, allowing for a lot of adjustment, but also hiding a lot of what's going on under the hood from view. Following along, I am finding that there's unfortunate geometry hidden away. I experienced the same issue with my mesh that you encountered around the 25 minute mark, but no amount of tweaking the solvers, moving the cutter, etc., fixed the issue. Also, the concave bevels inside the cutouts have some artifacts when I zoom in close. No adjustments seem to fix that either. Any suggestions on what to do when when your mesh starts showing problems? Using version 4.2, BTW.

[cibulskia]

This is insane. An unusual approach, perfect for experienced people in solid modeling. It just opened my eyes. Thank you.

[koraysaglik]

I have been learning blender for a couple years now but never have i been that good at hard surface, this tutorial has helped a lot and boosted my creativity for better ideas, thank you for this

[Dina_tankar_mina_ord]

I started using blender about a year ago. had been struggling with lightwave back in the day some 20 years ago. Never really advanced or learned much. After the famous dounut tutorial I got in to it real fast and with you and Ryuurui´s excellent free and cost effective courses I am actually starting to get proud of some of my outputs for the first time. Still alot to learn. But with you and other excellent people in the community struggle is usually solved with a youtube search thanks to you guys.

[MusiciansReflib]

I was away from blender for about 8 years. What drove me away was funky shading issues and artifacts. So glad you addressed those issues in detail. Looking forward to seeing more of your stuff.

[bourtaha]

You are the best of hard surface modeling