2D Artists - you have a 3D SECRET WEAPON in Blender

Apply your 2D art skills in 3D using Blender! Tutorial covers how to digitally paint in 3D, light and value art fundamentals, Blender’s Grease Pencil, and basic 3D modeling. Suitable for 3D beginners!
I am doing all the art with my ConceptD 7 Ezel.

Learn more about ConceptD –

LINKS

ToC:
00:00 - 00:17 - Intro
00:17 - 01:09 - Art Fundamentals Recap
01:09 - 01:26 - Curriculum Outline
01:26 - 04:54 - 3D Painting Training Scene
04:54 - 08:49 - Light and Value Lesson
08:49 - 10:17 - Grease Pencil Breakdown
10:17 - 13:56 - Basic 3D Modeling
13:56 - 14:47 - More Grease Pencil
14:47 - 16:03 - Setting Up For 3D Painting
16:03 - 17:00 - 3D Painting The Scene
17:00 - 18:36 - Planning In 2D

[marcobucci]

Hey folks, the series is fully complete!
Thanks to the Blender community for all the tips in the comments! I've incorporated them into the vids where possible :)

[teinili]

I really appreciate you spreading the usefulness of blender to the 2D artworld. I've spent so much time in Blender to learn about color and light and perspective and everything. If I don't find a reference I can just build it in blender its absolutely amazing

[clayanderson]

16:38 actually you can have layers !
- When you add your emission at 2:45, instead of choosing directly "Image Texture" choose "Mix" instead.
- Then instead of just one "color" you'll have two (representing your two layers). You can then proceed by creating your two textures for your two layers. You can also choose your mix mode to tell blender how you want to mix your layers.
- The active layer on which you paint is driven by the "texture slots" option on the top right side of the screen in texture paint mode.

- By the way a "trick" instead of creating textures for each of your object is to create a big texture (8k for example) to save all the paintings of your scene. You can unwrap several objects together by selecting all your objects (you can press "A"), go to the "UV Editing" menu and unwrap all of them at once using the "smart UV project".
- Then assuming you configured your material on one of your object with the big 8k texture, select all the objects( press "A") then shift-select the object with the material you configured (this active object should be highlighted in yellow whereas the other selected objects should be highlighted in orange), press "ctrl+L" and choose "Link materials".
- Now all your objects can be painted with multiple layers, all of this configured in just a few seconds independently of the number of objects in your scene and only one picture per layer will need to be saved ;)
- Don't forget to save your images regularly ! Saving the blender file WILL NOT save the texture images when you save the file ;) Instead go to the UV editor and click on image / Save as (once it's saved properly the button "Save all pictures" in the texture slots should work also).

[PizzaBoxDemon]

15:23 - Instead of doing each object individually you can shift select all objects then ctrl A - apply - scale. :)

[oskarilemmetyinen]

It is honestly criminal that these tutorials are free considering the immense quality. Just brilliant work!

[terminarnold]

12:22 Blender (since 2.83) has a built-in addon called "Real Snow". Once enabled, you can access to its panel by pressing N. By clicking the button "Add Snow", it will generate (in object mode) procedural snow onto selected objects/faces, with a realistic snow material included :) great vid mate!!

[nicoc]

Marco, your commitment to teaching people through your entertaining lessons is so admirable. Before jumping into the technical know-how of the software, you made sure we understand some basic principles of good value structure. That type of knowledge is just as essential as actually modeling the scene, yet if anyone else were to make this tutorial, I doubt they would include it.
Thank you for making these for us, and I can't wait to follow along with this project!

[HexYan]

This has been one of the most intuitive tutorials that you can watch. I do know how to do this in Blender and yet you showed me a much better and faster way. Thank you for this!

[jozseflaszlo]

Thank you so much, even as a 3D artist this helps a lot creatively! Also seeing the Concept D in action and hearing about it was great, totally wishlisted as my next machine, wish it had an even better config!

For anyone else wondering about technical reasons for some things I've answered the 'why apply scale' question in a reply but here it is too:

Objects in 3D start off with a (transform) scale value of 1 on each axis, you can find this value display in the object properties menu (orange box icon) or if you press the N key in the Item tab you will find the same info.

If you modify the scale of a mesh in Edit mode, the reference for scale will be taken from the properties, so if it's 1 everything functions correctly. But if you modify the scale in Object mode, the scale changes in the properties and must be applied because if you edit the mesh in edit mode with a different scale to 1 (depending how much the scale has been modified) 1cm for example will not be read as 1cm, and maybe you bevel and want a 1 cm round bevel but you scaled on Z(height) and your bevel goes down because on Z the scale is 10 and now 1cm vertically is referenced as 10cm instead.
So, that's why you apply scale. :)

tl;dr; - everything that references the scale property of a mesh will be skewed and will not function correctly without the scale applied.

q: 'what does the unwrap do?'

the unwrap makes a thing called a UV map, it's exactly like a pattern in clothing, the mesh is cut on the edges and layed out flat so you can paint on it
If you want to do it manually just select the edges, right click and 'make seam' it will turn red as an indicator that it is now a seam, press U and unwrap, you can use the UV Editing tab up there over the viewport. Keep doing that until you're satisfied with what you have, avoid stretching where you can, definitely avoid overlapping.

Best of luck, enjoy 3D ^^

[swordofkings]

15:15 you can use A to select all objects, then control+A to bring up the menu to apply the scale to all selected objects! (works in right click select configuration but I know some short cuts are different in the left click select setup)

[adamthorntonillustration]

I'll admit that I kinda watched this one only because Marco puts the jokes at the start (still love the fresnel one!). I hadn't intended to watch further into the video because Marco's forays into Blender and 3D always scared me a little. I feel that I'm still coming to terms with 2D art. So adding even more learning, with Blender, would be too much.
I thought, as a 2D artist, I'll never be able to do 3D, until Marco delivered the killer line - "You can! And with your existing skill set".
This is where my ears really started to listen. As usual, Marco makes it easy for us!


Thanks Marco!

[pitavant]

Dude I've been drawing for many years now and I just wanted to tell you that throughout all the Art youtubers and tutorials I've watched, none have helped me improve more than your vids. Keep it up!

[AlexiBalian]

Sweet machine!
I’m so happy to see you sharing your 2D skills within a 3D environment, including your use of the Grease Pencil to visualize such constructs, off the charts amazing- thank you !!!

[artofmina]

Just wanted to let you know, I've watched a loooot of art tutorials and videos. Like a lot, a lot. Free and paid ones. But no one is as good as a teacher as you in my opinion. Thank you so much for making me a better artist! ♥

[martians]

As a blender guy interested in learning some 2d for blender it's really exciting seeing someone take on a project like this from the other way, you make amazing stuff!

[honeydragon]

this was great because I've been trying to figure out how to get started on using Blender for a while now, but all the introduction tutorials were just going over my head. Going at it from this angle has been incredibly helpful in understand what each of the tools does.

[peterholub]

These 2D+3D tutorials are just amazing...
As most objects in the real world don't have sharp edges to better visualize the edge highlights on your 3D objects I recommend to use the bevel modifier.
Quick setup values:
Amount something very small like 0.02m, Limit angle, Turn off clamp overlap.

[ok_listen]

This, this is what I needed. I’m so scared of starting blender, this might push me to do it. Thank you!

[spaderkungskuk]

Everything in the viewport is transformed by a setting under Color Management in the lower right. By default it’s sRGB. Historically you often sample colors, and with the color picker it’s possible to sample an average as well as single pixels. Looking forward to the next part!

[haksin]

Thanks to your tutorial 3D modeling doesn't seem so scary now. You threw in another perspective on the subject. Wasn't so tech-y about it as the rest that I've seen. Thanks