Perfectly Peculiar Pixels [#14]

As you emerge into higher dimensions, the level of complexity of creation will jump up exponentially. Luckily, in 2025, there are more options, and more free options than ever before to help you along the way. I file these under the “I wish I had them when I was learning 3D” category, and looking back, some really feel like cheating. But, “if you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying”.

Polyhaven is a good library to start utilizing in your 3D creations, whether it’s to quickly fill up scenes, see how others modelled complex objects, or to observe how they handled complex UVW mapping. The HDRI textures you find there can help you light your scenes ‘cheaply’ with realistic lighting and not too much fuss.

This one is straight up cheating of the best kind. One of Blender’s greatest strengths is the amount of plugins you can find for it. Learning how to install and handle them should probably one of the first things you do when you install it. Autopainter can generate textures straight onto your own models. Does it have the typical A.I. problem of having to generated a dozen iterations before you get it right? Of course. Is it faster than hand painting it in Photoshop, or Substance painter? Oh yeah.

The reality of the market is that big studios are still using mostly Autodesk products, and up and coming Indies are using Blender. Which way should you go? Achieving basic competence in more than one software, specially when Blender is diametrically opposite to the rest in terms of its user interface, is hedging both against one side failing, and the other one keeping you from getting higher paid jobs. We talked about the benefits and shortcomings of open-source software, and we largely ignored the one thing it shares with consumer software; it needs funding, and lots of it.

Epic couldn’t have provided a more appropriate game for this week. A cat is an Oscar winner this year, and as you move from two to three dimensions, a game that switches between 2D and 3D gameplay is practically fate! There have been other games playing with this concept before, most notably perhaps “the original indy darling”: Fez. While providing a substantially different and refreshing gameplay from most platformers, I doubt it will go down in history as anything more than a footnote.

D’you think it might be the story, and not the software?