Initially this was my Blender review on Steam. It is a set of personal notes marked with dates and time regarding my evolution in art and hours accumulated in Blender, without counting other applications. It got so big that the platform did not allow me to post any more, so I decided to post here and reference my review to this website.

https://steamcommunity.com/id/EinMeister/recommended/365670

I chose blender to make good looking stuff without being able to draw it myself. This program allows me to create amazing assets without much talent, just knowledge. Amazing.

The fact that such a complex program is available for 100% free is also amazing!

Can't recommend it enough, i've been working in for like 14 hours a day 2 days in a row and at the moment i'm writing this review i'm starting my third.

Edit: I've been doing it for 3 weeks as much as I could. It's amazing how much stuff I can do now.

Edit 2 (12.9.2020, 430 hours) I've reached a point that I never thought is possible to reach without being a pro in the industry. Holy shit, once you learn how to use it you will be a god able to create anything! I still have to learn UVs, weight painting, sculpting, more nodes and lightning though.

Edit 3 (19.10.2020, 610 hours) After learning the basics of sculpting I've done my first commission that i spent about 30-40 hours on and worked on other small stuff. Also I can finally UV unwrap and work with textures. I started learning Substance Painter too, which is an amazing tool for creating UV maps. I've noticed that my past topology was trash so i'm working on improving it. Started using a github app called Instant Meshes to remove the poly count without losing much detail.

Edit 4 (11.11.2020 800 hours) I've improved my topology and started learning booleans and bevels since hard surface looks so cool. This guy on youtube called Josh Gambrell is a god in them. Can't live without Booltool, Hops and kit ops now.

Got accepted in the newgrounds Christmas collab 2020 bc people like my art, I'm working on something really big :)

Edit 5 (27.12.2020, 1000 hours) I've finished https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/einmeister/new-grounds-new-wheels my collab piece and besides the newgrounds advent, I also applied with it in https://youtu.be/ouUKTzWIJ3E a CG competition which I have somehow won,

I finished my first tutorial, meant to help friends and randoms that somehow happen to find it.

Edit 6 (30.03.2021 1560 hours) I participated in a https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/einmeister/zona-it wallpaper contest and lost. I have also participated in an avatar contest for the channel Dave2D on youtube, but lost. I spent the rest of the time making decalmachine decals which I plan to upload on gumroad for sale after I finish this mechanical leg project I've been working on for a month. I learned a lot of Substance Painter and Fusion 360 & how to export in moi3D, as well as manual retopology and optimization as I did a gig with a fish.

I am planning to finish my mechanical leg, which I will post here, publish my decal pack, learn actual moi3D modeling and some rigging. I also need to get into characters, I want to specialize into hard surface modeling but it doesn't hurt to know the basics of character creation.

Edit 7 (01.06.2021 1900 hours) I have learned rigging and put a ton of work into the mechanical leg but put the project on a long break. I have finished my decals but forgot to upload for sale so now if i'm better after many months i might try it again. I have participated in Moon Camp Pioneers 2020-2021, a contest held by the European Space Agency with 2 people I have found on the internet that did their part of the design and fully the paperwork and concept. We have won second place, here's the link: https://mooncampchallenge.org/pioneers-gallery-2021/details/

I also started learning gun modeling, having made https://www.artstation.com/artwork/VgqKXX an album cover for a friend and talented musician, https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/untextured-m4-04fce8bf5d01476f9e62c0500905f5d1 an m4 rifle and almost finished showcasing a Kriss Vector model with full internals that I will upload everywhere I can.

Edit 8 (31.08.2021 2330 hours) I finished my https://www.artstation.com/artwork/ZGnDQw Kriss Vector at the beginning of the summer, made a https://www.artstation.com/artwork/48Yx9k low poly Honey Badger model for some roblox game but ended up being scammed, worked on a 40 second animation that I will release at the end of September, created a high poly and baked it on the official CSGO PP Bizon model since I am making a skin for an ongoing valve competition. The last but not least of my summer projects is that I have started working on a good showcase of my mechanical leg that I mentioned earlier. Besides those I also spent some time watching courses and tutorials, including Substance Designer, and teaching friends how to get started with Blender.

Edit 9 (16.11.2021 2510 hours) I haven't been able to do as much work as I've done in my previous updates, irl school started and it is also my last year which means that it is very stressful, the final exam is coming...

The mechanical leg that I was talking about in the last update became https://www.artstation.com/artwork/3dyQdE

I have finished the animation that I mentioned, which is the https://youtu.be/6iZIaERfvpc]trailer for a https://youtu.be/-cJTfiS83b0 community music album.

I didn't manage to finish the pp bizon skin by the competition deadline, I think I would've given up on it if it was fully on me, but someone contacted me to do the albedo map and we will soon publish it on the csgo workshop. I have also made smooth normals for multiple csgo skins, I know all of the mistakes of the valve models i worked on to their core. 

I ordered a new microphone because my headset attachment broke, I can finally start doing youtube tutorials again.

I have started learning 3DS Max, its features seem interesting, looks like it has a workflow that could benefit me. Even so, it is "industry standard" and it might look good in my cv. I have also tried out Shapr3D, amazing program, but it has the only thing that makes me want to swap from Fusion 360 which is the fact that it is connected to the cloud all the time, I want offline programs!!

Also I've been trying to learn drawing, but I am really bad at it and I have no idea how to learn, I've been trying to learn drawing for longer than a year already and it won't work. It is required to get into 3D art unis... weirdly enough. Drawing is not for me but I have to force myself through it.

Edit 10 (29.01.2022 2710 hours) I have finished the bizon skin, worked on other models for csgo, created a tutorial on youtube, learned MoI 3D, met some cool people in the industry, re-rendered everything for the mechanical leg and kriss vector projects and also made an extra transparent shot for it, I have done some sticker designs of my own art that I want to print soon, made a 3D printable model of the Apollo spacecraft for a kickstarter game and worked for the entire holiday season on a high poly MP9 model that I want to learn texturing and asset optimization on. 

Drawing doesn't work, I have no motivation for it as I have for 3D, no passion, not for me. I will apply anyway, even if I found out I can probably not afford it. 

Started working on a course with someone.

Edit 11 (25.07.2022 2806 hours) GRADUATED school, I am finally a free man, sadly I had a lot to study which was time I did not spend doing 3D art. Lots of time was wasted for information I will never need like the analysis of some really old Romanian books, plant biology and maths over anything i will ever need to use even if I learn Houdini. I have been accepted at Howest DAE in Belgium, a digital arts university in the city of Kortrijk. I will study there for the following 3 or 4 years, me having done so much 3D in the past means a huge headstart. I have printed the stickers I mentioned previously and put them around the city, sadly people ripped most of them. I haven't finished the MP9. The invasion of the terrorist state of Russia to the country neighboring mine affected everyone. I have been shocked by it and I couldn't look at any guns for a few months, and by the time I got my head together I didn't want to work on that old project anymore. I started modeling another B&T weapon, the SPC9, a very new model with very little image reference that no one has modeled and posted online before. I will post the MP9 as a training piece for this one, even though the techniques are totally different. I am modeling the SPC9 in Fusion 360. 

I have taught several teams of highschool students how to model in Fusion 360 in order to participate in the same Moon Camp contest that I won second place of last year. Some of them quit, but 3 teams managed to submit their project and one of them got third place in Europe :) Now they also know CAD.

I have done more work for CSGO skins, watched a few tutorials, but that was pretty much it.

Edit 12 (25.07.2023 4050 hours) The exact 1 year time skip is a coincidence, but it is iconic. I have finished my first year in Howest DAE with great success, no retakes. I'm proud of it because it is a famously hard school to do that in, many people that start the year are gone by the end of it, willingly or unwillingly. The workload is very dense and it required huge amounts of effort, I have not been able to work on any personal projects during the school year, only in holidays. I have learned a lot of theory and soft skills and put them to practice, which I have not expected. I already had a lot of experience with 3D before enrolling here, unlike my classmates, so I expected not to learn much in the first year and only start to get serious starting from the second, it was not the case. I will learn a ton of useful stuff the upcoming year without having wasted one. I have learned how to program in Java, how to do procedural models in Houdini, how to do preproduction sketches also called concept art, evolving my iteration and composition skills. I have learned how to receive and give feedback better, as being surrounded by so many artists involved lots of that. Made lots of friends, some of them are really close to me, fell in love, got my heart broken, improved social skills. During the academic year I made those link1 link2 link3, continued work on my SPC9 in holidays, did some more csgo bakes, started doing cs2 bakes once it got announced along with the beta test, both clear canvases and skin normals. This summer I mostly did cs2 bakes, but also finished my exams, modeled some flowers, continued learning from tutorials and courses and made a quick tutorial to transition to Blender for my Maya user friends. I am also preparing to teach at the Java Processing intro course for the new year students next academic year. I need to start working on a collaborative project with a friend and I also want to model some buildings inspired by Iasi, a beautiful city in Romania that I have visited a little bit after I finished my exam season. I also started going more often to the gym this summer, unrelated to 3D, but it helps me feel physically better since I stay so much in front of my PC.

I will keep updating this whenever I feel like I achieved something.