I’m a veteran Maya user, but for my next project, I needed to dive into Blender. This is the first model I’ve made in Blender, and while I don’t know it as well as Maya yet, my initial impressions are mixed. If you ask me which is better, I’d still say Maya. UV unwrapping in Blender feels like a headache, and keeping track of normals is much more difficult. Pivots and snapping also don’t feel as refined as in Maya. Any day of the week, I’d choose Maya over Blender.

That said, I’ll be spending a lot more time with Blender moving forward. Maybe I’ll change my mind as I become more proficient—or maybe not. But I do think Blender is an excellent tool for anyone starting their journey into 3D.

For this project, I created both a high(er) poly and super low-poly version, exported both, and did my bakes in Substance Painter (even though I know I could have done that in Blender too). I textured everything across two UDIMs, which was a lot of fun as always.

Since Blender is free, and this project was all about learning the software, I’m making the model available for free for anyone to use.

I hope you enjoy it!