Stop Blaming the Tools and Git Gud
For years, I kept hitting the same invisible a walls in my 3D progress. I’d start a project, struggle, and quit. Then I started playing the Souls games and I was taught an honest but brutal lesson: I was experiencing a skill issue. Not a natural talent issue. Not a 3D software issue. A lack of skill—and skill can be built.
How I Got Good at Repeatedly Dying
At first, the Souls games were overwhelming, just like learning 3D. I kept dying, getting frustrated, and every boss wiped the floor with my face. But slowly, I started seeing patterns. I noticed enemies telegraphing their attacks, saw openings to dodge, and learned exactly when I could safely strike back. I learned from my mistakes, adapted my fighting method, and approached each fight with patience. The more I paid attention, the less I died.
And then it clicked. The game wasn’t unfair, it just didn’t care about my feelings. It was my job to learn, adapt, and improve. If I failed, it was because I messed up. I got impatient, or didn’t take time to learn the game mechanics.
That same mindset shift changed how I approached 3D. Every bad sculpt wasn’t a personal failure; it was feedback. My anatomy was off? Skill issue. My lighting was ugly? Skill issue. Once I owned my mistakes and decided to actively improve, I finally had fun both in the game and in my 3D art again.
Learning to Take Responsibility
One of the hardest lessons from Souls is accepting that when you die, it’s your fault. The game doesn’t cheat or hide behind artificial difficulty. It gives you all the tools you need to win, but if you don’t learn how to use them, you fail.
I realized the same was true for my 3D work. I kept blaming software, hardware, or a lack of talent instead of admitting I just hadn’t put in enough leg work. My sculpts weren’t bad because ZBrush was complicated, they were bad because I didn’t understand anatomy. My shading wasn’t flat because Blender’s material system was lacking, I just didn’t know how real-world lights and materials worked.
Skill Issues
Before Souls, if a sculpt looked terrible, I’d assume I simply wasn't good enough yet and give up. And being blunt, I wasn’t good enough. The difference now is that I see it as a skill issue, not a personal failing. And skill issues can be fixed.
It's liberating calling it what it is. Instead of a deep personal flaw, it’s simply a skill gap I can close by analyzing my mistakes, making adjustments, and trying again. Bad anatomy? Skill issue. Messy topology? Skill issue. Flat renders? Skill issue.
Blaming tools or other people might feel good at the moment, but it never helps you improve. The only real solution is to put in the work.
How to Git Gud (Without Rage Quitting)
As it turns out, getting better has the same roadmap no matter what you're learning and it comes down to three key areas, no matter if you're trying to defeat Father Gascoigne in Bloodborne or sculpting a human face.
1. High-Quality Knowledge
If you don’t know how something works, you’ll always struggle. In Souls, that means learning how stamina, parries, and dodge rolls actually work instead of mashing buttons in blind panic. You can try brute-forcing a boss, but if you don’t understand how stamina works, how to heal effectively, or how to manage your attacks, you'll always be struggling with the game. Quality knowledge is the basis for everything you do, no matter what you want to learn.
It’s no different in 3D. Using the 3D software requires a ton of technical knowledge, and character modeling demands serious anatomy skills, among many other. If you try to sculpt a full character without knowing how muscles and bones connect, it’s going to look off. You can't fumble around in ZBrush hoping for the best without some underlying knowledge.
2. Practice
You can watch all the Souls boss guides in the world, but if you never actually fight the boss, you’re still going to fail.
The same applies to 3D. Watching tutorials is helpful, but it's not enough. You have to put in actual hours sculpting, texturing, and do it over and over again. You develop muscle memory only through repetition.
For a long time, I thought I could learn 3D by watching tutorials. But just like you can’t learn Souls by watching someone else play, you can’t become a great artist without doing the work yourself. The vast majority of your time should be spent practicing and creating projects. You need to embrace the grind.
3. Feedback
Souls games give instant feedback: you died, so something went wrong. Maybe you mistimed your dodge. Maybe you got greedy and tried to sneak in an extra hit. Even if you don't know exactly what mistakes you made, the feedback is clear: What you're doing isn't working.
In 3D however, there’s often no instant or obvious sign of whether you’ve succeeded or failed - and without feedback you could spend years reinforcing bad habits and not improving. One of the fastest ways you can improve your 3D art is by accepting honest feedback at a fast pace. This is one of the hardest parts of learning 3D, as receiving harsh feedback often feels like an attack and it's easy to take it personally. Perhaps the best way to get past this, is to simply separate yourself from your work. Even if your work is bad, this doesn't mean you're bad as a person. It's your work that's judged - not you as a person.
Your Tools are Already Good Enough
In Souls, every weapon and build can work. Some might make certain fights easier, but there’s no single best weapon. It’s about mastering whatever you choose.
The same goes for 3D. Whether you prefer Blender or Maya, ZBrush or 3D Coat, the tool itself isn’t what makes you excel. It’s your skills and understanding of the fundamentals.
I spent ages bouncing between 3ds Max, Modo, and Maya, looking for the magic 3D software or render engine that would make my art better. But just like swapping out weapons every five minutes instead of learning enemy attack patterns in Souls, I wasn’t actually improving. Instead, I was wasting time re-learning the same basics. Once I stopped chasing the perfect tool and focused on getting better at the one I already used, my 3D art jumped to a new level.
Why Your First Version is Always Ugly
The first few times you fight a boss in Souls, you’ll probably die. A lot. But each time, you learn something new. You start to notice the boss’s patterns, find openings to attack, and gradually refining your approach. Eventually, what seemed impossible becomes second nature. The once impossible fight now becomes an elegant dance. This is one of the reasons people love these games - the boss fights feel like puzzles to be solved.
The same is true for 3D. When I sculpt something and it looks bad, I don’t immediately throw it away, instead I iterate. I analyze what’s wrong, tweaking the proportions, improving the anatomy and cleaning up the shapes. If it still doesn't work, I try again.
Patience and the Grind
The hardest Souls bosses took me days to beat, and that struggle taught me an important lesson for 3D: Consistent effort wins over everything else. You won’t learn anatomy in a week or lighting in a day. Just like in Souls, it’s all about putting in the hours, getting a little better each time, and sticking with it when things get tough.
A major step toward developing patience is learning to accept discomfort. Everyone who’s ever tackled something difficult has felt frustrated at some point. Progress doesn’t follow a perfect upward curve, you move forward, hit a wall, and then repeat. When you start feeling frustrated, acknowledge it and decide how to respond. You can either embrace it as part of the journey or dial it back by taking a break or switching tasks.
Now, when I hit a wall with a sculpt, I remember those marathon boss fights. If I can spend days learning to dodge every swing of Genichiro Ashina’s blade, I can spend the same refining a character’s anatomy. And if it still doesn’t click, I start fresh, just like restarting a boss fight with a new strategy. Embracing the grind keeps me moving forward, even when I fail.
Keep Learning and Stay Patient
By approaching 3D art like a Souls boss fight—learning the fundamentals, putting in the hours, and staying open to honest feedback, you’ll realize that no challenge is truly impossible. The moment you accept that you’re facing a skill issue - and that skill issues can be fixed - you’ve already taken the first step to getting better.
Every failed render and every flawed sculpt is just another attempt, another death on your way to victory. With enough patience, practice, and perseverance, you’ll find that learning 3D is no different from beating the toughest bosses in Souls: it comes down to grit, determination, and the willingness to learn from every mistake.
