How to approach such type of works?

[mathieu_obin]

Hi everyone!

I’m fairly new to Nomad Sculpt, and I’m looking for resources or workflow advice for this kind of approach. I don’t necessarily want to reproduce these references exactly, but they show the general direction I’m interested in: fictional UIs, biomechanical machines, and hybrid forms combining plants, bodies, organic matter, and mechanical parts.

I’m mainly a mixed-media artist, moving between traditional art, digital drawing, collage, and software such as Procreate, Affinity Photo, Photoshop, and Blender.

My current idea is to create strange three-dimensional frames, structures, or interface-like objects that I could combine with my 2D artwork and drawings. I’d like them to feel slightly organic and irregular, somewhere between sculptural objects, machines, and fictional interfaces.

Most of the Nomad Sculpt tutorials I’ve found focus on characters, creatures, or realistic anatomy. I was therefore wondering how more experienced Nomad users would approach something more abstract and experimental, based on assembling and iterating small shapes.

Are there any specific tools, techniques, artists, tutorials, or search terms you would recommend for exploring this direction?

I’ve included a few reference images to give you an idea of what I’m currently looking at.

I also have a second, fairly beginner-level question. I use Blender regularly, but mostly for low-poly work with a retro PS1-style aesthetic, so the polygon counts in Nomad Sculpt seem quite extreme to me!

For a project like this—or for a typical Nomad project in general—what would you consider a reasonable polygon count? At what point would you usually start simplifying, voxel-remeshing, or decimating the model?

Thanks for any advice!

[VertexPuppy]

I like your work a lot. Ill have to consider your question more. How strong of an Ipad do you have? Maybe you are on PC? I’m thinking your style would benefit from looking at the “Array” and “Tube” Demos under the preset menu. I think the Triplanar and Tube tools will likely be important for you. As well as gathering a selection of Normal maps and displacement patterns. For your second image with the bulb of glass like the creatures from Naussica. I suppose I would achieve this by starting out with a few spheres placed about. Turning on Dynotopology and using the Drag tool to create some of the reaching metal you have. Paint them metal. Your chalice lantern would be tubes arranged carefully to form it. Your backdrop of the light blue. I’m thinking you could use a plane tinted that blue, set it to additive. And overlay another plane on top with your text applied as a texture with transparency if you still have the image. Your primary bulb i cant tell if it is a gorgeous tiny terrarium or metal reflecting the grass. Ill assume the 2nd. It would be a sphere, you can use a normal map of similar texture. Apply it to your sphere. And paint the sphere metal. Turn up reflective under material to maximum. And set your greenery in the far background. As your Environment under lighting. you can import it isolated. it will reflect in your orb as if it were the sky. I apologize if i’m not good at answering. I’ve never answered a question about our hobby! Thank you! To recap: Triplanar The object, Triplanar The painting setting, Tubes, Dragging and tugging things about, Normal maps, displacement maps Messing with material properties and importantly being ok with bringing in your text work or things like backgrounds separate and overlaying or underlying it with things. bye bye!~

[mathieu_obin]

Thank you, this is really helpful! I’m working on an iPad, and I’ve already started experimenting with the Array and Tube presets. Your suggestions about Triplanar, normal maps, displacement and using separate planes for text and backgrounds make a lot of sense for the kind of work I’m trying to develop.
No need to apologize — you gave me plenty of great directions to explore. Thanks again for taking the time!