3 Helpful Tips for Making A Simple 3D Model Look Complex

If you’re trying to model any kind of technological or mechanical object, you’ll quickly realize that it’s difficult to make it look complex and detailed enough. These 3 tips will help you take your model to the next level.

Tip 1: Hide the seams.

Covering the seams where two meshes intersect adds a subtle but powerful layer of realism. For example, if you have a cylinder on top of a cube, add another tiny cylinder at the base of the first one to cover the seam.

You could also join your objects and model in a real bevel, if you’re willing to do the extra work.

This helps add realism and detail in the same way that beveling does: removing sharp corners. Nothing in the real world has the kind of sharp corners that result from mesh intersection.

Tip 2: Add pipes (or wires).

Adding pipes or wires is an excellent way to add both detail and realism. Most real mechanical-looking objects have some kind of wires or pipes on them. Whatever it is you’re making will almost certainly be better of with a couple of well-placed pipes.

Pipes are extremely easy to model. Just add a cylinder and extrude it into a pipe shape. If you select all the joint areas and extrude them outward you’ll get an even more realistic pipe. Also adding other details on your pipes, like couplings or valves, can help add realism and keep your pipes from looking identical to each other.

In the image ↑ you can see that a simple cube on one of the pipes completely hides the fact that the pipe is a duplicate of the other.

Make wires by placing simple curves. Be sure to place wires next to each other in groups to form a tangle or bundle. Single wires are rare.

Also be sure to extrude a wider section on the end of your pipe (or wire) just before it intersects your mesh. This helps it look like the pipe is actually connected to something.

Tip 3: Add small details.

Small details can add tons of complexity without much effort. Just select a few faces or groups of faces, inset them, and extrude them inward or outward to make a defined panel. Or make some loop cuts and extrude those a few times.

The point of this is to break up any large, featureless areas. Objects in the real world rarely have large empty surfaces.

You can also model a few separate detail meshes and then duplicate them around your object, scaling and rotating as needed.

Try starting with a cylinder. Make it look interesting with loops, insets, and extrusions, and then make it fairly small and place it on your mesh somewhere. Save up a collection of details like this and you’ll be able to detail any model!

Another good technique is to add something simple but extremely detailed, like a ventilator grill. You can see how the ventilator grill adds greatly to the level of detail in the image ↑.

It’s a good idea to make sure you place some details behind other details. This adds depth and gives a realistic layered feeling to your object.

The key to realistic details is to add enough without overdoing it. Don’t extrude too far. Don’t cover every surface with hundreds of bits and pieces.

Bonus Tip 4: Use detailed textures.

You can add a ton of detail without any modeling at all if you use image textures in your materials. You could paint your own texture maps with details specific to whatever it is you’re modeling, or you can just use generic image textures.

In the attached image, the material is based off a metal plates texture from AmbientCG.

Even if you don’t want to add any details through image textures, you do need to make sure your material includes a layer of dirt or grunge. Nothing real is perfectly clean, ever. Something as simple as a noise texture connected to the roughness of your shader can make a massive difference.