3D digital art has certainly come a long way from its obscure beginnings. Nowadays, you find it everywhere – in print, web and television advertisements, in movies, etc. But what exactly is digital art?

The technology of 3D digital art

3D Digital art is a very young field, and more research and formal training is needed before schools can offer it as a viable study. So far, 3D digital art software has managed to create impressive 3D images, but more functionality needs to be incorporated. Software developers are continuously working to delve into the vast potential of 3D digital media.

Many digital 3D artists are involved improving the application of 3D digital software’s light and shadow effects on objects. Most 3D artists also create straight from their imagination ‘surreal’ or impossible objects. Their output is often times seen in movies and on the Internet.

3D digital imaging is a long process. When you create one 3D digital face, it can literally take months – even with the help of software such as Corel Bryce 3D, Adobe Photoshop, Curious Labs Poser, Jasc PSP and other painting programs. The technique of ‘modeling’ is particularly hard to master. It takes months and sometimes years for the best digital artists to achieve ‘broadcast quality’ looks.

Spline control is another particularly complicated area of 3D digital imaging. Before going into such advanced techniques, digital art students must be well versed in the fundamentals of LightWave 3D, as well as basic modeling skills. They should be very good at selecting and modifying points and polygons, determining framing and motion paths, basic surfacing and image mapping.

Blender 3D is a powerful open source program for creating 3D models and objects. Although it is freely distributable, it is not in any way inferior to many high end commercial 3D modeling and animation programs. In fact, in the modelling department, it is surprisingly fast and intuitive to use compared to many commercial programs of the similar type.

There are two main ways of creating 3D models in Blender 3D.

The first method is by modifying from existing objects and primitives. These included tools in the Add function such as NURBS surfaces and meshes. From these objects we apply various operations. Two very useful functions are Extrude and Knife Cut. Extrude is performed by pressing the E Key on the keyboard. Knife Cut is performed by using the K Key.

The second method of building 3D models is from using curves, paths, edges and vertices. This method may employ techniques such as extruding vertices, creating faces, revolving using Spin, extrude along path or curve. A quick way to create face is by pressing the F key once the respective edit points has been selected.

For precision modelling, we can use the Snap to Grid mode. This is done by holding the Ctrl Key while snapping points. One can also use direct numerical inputs as well.

When doing 3D modelling in Blender, it is important to understand the properties of Object & Edit Mode. We will need to toggle between this two modes very often.

These fundamentals in 3D modeling are not only applicable to Blender 3D. In fact, it is valid for most other 3D applications as well. The processes are similar, only the specific keys and commands are different.

You’ve probably been trying to figure out how to sell your music on iTunes forever and never got anywhere, or, this may be your first time asking the question. Whichever person you are, iTunes can be a great place to begin as long if you have the right knowledge. I’m here to give it to you.

Bluntly, the Simplest Way
Go onto CDbaby.com and sign up. The website will distribute digital and physical copies of your music to iTunes, Rhapsody, and more. You have to pay $35 as a one-time fee for CD baby to do this for you. In addition, they will take 9% of your revenue from your music sales. This is by far the simplest way to get on iTunes. However, just because you’re on iTunes does not necessarily mean you’ll sell records. You need to know how to promote correctly for maximum exposure, thus, bringing you more income.

Promoting to Your iTunes Store
If you don’t have a website you can create a free blog at blogger.com. This is almost the same thing as having your own website except the hosting is free and your title will look similar to this: “myitunesgreatpopmusic.blogspot.com.” Blogger is very simple but if you want something simpler, create a MySpace page and promote from there. One of the keys to promoting is creating backlinks to your main page which increases your page rank in the search engines. In short, sign up with as many social networking sites you can and link them all to a main your main page. You can also do the same exact thing with YouTube by creating numerous videos with high search volume keywords for the titles, creating more video views linking back to your main page. To sell your music on iTunes, you’ll need to have an abundance of pages all linking to your store.