Anvil Tutorial

I went through Blender Guru’s anvil tutorial last week, which was a great intermediate modeling and texturing walkthrough. It covers some different modeling techniques for hard-body surfaces and introduces normal-map baking, which is something I have never really had a chance to learn.

Here is my final render of the anvil I created:

Final render from Blender of the anvil from Blender Guru's turorial

Although the final render shows various nicks and cuts, the actual mesh does not have any of those features. By creating those details in a higher-resolution mesh and then baking them to a normal map, it gives the illusion of all that extra detail.

Here is the same shot as a wireframe (with subdivisions turned on):

Wireframe render of the anvil

If you are already familiar with Blender but want to go beyond the basics and learn more about modeling and texturing, I highly recommend the tutorial!