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Your sculpting technique is fine but your anatomy is atrocious.

The rib cage and abdominal musculature anatomy is off. You don't just have abdominal muscles on your lower trunk. Also the abdominals should have a limited width. To the nipple line would work but your nipples are set out too far. They should be in the mid clavicular line but you don't have any clavicles. The 6 pack is nice but the hole in the top one would hurt as it's not present in real life and is where the xiphoid under the bottom of the rib cage should be. So your abdominals are to high and too wide and too bulky. There should also be one long one below the navel which is way too low. The pecs attach to the sternum and manubrium and go to the inside of the arm. That's what forms the axilla (armpit). The lat in the back and the pec in the front. So along the sternum the pecs should go outward not downward. Also that deep line separating the pec from the shoulder would sever the pec muscles from the arms. That is not existent in normal anatomy. People do tend to shift there humerus foward but that is an abnormality caused by bad posture and muscle imbalances. There is no rib cage giving the upper trunk its form. The serratus muscles are just sliding downward and fading out instead of inserting onto the ribs along the lateral side under the axilla. You've created a new muscle under the arm that doesn't exist. The deltoid muscle is nonexistant in the front and top and is in the wrong place on the back. There are three heads to the deltoid. The anterior (front) middle (on top) and posterior (rear). They blend together midway down on the lateral side of the humerus at about your cutoff. The posterior one attaches to the spine of the scapula where your attaches to nothing. The anterior attaches to the lateral aspect of the clavicle (which you don't have) and the anterior acromion. The middle attaches to the lateral acromion. The upper traps also go outward from the nuchal ridge on the skull to the acromion on the top of the shoulder then down the back along the spine of the scapula to the spinus' of the vertebra. The lower trap is also on the spine of the scapula to the vertebra and the lateral aspect goes down diagonally to the 12th vertebral spinus process. So you have no lower trap. The lats sweep up from the lumbosacral fascia which starts along the upper boarder of the illium (which again does not exist) moving laterally and inserts onto the humerus in the same medial groove the pec inserts into. You con't have any lats either. You also don't have any paraspinal muscles along the spine and you have no posterior hip fold where the glut medius is. I could go on and on.

You NEED to read a book on artistic anatomy. I love Bridgeman's books. They would be great for you due to your focus on muscles.

The Human Machine (Dover Anatomy for Artists)

Constructive Anatomy (Dover Anatomy for Artists)

You MUST start with the bones. Get a GOOD inexpensive or free skeleton. Put it in a separate collection and use it as a reference so you know where the bones are and can attach the muscles appropriately. Once you know your anatomy that will be superfluous or only needed as a check. But you really REALLY need to learn anatomy if you are going to do this kind of work. It LOOKS good but anyone who knows anatomy will go "nope, it's not right". When you create art about a subject always keep in mind that somewhere in your audience there will almost always be a content expert. Like me. An an artist, I always strive to impress them. If I make a spaceship, I keep in mind as best as I can the physics involved. You con't need the math. Just like in art anatomy you don't need to know the innervation of the muscles like a doctor would need. You need to know enough that you can sell your art to an expert. Keep that in mind as you do all your art. That is one thing that will separate out the pro from the amateur. There is always artistic license ... but not with human anatomy. Even is you're doing an anime or cartoon, the best artists embed their knowledge in the subtle way they do their linework or design their mesh. That's why we buy it.

I hope that helps. Don't give up or get frustrated. Your sculpting technique is good. Your knowledge must match. One thing I learned doing art is that a good artist researches and expands their knowledge about not only their craft, but their subject matter as well. Do that and you can only get better.

Good luck.

Thank you so much for taking your time to help me. I tried out a lot over the last few months and now I want to specialize on something. I think Hard Surface would be the technique that I would enjoy the most. I already have some ideas on my mind what I want to do, but I am afraid those are all too hard for a beginner like me. Something to guide me through at least the beginning would help me personally alot I think.

Someone else posted something on this sub earlier and he said he was using this book to learn Hard Surface Modelling and I think I want to get somethng similar too. Do you have any suggestions on books/ guides or do you have an opinion on this one?

I also checked Arrimus 3d on youtube and he has a ton of great stuff there. Just after a few minutes in some of his videos I saw new techniques to create different stuff. His videos should be very helpful to me. Thank you for the recommendation.

When using a Surface device, it is nice to have a small bluetooth keyboard with a numberpad. I set it angled to the side of the device. I would also use software like autohotkey or radialmenu to remap the pen buttons so that you have access to the MMB from the pen.

In terms of easily moving objects, you're just going to have to practice a lot. It becomes just as easy as a mouse after awhile. If you end up really enjoying the pen over the mouse, I would also pick up an artist glove: https://www.amazon.com/LaughingPaw-Anti-fouling-Drawing-Display-Tracing/dp/B01CX0AIUG/ref=redir_mobile_desktop?_encoding=UTF8&keywords=artist%20glove&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&qid=1500645199&ref_=mp_s_a_1_15&sr=8-15

The glove will protect your hand from the tablet's heat and will also allow you to slide your hand across the glass more easily.

Id rather get something like this https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-15-6-Full-Gaming-Laptop/dp/B072C1FNN1/ref=sr_1_4?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1504021932&sr=1-4&keywords=1070+laptop

That one has a full 1070 in it.

Alternatively this one is a good chunk cheaper and has a 1060. https://www.amazon.com/Amazons-Choice-Predator-GeForce-G3-571-77QK/dp/B06Y4GZS9C/ref=sr_1_10?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1504021932&sr=1-10&keywords=1070+laptop

These are just the first two examples that Amazon search has spat out. If you really intend to buy a laptop you should read reviews on the specific models if there are some glaring issue with it like thermal issues or whatever.

Anyways a laptop with a 1060/1070/1080 would be best as those are pretty powerful for laptop GPUs and almost as good as there desktop counterparts and they offer a lot of VRAM. The 1060 and 1070 have 6 respectively 8GB on board.
If money is no object you can even go for SLI system these days although those are 3000$+

Alternatively you could look into small form factor desktops like an ITX based system depending on how you travel between your houses.

Animation is very very deep, but incredibly rewarding.
For characters, Richard Williams animators survival kit


https://www.amazon.ca/Animators-Survival-Kit-Principles-Formulas/dp/0571202284

It is an industry standard. It has tons of great information and people all levels refer to it constantly. There are tons of great youtube tutorials but I can't grab any from mobile ATM.

A search on YouTube for the "12 principles of animation" may be a good jumping off point. If I remember I'll try and find you something tomorrow.

I would suggest that you take a look at something called "Planes of the head", being able to clearly distinguish shape and form in sculptures are important in order to place different landmarks, and keep a consistant quality of the sculpt. I would recommend looking up Stan Prokopenkos youtube-channel about this, as he is very good at showing how the anatomy works, and what common mistakes are. Even if Prokopenko is drwaing, the theory of how the major and minor planes do not change.

I would also like to suggest Michael Hamtpons book "Design and Invention" as it has very good shapes for 3D-work.

It's very nice to see sculpting here, keep it up! :)

I just spent $300 for a GTX570. This is a nice card, and runs cuda really well. I don't think you can get anything that supports cuda for cycles, better than a cpu can support cycles, for near $100.

That's the harsh reality. If you spend $100 or less on a graphics card to run cycles with cuda, you probably wont save any time vs. running cycles on the cpu.

Save your money, and get a really nice GTX .... or save for the Tesla cards (>$1000).( Nevermind, Tesla cores aren't meant for Cuda stuff... I don't think they would be better.)

Word to the wise: If you've spent a good deal of time going over tutorials on the net, you're ready to buy a real book. Books you can buy at Amazon are so much more complete and thorough and helpful than the freebie bin of the internet. Remember, however, that this year's selection of books generally deal with blender 2.4x

Tony Mullen is a good author.

a shot of it like that will never look realistic, here is an example of a very clean and polished charger (found it on Amazon), even that the model doesn't have the boolean "glitches" that your model have, and their bevels are perfect, and it has surfaces that looks a bit different, and the USB ports are perfect, and it even had an LED light and the power chord, it still looks like a 3D render because it simply is.

the lighting, the whole white background, the complete absence of anything else, the problem is with the scene itself not just your model or shading, for example take a look at this, i bet you, that if i posted that here with a title syaing "evee is soo fun!" i'll get dozens of upvotes and nobody would be able to tell that its actually a screenshot of a real video (from unbox therapy), so yeah, you want realism ? learn about composition, also, you really should use HDRI too.

I use Wacom Intuos (Large or medium i think), I would recommend this one: https://www.wacom.com/en-cn/products/pen-tablets/wacom-intuos

I have an older model, but it still works great after 2 years and was very cheap. See if you can buy the 3D version to get zbrushcore packaged with it.

If you want to spend more money, you can buy the Intuos Pro, but I think the normal Intuos models work good enough.

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EDIT: Here's the old model I have https://www.amazon.com/Wacom-Intuos-Touch-Tablet-CTH690AK/dp/B01N9NWQDM/ref=sr_1_11?keywords=wacom+intuos&qid=1564907169&s=electronics&sr=1-11

This is a good rendering laptop. It has a 6 core CPU that beats most other CPUs like the 8300h. And it has a 2060 and 16 gb of RAM. An SSD and an HDD. It's a good price and good when looking at price to performance. It's cheaper than other gaming laptops because it has a 60hz screen--and you don't need more than 60hz for what you're doing

Omen by HP 2019 15-Inch Gaming Laptop, Intel i7-8750H Processor, NVIDIA RTX 2060 6 GB, 16 GB RAM, 128 GB SSD, 1 TB HDD, VR Ready, Windows 10 Home https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NDYBX4G/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_x6MPDbK8KNC3W

I've found what works best for me is a wireless mouse/trackball (Logitech's Unifying stuff works well), and I still use the SP3's keyboard. And if you do stick with that keyboard make sure in User Preferences>Input you check "Emulate Numpad", it'll allow you to use the regular number keys for the camera views if there isn't a number pad.

Keep in mind I use it while on the train so a trackball is better than a mouse in that situation, as is the SP3 keyboard.

i suggest Amazon, or newegg

whatever you trust,

500 is a reasonable budget and you can get something good enough for a variety of tasks.

here is one example...

https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-Ideapad-320-Performance-Bluetooth/dp/B07DYTNQ48/ref=sr_1_3?qid=1563807413&refinements=p_36%3A40000-50000%2Cp_n_size_browse-bin%3A2423840011%7C2423841011%2Cp_n_feature_five_browse-bin%3A13580791011&rnid=2257851011&s=pc&sr=1-3

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whatever you pick i would go for as much RAM (at least 12gig) and best cpu that you can find, even used or refurbished would be cool.

You don't need a graphics card, but it will help speed up renders.

Thank you! That was my fear. I was thinking RAM would be my best chance because he's mentioned it, in which case I'd just find a general price and be like now choose the right one and make a silly fake giftcard to downloadmoreram.com, which isn't real of course!

So he has 2 monitors already. He isn't pro at blender atm but follows tutorials to learn. Are books on blender irrelevant/outdated vs YouTube generally? He's working on textures and faces now I think.

Forgive my ignorance on tablets- as a writer and researcher, I stick to laptops for notetaking because that's just how I work. How is a tablet powerful enough for modeling if so much goes into blender to begin with? Is it difficult to work with? He has a laptop but I've never seen him use it for blender. It's on Linux though, if that matters. (Edit: like this?)

Thank you again!

Looks like a nice first pass, give the body some weight and move it up and down and then you can start adding some secondary motion (small belly bounce, head bob, etc)

I highly recommend this book if you're getting into animation. http://www.amazon.com/The-Animators-Survival-Richard-Williams/dp/0571202284

It's up!

I hope it helps you. I still have a few minor formatting issues from the .mobi conversion, but the material looks good. Let me know if you have any questions or requests.

This pic seems similar to what you've made. The faucet's glossy shader needs to be close to 0% roughness (mirror-like). Pretty nice otherwise though

thanks. THis one then:

https://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-GeForce-Windforce-Graphics-Gv-N206SWF2OC-8GD/dp/B07XL55JMB/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?keywords=Geforce+2060+Super+%28with+8GB+vram%29&qid=1574792505&sr=8-1-fkmr1

Any reason why you'd choose this over the others ? Is it CUDA?

The arms look a little off. A great book for learning human anatomy is Figure Drawing: Design and Invention. It's referenced a lot by sculptors (and in clay sculptors)

https://www.amazon.com/VicTsing-Wireless-Silent-Breathing-Backlit/dp/B075M3YY18/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=easterntimes+tech+mouse&qid=1555813748&s=gateway&sr=8-2

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$16 good quality

So the one you're talking about is this?
https://www.amazon.com/Wacom-CTL490DW-Digital-Drawing-Graphics/dp/B010LHRFM2/ref=pd_lpo_vtph_147_bs_t_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=4JY11WMB4MMNVZRCC0GQ

So difference between that and this https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KKPBWBU/ref=twister_B0151LH8ZC

is it just that the 2nd one provided zbrush core? It does say specifically 3D though.

The Animators Survival Kit.
https://www.amazon.com/Animators-Survival-Kit-Richard-Williams/dp/0571202284