Learn Low Poly Modeling in Blender 2.9 / 2.8
Why Hacker News recommends it
It is the most-recommended beginner Blender tutorial on HN, with several people saying it made them comfortable in a couple of hours.
What it is
Imphenzia's 83-minute tutorial covers the low poly modeling techniques he learned over five years of Blender use, with timestamps from navigation and extrusion onward. It uses Blender 2.83 with default keys.
Recommended by 4 HN commenters across 4 different months, 2020 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec artificialLimbs · 2021-10 · on “Apple Joins Blender Development Fund”
I uncomfortably poked at blender a few times over the years until this tut by Imphenzia, which made me comfortable in under 2 hours: [this video]
Strong rec jolexxa · 2023-03 · on “Blender 3.5”
hey me too!! The video that finally helped me get going was this one from Imphenzia on YT: [this video] all his other stuff is great, like building and rigging a low-poly character. Instead of having to follow tutorials and make stuff I didn’t want to, he shows you how to use the tools to make what’s in your imagination!
Recommends juanuys · 2020-12 · on “Ask HN: Best Tutorials for Blender?”
For Blender, I've really liked this video, and others by the same chap: [this video] For game dev, I'd start with something with a UI and general-purpose like Godot or Unity, or if you're not a coder, maybe GameMaker and its ilk.
Recommends Etherlord87 · 2025-08 · on “LL3M: Large Language 3D Modelers”
Wrong tutorials. A lot of these models consist of just taking a primitive like a sphere, scaling it, and then creating another primitive, scaling it, moving it, so you have overlapping hulls ("bad" topology). Then in shading you just create a default material and set its color. There are models in the examples that require e.g. extrusion (which is literally: select faces, press E, drag mouse). Some shapes are smoothed/subdivided with Catmul-Clark Subdivision Surface modifier, which you can add simply by pressing CTRL+2 in "Object Mode" (the digit is the number of subdivisions, basically use 1 to 3, you may set more for renders). Here's a good, albeit old tutorial: [this video] Yes I made some ass