So I was flipping through YouTube and I found this tutorial that looked rather interesting. This guy made a red solo cup with ice cubes and liquid. I watched it, but stopped after a while because it didn't seem like he was doing things right. Now, mind you I haven't used Blender since 2.79, but this guy said it was it first tutorial, and to be honest, he seemed to be making a lot of mistakes. At any rate, I don't want to pick up any bad habits and then have to unlearn them later, so I was hoping that someone who has more experience with 2.8 and up might take a look at the video and tell me if he's doing things right. So here's the link: Red Solo Cup

I'll wait a few days to give you time to look at it, and check back. The video is about an hour long to the end, but I'm really only interested in the cup part.

Didn't have time right now to watch the whole thing. It's over an hour-long, which in itself seems unusual for such a simple scene, but that's ok. Everyone has their own way of doing things I guess, and it doesn't hurt to learn different techniques. However, if I were going to model an object and create a scene to real-world units of measure that were significantly smaller than the default Blender scene units (meters), I'd definitely change the scene units to match the units of that object I'm creating. In other words, if the cup reference is calling for dimensions in millimeters, then I would change the scene units and the grid units to millimeters in Blender, rather than using scale formulas to convert and scale everything on the fly as he is doing there. However, that's just a personal workflow preference. It's not necessarily incorrect to do it the way he is doing it, and some people might argue that keeping the scene in meters will make it easier if you decide to start creating other things in the scene that use a larger scale.

The only other thing I noticed while scrubbing through is that he's really doing a lot of things the "long" way, so to speak. It may sound like nitpicking, but many of his polygon selections in edit mode were done in a much slower, longer way than might be necessary. For example, when he selects the polygons for the white material on the cup, he was using box selection from the top view, which doesn't capture all the necessary polygons on the model, so then he has to manually select those additional polygons by hand. There is a much, much faster way of doing this. In fact, there are a couple of different methods I can think of which would do a better job of selecting all those polygons more efficiently, but I don't wanna explain all that right now because it could confuse you during this project. There's nothing inherently wrong with the way he's doing things, it's just some of the techniques seem unnecessarily complicated.

I certainly do not wish to critique this video or his workflow. I just want you to know that there are faster methods to doing most of this, especially the modeling process. As far as "bad habits" are concerned, I don't see anything offhand to worry about. The tutorial seems to produce a nice product in the end, and that's really what it's about unless you are an advanced modeler or content creator.

Have fun with it!

Okay, I'll give it a shot then. If nothing else, should help me get a feel for modeling things.

I took a brief look at the tutorial and like LuxXeon could not currently watch the whole thing and agreeing with LuxXeon do not want to critique but do agree with one major point of doing things to scale is always a big help in any modeling project I attempt actually sometimes I may get a little to focus on scale measurements that I want them to be as exact as possible that is how my personal mind works. I think personally I would watch several similar videos that would be similar in project style before actually diving in to any one specific one so watch a couple that would be cup modeling and then a couple of achieving similar fluid look so as to pick apart what you would find more in tune with your own style so you can learn several ways of doing the same thing but settling on what works best for you if that makes sense. Like I like allot of Architectural modeling and have tried several different creators but eventually settle on a style that is taught by Thomas McDonald because his style of doing things falls in line with how I think and it just clicks if that makes sense. Hope this helps with your question

That's a good point, Lobo. I think with all the different tutelage available now on Youtube and other websites, it's easy to get overwhelmed or confused as to which technique is the "correct" method of doing something and what, if any, are just teaching outdated or repetitive stuff that is a waste of time. I'd suggest that nothing is really a waste of time if you actually succeed in creating something, but it all depends on your current skill level and experience.

As Lobo suggests, if you have an idea of something you might be interested in creating, do a search for it on Youtube. Chances are good that you will find many results and many different videos of people creating the same model. Pick a few of those and just run through them. Then decide which one best fits your style of learning and go with it. Sometimes the way one guy does something might be too advanced for your current skill level, or vice versa.

When it comes to 3d modeling, there are lots of different techniques and methods to achieve the exact same thing. The only time something might be considered "wrong" is if it's using a system that produces a model or product that simply will not work for your needs in the end. For example, someone might be creating a model using boolean tools or techniques that produce lots of triangles or ngons on the model, but you need it to work in other software packages where such an object might not render properly. Or you might want to be able to apply subdivision surfaces to the model for additional smoothing under a close camera angle. Then you would certainly wish to avoid any techniques that produce ngons on the model. Otherwise, it's just a matter of personal workflow and efficiency. There's really no right or wrong method.

My only recommendation is to stick with tutorials that are created for Blender 2.8x or higher, if possible. Avoid the 2.79 tutorials at this point, unless you are confident enough to be able to make that learning transition to a completely different UI and workflow.