A Wine Glass

This is one of the quintessential beginner projects in 3D modeling courses and it can serve as a perfect introduction to NURBS modeling techniques. The shape is familiar and the technique’s very basic, meaning you can get a good-looking model under your belt very quickly and easily.

A Greek Column

Like the arch, this is another easy-to-model architectural element you can use time and time again in projects down the road. Plus, we’ve got a tutorial for this one.

A Skyscraper

This is a fantastic project to help you get the hang of efficiently handling increasing levels of complexity and repetition. The shapes on a modern box-style skyscraper are simple enough they shouldn’t cause problems for beginners, but also bring some interesting technical challenges to the table. A large number of windows forces you to learn techniques for evenly spacing edges, and creating the windows themselves requires a solid understanding of the difference between world space and local space extrusion. It’s also a perfect opportunity to get acquainted with the use of selection sets to handle repetitive face and edge selection.