How to search for images for 3d modeling?

Question

3D

Where do you look for images of objects with projections for modeling?
Or is there only an option with a Google search for several similar images and manual docking?

Answer 1

I'm not sure about projections, but if you generalize to concept art, sources of inspiration, etc. I always take it from a certain list of sites:
Artstation, an incredibly huge database of models and drawings, and if you discreetly take a screenshot of someone’s model in profile for subsequent modeling on it, then no one will scold
Pinterest, there is a lot of garbage in the search, but there is more content than in some other place, the main thing is to fool around with tags
. In addition to searching on Google, I advise you to wool Yandex too, from experience I can say that their output is completely different, I often found something useful here and there.
Well, another auxiliary tool is the PureRef program, free and incredibly convenient for all kinds of artists and modelers
UPD: I will most likely be corrected, Artstation is generally originally a platform for posting a portfolio, many AAA + game companies post vacancies there, but for mere mortals it is also a place where you can salivate at masterpiece models or drawings

Answer 2

The problem is that this is generally the reverse process. As an engineer (who is looking for all models somewhere in the astral), I can tell you that a three-dimensional image is formed in the head, expressed as a spatial model, and only then (sometimes in the process) projections are built from it for unambiguous understanding (correction) of the form. I mean, the original image here is three-dimensional, and the projections are the final product. Not vice versa.
On the contrary, this is reverse engineering, the joke of which lies in the fact that it is you who have to think out everything that is ambiguous, and that is why this is one of the really difficult tasks that requires high competence and understanding of the essence of the model immediately at the level of a three-dimensional image. No wonder there are a lot of methods .. one might say, obfuscation of models - to complicate the process of reverse engineering from an image.
I mean, the entire community of commercial (and not so) use of 3D models intentionally avoids orthogonal projections and gives either only one, conditionally main, or is generally limited to axonometric views, which give only a general idea of ​​​​the form. And all this means that either you use your talent for three-dimensional vision and imagination to refine the existing one, or you buy someone else's on stocks right away in the form of a finished 3D model.
How can you cheat? Not very productive, because modelers do not want to lose money on this at all, but it works: aggregators and stocks sometimes have a built-in three-dimensional viewer, from which you can pull off as many projections as you like with a regular PrintScreen. Sketchfab, for example. There are two problems: perspective is built almost everywhere and the resolution of the screenshot is not so hot.
Well, actually other stores (CGTrader, for example) also have the right to life - there are often also given at least two projections. Also with perspective, of course. As a rule, projections are unsuitable for direct copying due to distortion, but maybe that's enough for you.