I realise this is a weird topic to bring up but as people know I'm always advocating people make their own stuff these days to decouple themselves from woke content plus if you find that you enjoy it it's great fun and really rewarding. I would much rather spend hours on this than even paying attention to any of the utter shit popping up on trending pages these days and it will be my primary form of escapism.

One way I have been seriously upping my art game is speed running Ryan King Art tutorials. The best part is his channel isn't dead and he keeps on adding stuff which is nice to see that he's keeping going with it. He has some modelling tutorials but a big part of his focus is on procedural materials and if you go through them you can make some absolutely amazing stuff very much on par with AAA content in terms of texturing. Then of course if you want to add little detail and scratches or make it a bit more unique you could potentially use texture paint which Blender has the capability for.

https://www.youtube.com/@RyanKingArt/videos

Currently I've been looking at his greeble stuff and I'm also looking at snow/sand as that would make it relatively straightforward to make some short films without having to model crap tons of vegetation. His tutorials aren't for beginners obviously but if you're looking to 'get gud' the procedural materials in particular are fantastic. Bearing in mind you will be needing cycles because he makes heavy use of bump and displacement to get those shiny details in so make sure you've got the PC for it.

His videos are reminding me I really need to have a look at geometry nodes sometime because I've barely looked at that. He's seriously got every single material you can think of you might need. I want to settle down with the rocky desert tutorial because my scenes have been lacking in colour and are a bit too dark even for space.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CC0pyI7rR90

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vzy8nxDvVvY&t