Picked up a cheap UV lamp for my desk setup and turns out my scene was way too dark because my computer screen was messing with how I saw the shading, anyone else had lighting issues that were actually just your monitor?
I dug up my very first Blender project from 8 months ago, the classic beginner donut tutorial. The icing was all lumpy, the sprinkles looked like weird cubes floating off the surface, and the lighting was just a single point light making everything look flat. I remember spending like 3 hours trying to figure out why my subdivision surface modifier crashed the whole program. Fast forward to this week I made another donut just for fun and the difference is huge. The geometry flows smooth now, I used an HDRI for lighting, and the sprinkles actually look like they're sitting in the icing. It's crazy how much just practicing the same simple thing over and over teaches you. Did anyone else keep their first model to compare later or did you delete it out of embarrassment?