   What's the difference between Modeling and Sculpting?
  Are they two different things, or two different methods to do a single thing, or maybe they're interchangeable terms for the same thing?If they are different, are there any advantages to one over the other, particularly for beginners?   
  My intuition says that modelling is about manipulating sets of polygons in a direct way, using tools that operate on vertices, edges or polygons.Sculpting on the other hand, sounds like pulling, pushing and shaping a big mesh. Manipulations don't happen on a polygon level, but rather on surface level. I figure that this technique is often used for terrain, but starts to gain popularity.If you want detail, control and low-polygon models, you probably want to use modelling over sculpting. If you want to make nice organic meshes quickly, you want to use sculpting.Hope that helps (Also hope this post makes sense ;) )   ;  Sculpting is used to make very high detailed, and often, organic looking meshes. You aren't concerned with the polygons as much as you are concerned with the shape.The difference in workflow is that when you are doing regular modeling, you have to be careful about the edge flow, and other technical things relating to the structure of the mesh, and how it will deform. When you sculpt, you are just dealing with a big mesh and treating it like a lump of clay. You aren't as concerned with the structure of the polygons.A lot of game characters these days are sculpted first, and then a lower detail mesh is modeled around it. The low detail mesh will pick up it's normals from the sculpted model, and have the proper edge flow.Try out Sculptris to see.http://www.sculptris.com/;  So I see they're different.How does animation fit into all of this?   ;  I think I'd consider sculpting a subset of modeling rather than two completely separate things. At least overlapping in many ways.Being an ex-hobbyist 3D artist, I'd say similar to animation and modeling. I imagine it's similar on a professional level, but a good amount of modeling happened while animating after the model was finished just because you never know how the model will look till it's actually moving.Not so much a black and white issue so much as a many shades of gray in both cases imo.edit: one advantage of sculpting is that it can be a lot less work for getting something that looks impressive.   