/3/ - 3DCG

[Anonymous No.469191]

TL;DR can you make a living doing 3D work? Or will you always need a day job?

What's the potential future for someone who wants a career doing 3D/something 3D related?

vfx:
Been going downhill for years, and all the forums I read say avoid it as it's getting worse. No overtime pay, long hours, working weekeneds, you're easily replaced by someone else. etc.

Video games:
Not a bed of roses either, but some vfx posts are about them jumping ship to the game industry. Only slightly better, but for how long?

3D printing:
I know nothing about this.
I'm sure a new industry is about to boom, but is it more for industrial, practical 3D printing, like for engineering? Or can you make a living printing 3D characters, environments etc. ?

Architectural Visualization:
I know nothing about this either.
It's been around a long time. Do companies hire arch viz artists? Or can you make a living freelancing?

Anything other related fields, please post.

[Anonymous No.469192]

post your folio first

[Anonymous No.469193]

>>469192
perhaps OP was speaking on behalf of the profession and not his own personal needs

i've heard there are some good jobs in combining engineering and 3D by modelling components based off blueprints and running strength simulations on them and such

[Anonymous No.469194]

>>469193
op needs to post his folio and work experience, which is what employers look at first

[Anonymous No.469197]

OP's folio has nothing to do with the answering these questions. Typical /3/ autism.
He's talking about the future of the industry and how positions grow or decline for various roles (vfx/games/printing). At what point do you need to know his experience to answer those questions?

[Anonymous No.469198]

>>469197
theres nothing autistic at all about asking for his folio and work exp. Thats what gets looked at first. You get contacted further or thrown in the trash. Or...you get blacklisted for stealing work.

[Anonymous No.469202]

>>469191
So much for this thread...

[Anonymous No.469203]

>>469202
>no folio, no work exp
>where are the jerbs

pathetic

[Terminal No.469205]

Hi.

>Video Games
I see your trying to get a job in the industry. Now. Lets just say your trying to do video games.

Company's tend to ask for a portfolio, however. you'll still need to pass something called an "Art Test" which is a set amount of time that proves you can do what is display in your portfolio and that you can work fast without guidance.

depending on what company you may face from a single test to a dozen tests depending on the company and their standards.

Portfolios help a lot as a reviewer can take a single look at your portfolio and tell if your good or an armature by just a few things.
>I.E Standard Nuke effect in Maya is not a good thing to use in your portfolio!

>3D Printing
Alright, You want to do 3D Printing. Most company's will use a 3D Scanner and you'll need to be familer with programs that interrupt raw data like that and be able to clean it up if necessary.

>VFX
Finally, VFX. Similar to the game industry in a lot of ways but programs and techniques will be sometimes similar or different however they tend to sick with most of the same programs.

Now, it is harder to switch between VFX Stream and Game Design Stream as certain things become an issue that i won't go into detail.

I hope this helps.
- Terminal

[Anonymous No.469206]

>>469205
>based Terminal

[Terminal No.469207]

Oh, You'll probably want to know the current programs in general use.

>Autodesk Maya
It is 3d max replacement, although not as powerful it makes up for it with melscript.
>ZBrush
Just like sculpt an owl.
>Substance Designer and Painter.
Pretty much is your go to texturing tool.
>Photoshop
Mostly used for concept art and texturing.

Game Engines.
>Unreal
Free but with a catch.
>Unity
Free but has odd restrictions.

[Anonymous No.469223]

>OP asks a question about the profession
>/3/ asks them for a portfolio
>OP posts it
>/3/ destroys OP

classic

[Anonymous No.469235]

>>469205
Thanks for the reply.

>I see your trying to get a job in the industry.
Yeah, the desire just to make cool shit like we did in high school when sketching and stuff.
But I pirated nuke and also shot my own back plate video, made my own 360 HDR panorama of the environment, tracked it, and composited a 3D model into the video and REALLY liked the process and the outcome.
So I looked up vfx forums and they all say the industry is going downhill.

So I've been trying to get into the games industry with no luck, so I've been thinking about vfx since the passion is about the same, maybe even more.

>I.E Standard Nuke effect in Maya is not a good thing to use in your portfolio!
What's "standard nuke effect"?

>Alright, You want to do 3D Printing. Most company's will use a 3D Scanner and you'll need to be familer with programs that interrupt raw data like that and be able to clean it up if necessary.
So where does printing your own models happen? Like I said, that's probably just a dream where there's not much a market, and it would be mostly scanning in IRL objects and making adjustments....boring.

>>Substance Designer and Painter.
I'm so happy for allegorithmic.
They went from obscurity and are becoming popular.
I hope they are the nail in DDO and NDo's coffin. I just think dDo and nDo are just overrated.

>Unreal
>Free but with a catch.
As long as I can use it to present stuff I'm happy.
Not planning on making my own game or anything.

So to summarize, I was looking to alternative industries that use a 3D modeling/texturing/rendering workflow, that may be a good for making a living.

Attached is just a WIP of mine, screenshot taken in substance designer.

[Anonymous No.469258]

>>469191
You can always do freelance 3D on the side even if you already have a part or full time job.

[Anonymous No.469292]

Like with all technologies there was once a time when the technology was new that just knowing enough to be competent was enough because the pool of employees who had any skills was very small.

So employers had to get very competitive in order to get employees, wages would be very high and employers would be falling over themselves trying to hire you.

This makes that industry very attractive so more students study to get into that market. As a result that means there are now more employees the employer has to choose from. Wages and working conditions fall.

Shit load of Millennials have studied 3D thinking it was a golden job market. Gen Xers hold all the good jobs because they got in first and the Millennials have to fight each other for the increasingly shitty art monkey jobs.

Chances are you're going to get work where you're paid salary and at the end of the day you'll end up taking home less than minimum wage for the hours you put in. Your working conditions will be pure shit because if you so much as step out of line your employer has 100 people waiting to tongue punch his fart box just for a chance to show him their portfolio. But you take the shit job hoping it will give you the experience and credit needed to get a better job.

So yes there are jobs but every entry level job is going to be complete shit in terms of working condition and pay and in order to qualify for those jobs you'll probably have to have better skills than people who have been working in the industry since the 80s. And your only chance to move up in the industry will be for one of the Gen-Xers ahead of you to drop dead or retire and Gen-Xers aren't old enough yet to likely do either.

We should have had another Vietnam to thin their ranks out a little.

[Anonymous No.469294]

>>469292
>We should have had another Vietnam to thin their ranks out a little.

holy shit anon i almost spat my tea.

[Anonymous No.469295]

>>469292
all of this is wrong and ignorant.

[Anonymous No.469345]

Can anyone post some artist portfolios? The ones you like the most, appealing, interesting, good design, etc.

[Anonymous No.469347]

>>469295
>But i can't say why so just take my word for it as the anonymous authority on the matter

[Anonymous No.469361]

>>469292
>>Chances are you're going to get work where you're paid salary and at the end of the day you'll end up taking home less than minimum wage for the hours you put in.

this is an exaggeration but overall you're correct

op: really if you're good enough you'll likely be able to stay employed despite the current state of the industry. It may not be smart to pick your path based on where you think you're more likely to get a job. If you're passionate about a particular part of CG that's what you should pursue because only with extreme dedication will you be successful. in other words, your portfolio will not likely beat out someone who is in the same field but chose that path out of passion/talent/skill rather than job prospects

[Anonymous No.469364]

>>469361
I don't see why this would be an issue. The hours i've put into my own learning in my own time at home would exceed a years worth of overtime at a job. If you're doing something you enjoy then putting in what are essentially free hours isn't that big of a deal, seeing as you're going to be provided a lot of mentoring and opportunity. I already use a computer for 14 hours a day. If i spend 10 of those hours working as a mindless drone with those chances to learn, and being paid for it, that's nothing but a positive.

[Anonymous No.469365]

>>469345
Vitaly bulgarov
Fausto de martini
Cki Vang
Gavriil Afanasyev Klimov
Raphale Grassetti

Overrated:
Kolby Jukes
justin goby fields

[Anonymous No.469409]

>>469292
>your employer has 100 people waiting to tongue punch his fart box just for a chance to show him their portfolio
>pic related

>>469295
ok i'll use your logic against your argument
>all of this is wrong and ignorant.
what you said was wrong and ignorant.
am I doing it right?

[Anonymous No.469410]

>>469364
I think you misread my post.. what are you saying?

[Anonymous No.470786]

>>469191
Architecture student here, i actually work at a firm (mostly) doing 3d stuff but it is required to have knowledge of structure, construction systems, urban design... architecture stuff.
(sorry for the bad english)

[Anonymous No.470799]

Could any anon post portfolio of some 3d shit?

[Anonymous No.470841]

>>470786
agree with this, most Architecture Firms do their visualization in house nowadays. Its better to employ people who have 3D skills, but who can also draw construction details, make models ect, than a dedicated 3D artist.
That being said theres still room for specialist software people in some cases, ie BIM managers, or people who can use parametric tools well.

[Anonymous No.471260]

>>469192
>>469194
>>469198
>>469203
>>469203

>reading comprehension, what is that?

[Anonymous No.471370]

should i learn to model in maya first for the basics or topology/edge flow of character models, or just jump into zbrush and say fuck it? i want to make game models.

[Anonymous No.471374]

>>471370
Just jump into ZBrush first and work on the actual creativity side of things. The technical side is very easy to learn.

[Anonymous No.471409]

Pro here...I can't speak for games, but VFX is far from dead, there are more heavy CG movies now than ever before, and more feature animation. VFX is dieing for the US - but if you want to move to Canada (Vancouver mostly, Toronto also), London, or New Zealand, you will find work. Most of my friends and myself have salaries between 100k and 150k in senior and lead positions. Most of my peers do not get OT at large companies, but its true smaller companies will take advantage. There are literally not enough artists in Vancouver to do the current slate of work.

If you are in the US there is a lot of work in advertising. Awesome companies like Psyop, The Mill, a52, Framestore and others have both LA and NYC offices, sometimes Chicago.

I have 10 years working experience, just finished paying off my debt, and just bought a house. I am on the advertising side of things and get to do awesome work. Couldn't be happier.

People who work hard in this industry AND have a good eye/talent will do great. It isn't something you can sit down and learn in a month, its a craft and takes a lot of dedication to get good enough to do as a full time job.

[Anonymous No.471423]

>>471409
within the next five to ten years many vfx and 3d jons will cease to be as someone puts out a tool thats far more automated than whats currently available. Too many effects in movies are too similar to each other for this not to happen. Your job isnt safe, and definetely wont be around in the future

[Anonymous No.471520]

>>471423
people said the same thing about mocap but end of the day you need someone who can coordinate and splice mocap data together, designating keys and smoothing shit out. it's not that the job isn't safe, but that positions are shifted around, and pose to pose animators become mocap handlers. same thing applies to VFX and 3D as a whole. you can't automate it enough to not need specialists, since someone has to script and edit the programs for different scenarios anyway. automation is a tool that is used discreetly for speeding up the production pipeline, and not a replacement and never will be for anyone looking for high fidelity in their project.

[Anonymous No.471523]

>>471520
>you can't automate it enough to not need specialists

sure you can. Movies and games are way too similar for this not to happen, slowly at first, but building and building over time. Especially as gpu computing power increases. Media is going to change - drastically - and be far different than what it is today.

[Anonymous No.471525]

>>471523
it's not enough. you're splitting hairs you can't even see yet. i could easily say that it's gonna get more and more complex where automation only takes away a bit of the equation, but stuff like pathfinding,AI, and so forth is going to come in as the manual labor. you just can't automate it all. something else that is more complex will simply take place. it's been that way for decades now.

[Anonymous No.471531]

>>471525
>it's been that way for decades now.

decades ago I was using a gameboy, not even a gameboy color. Now I have a titan X.

People in the movie and game industry dont want to see their jobs replaced, so they dont develop automation that will do just that. Some people on the outside want nothing more than each man and woman on earth having the power to create their own entertainment, procedurally or otherwise, that's better than the best movie today, within seconds. The outsiders work tirelessly at this goal.

[Anonymous No.471533]

>>471531
>so they dont develop automation that will do just that.

it's not that they don't. there just isn't any suite that can fully automate anything. go ahead and find something that could take away the steps fo placing emitters according to a paritcular structure without relying on manual placement. at best you can take presets, but then you might have a different shape for a river,waterfall,firebreathing creature,exploding canisters, and so on. the idea of automating something as abstract as this is just nonsensical, and not a matter of feasibility. there are improvements in the process making it faster but it just can't be replaced fully, otherwise you are dealing with a program smart enough to guess that the model you have is x or y, so the emitters are based on a particular substance and so forth.

if such a thing is made that would be great, it'd make the job easier and let us make more complex things in shorter time, but that ain't gonna replace human ingenuity.

[Anonymous No.471537]

>>471533
>it's not that they don't. there just isn't any suite that can fully automate anything

are you fucking this stupid? We're not talking about rolling out a "suite of tools for $999" to every man woman and child so they can move verts around. We're talking about how entertainment is going to change, drastically, as proceduralism greatly increases the variety and quality of media. This is definetly coming and being worked on and will benefit everyone, not just reward the select few working in their little studios.

[Anonymous No.471541]

>>471537
again, you're just making assumptions here. this is 2015 and we've tapered hard in terms of automating VFX. you want to suggest that jobs are gonna be lost yet they're heavily in demand. unless you can cite some sort of program that can automate VFX, i'm not gonna just blindly take your claim with faith here simply because "it's the future." people have said this about so many things. back in the 50s people said we'd be living in space and shit by 2010. if you don't want to talk about suites there's not much else to talk about here, and proceduralism is already implemented in them regardless. you can even script your own procedural mechanisms in the major ones, so any form of automation you're suggesting is going to be standardized would already exist. yet it doesn't, so here we are, speculating yet again.

[Anonymous No.471552]

>>471541
>so here we are, speculating yet again.

everything that looks into the future is speculation. At one point, the light bulb was speculative. Same with knowing that the earth was indeed round and not flat.

The fact of the matter is, "your entire game" and "your entire movie" is too similar to the thousands that are out there for them both to not become entirely procedurally generated in the near future. Thats just the facts.

[Anonymous No.471553]

>>471552
>At one point, the light bulb was speculative.

no...just no. there was ton of stuff that supported it. we knew how a wire filmanet would behave heating up, and how an inert gas could prevent oxidation. we could conjecture that a lightbulb is possible by taking those factors.

but right now, there's nothing that says the similarities in the production standpoint between game and movie is going to somehow lead to procedural generation taking out jobs. if anything it would ADD jobs, not subtract them. none of this about the future is fact, but merely speculation. we can't even predict the weather properly still. who are we to try and predict technological leaps?

[Anonymous No.471581]

3D printing is only getting better in future careers. With more and more advancements in the development of the printers, only means a bigger market as you can do more and more stuff with them. But I personally feel that they will just get easier to use thus eliminating the need for people to operate them and such. but on the same stretch it would be like owning a car and not knowing how to fix it, you always need auto mechanics.

>Pic related: how I feel the jobs for 3D printers will go

I was talking to the head of Tech at a local University and he said that when it comes down to it,3D printing is just gonna be a second hand thing. To use my auto shop metaphor, you can't just have a auto shop that changes oil, you are gonna have to have the whole works. So for Future tech jobs, you are gonna have printing as a tertiary thing in which you can do.

but I meant his is just my thoughts. Who knows maybe they won't be the price of a microwave oven in the future; where everyone can just afford it.

[Anonymous No.471582]

>>471581
3D printing has always gotten my attention for the level of detail we can get now as a personal thing, like the formlabs one. i wanna get some zbrush stuff printed one day on the fly for clients to hold as a concept, maybe even employers. like a physical portfolio of shit i dunno.

[Anonymous No.471584]

>>471582
You can convert zbrush models to blender files then print from there, we do that at our school.

[Anonymous No.471610]

>>471553
people speculate about the future in order to plan for it. This is a key part of being a human being.

Once media reaches a higher level of proceduralism like i described, it will definetely remove the vast majority of media jobs. An example is when about 20 members of my extended family worked at Ford, assembling automobiles in the 70s and 80s. As it became automated and robotic, most lost their jobs. Now only one person in my family who works there, and one other works at a private facility making government planes.

[Anonymous No.471796]

>>469191
Note: i did not read the previous posts

Anyway basically if your work is above average then yes