To be good...

[Anonymous No.683449]

Hi /3/ Im 21, still living with my parents, unemployed. Have no experience in 3D design and 2D. Just started, however i always loved this kind of art and want to become decent skilled and maybe gain a bit of money from it on the future.

So here is my dilema. I know you can't achieve to be any good if you don't spent hundreads of hours practicing and studyng but i am also pretty old and cannot be unemployed.

So should i study and practice arts full time or should i get a job and forget about this?

>Inb4 just do both.

No. I can't, all the jobs i can apply are full time with just one free day. Would be imposible to learn and achieve something.

Also im thinking on going to arts school if i find one, but on the meantime im still a neet.

>Pic related. I did that.

[Anonymous No.683454]

>>683449
Literally just do both. Don't put your life on hold because you have some passing interest.

>but it's not a passing interest
You don't know that yet. You're seeing all these possibilities and shiny things without knowing the real work involved to reach those goals. Chances are you'll lose that enthusiasm down the line and decide it's not for you. It's one thing to say "yeah it'll take a few hundred hours to git gud at this", but it's another actually doing it. Not everyone has the hunger and dedication to really go for it.

Get a job, do the 3d in your free time. Even if you don't have much free time. You don't need to become a master in your parent's basement. Just learn the basics and get a good handle on it, and the basics of composition and other art stuff that isn't just 3d. If you decide you really want to pursue it later down the line or you start to plateau, go to school, or use your savings to stay afloat while you grind hardcore on your own to learn. Maybe in a few years or so you'll be good enough to get hired somewhere, or at the very least do freelance. In the time between, work on getting a following going on social platforms to build connections and get your work out there.

[Anonymous No.683456]

>burn the boats
leave everything behind and go where the action is. book a flight to Los Angeles. Get a piece of shit apartment in west adams with lots of roommates from craigslist and ride the bus every morning. You wont be making overwatch animations but you can get started in marketing, motion graphics, or technical work.
>stop being a pussy
if you really fuck up your life you can always go crying back to your parents the in middle of nowhere. LA has plenty of other jobs anyone with a pulse can do if you loose interest. Just dont be a weekend hobbyist. Youve got to commit youre full attention to this as an actual job, a job that isnt always fun but a job you get paid for doing not a hobby/fanart you do for free. Also, you really benefit from not living with your parents, psychologically, even if they still financially support you, get out of their house asap. It makes no economic sense but creatively you will not take risks when your living around old people.

[Anonymous No.683457]

>>683454
Thanks for the response. I think like this mostly because i have near 0 experience in arts and are kinda ashmed by the amount of knowledge and grinding required to actully do something.

Since i was a kid i've been pretty visual and enjoyed looking at conceptual art and 3D settings, however i never put interest on learning it. I regret this.

Time is the most precious resource we have and im afraid to not invest it well.

So i guess need to learn to draw right? That's more hardcore grinding to the list.

Is not that im lazy or something but i always hear and see that people who are good at some field spend all of his life doing it. Just look at pic relate. Is a Craig Mullins painting. Im afraid of never reaching that level of work and makes me anxious, take in mind that im 21.

Well maybe im overthinking the things but you know in deep that something about this is true. All of you.

[Anonymous No.683459]

>>683456
I live in México and haven't find any art schools yet. There are some good ones on México City where Pixar animators goes and shit but they are extremely expensive and i couldn't go there.

Why do you mention LA? Is there a lot of schools to go? I thought collegue in the US were insanely expensive too. I don't know to model yet, if you are refering to job opportunities.

Sorry for my bad english tho.

[Anonymous No.683465]

>>683459
you are fucked. mexico is a bad country for artists. USA Los Angeles is where all entertainment for entire world is made. im talking jobs. 3d school,college, artschool is unnecessary waste of money, you just need to do tutorials on cgpersia and get a demo reel together. Mexico city might be your best bet for 3d jobs. I bet you could find a outsource studio and work shitty 3d children tv show in spanish. Anything, no matter how shitty, is good to spend hours everyday in the 3d software. SKILLS and KNOWLEDGE are the most valuable things. Maybe you should try to immigrate to a richer country like argentina or spain if you want to have a better life.

[Anonymous No.683467]

>>683465
So, should i spent my days grinding art everyday instead of getting a shitty Jon?

[Anonymous No.683469]

>>683465
So, should i spent my days grinding art everyday instead of getting a shitty Job?

[Anonymous No.683473]

>>683457
You don't *need* to know how to draw, but understanding the fundamental concepts (light, form, composition, color, etc.) will help immeasurably.
Drawing can help down the line though, being able to draw out a concept and bring it into 3d is a good skill to have as it keeps a solid vision the whole way through.

>Time is the most precious resource we have and im afraid to not invest it well.
At the beginning any time invested is good. It doesn't really matter how long it takes. A good artist is a good artist, whether they're 25, 13, or 80 years old. Obviously though you'd want to get a job or something sometime soon. Your best bet I think is to put it on hold, work up a savings and then when you feel you can live off it for a bit, really dive in and learn it seriously. Treat it like a job, set goals and projects for yourself, try to hit your deadlines. Then start putting together a portfolio.

Since you're living with your parents though with no job, you probably have a fuckton of 0 pressure free time to start learning though. There's no time better than that. Obviously you probably should have started when you had less social pressure to be self sufficient, but in any case it's ultimately up to you. Do you want short term benefits, or long term ones with no guarantee they'll bear fruit? Art is a gamble.

[Anonymous No.683533]

>>683449

Rich dad poor dad but you can become a millionaire from a minimum wage job if you saved everything. There is no real money in 3d like youtube and twitch it's the people at the top that make the money. I worked in the ps2 era for 37k a year but lost out due to highpoly shit and normal mapping so I was years without proper money so it evens out over time. So the options are be the best person possible and get one of the 160 or so character art jobs in the world. Get a salary of upwards of 100k per year. Pay expensive rent money and sit at a desk non stop from 9am to 10pm for 2 years. If you factor in hours spent it's the equivilent of a decent 9-5 middle class job. The other option is freelance and the prices I hear people are getting for things like fortnite heads makes me wonder why even fucking bother when you factor in buying ur own equipment light and heat, possible rent, software expense because they will need to see it's legit, medical bills, taxes etc etc. I do 3d as a hobby now and am much happier. I have enough to buy vidya some whores and a new pc every 5 years. I will never be rich but I dont care because I'm content.

[Anonymous No.683560]

>>683469

this picture is a very bad job.

[Anonymous No.683603]

>>683560
how about no you fucking pizza roll

[Anonymous No.683604]

>>683560

Stop the fucking bait.

[OP No.683657]

OP here again. Just sign me into an art degree in college. Will spent three years of my life in arts.

Did i do the right thing?

>Ps: Im struggling with pic related right now...

[Anonymous No.683660]

>>683657
Just do it and don't look back. Even if you decide not to do 3d, most, if not all the skills you learn in art are transferable in some way to every medium. You just gotta find what you like to do.
You're still young and starting out though, so it's alright to bounce all over the place and try new things. Something eventually will just click into place in your mind and you'll know it's just right. At least that's how it was for me.

[Anonymous No.683663]

>>683657
lol if this is hard for you, you are going to have a real hard time with 3D my little mexican pedro

[Anonymous No.683667]

>>683657
>struggling
That's because you lack practice with topology. I suggest you watch Grant Warwick's tutorial on hard surface modeling; you'll get exposure to plenty of shapes and techniques to reproduce them.

[Anonymous No.683708]

>>683449
Most people started when they were kids and actively developed their skills during teenagehood.
Think if you have a chance to compete with a ~25 year old artist taking it seriously who's been drawing for 20 years and modeling for 15. With 4 years of experience.
Yes, the difference will slowly blend in time, but ngl it's extremely unlikely you'll ever reach their level.

[Anonymous No.683715]

git gud

[Anonymous No.683724]

>>683660
Thanks for the support man. So somehow you regret studyng art for a little? Do you "bounce" all over the place a lot?

>>683667
Thanks. Gonna watch them asap. It seems that i broke some faces and now i can't section them and have some vertex that i can't move in the X axis and a lot of other problems. Is a pain in the ass.

>>683708
More anxiety for me. Gonna grind harder.

>>683715
Im trying.

[Anonymous No.683806]

>>683667
Just saw them, but he's using 3D Max and have some options that i don't have in Blender. He first started teaching shapes and angles in 2D. Any other good courses targeted for noobs that i could take?

[Anonymous No.683810]

>>683724
>So somehow you regret studyng art for a little? Do you "bounce" all over the place a lot?
Growing up, I was always just trying out different things that interested me. Which was a lot of things so I ended up bouncing around a lot. I taught myself HTML at 12 (from an old ass library book) because we didn't have the internet so I made my own, learned to make shitty games with gamemaker at 13 because it was something to do, ended up doing 3d animations with some shitty program called 3d canvas around the same time just because it was "fun" (they weren't any good though), learned Blender later on (like 2.47 or something), then took a 3d class in high school and learned 3ds Max as well. Later on in HS, I got really into making weird ass profile photos for my Facebook (since that was the cool thing in 2010), which made me learn Photoshop and stuff, which led into learning photography, which led into doing that professionally for a bit.

I went to college for Physics for some reason though, I really loved math and science so I figured it was what I wanted to do. But after a year of it I just didn't see myself wanting to do that the rest of my life. My mom asked me randomly why I was in physics when I do all sorts of art stuff and I didn't have a good answer. Next day I switched majors to Graphic Design. That first class something just clicked and it all made sense for me. Ended up getting some awards and stuff for my work, got a job doing gd stuff for the school, it all just felt right. I've been graduated for a while now though, and I do 3d and gd.

I don't regret learning art, and I don't regret bouncing around. All of it gave me different perspectives and ways to approach problems differently than others. I know my gay ass blog-post answer probably wasn't what you were really expecting though. Basically what I'm trying to say is don't be afraid to try new things or learn different things, you'll eventually find that one thing that makes you happy.

[Anonymous No.683940]

>>683449
nice Tintin shuttle

[Anonymous No.684056]

>>683940
Thanks buddy. Althought the original one only had 3 legs...

[Anonymous No.684089]

>>683657
Boy if youre using blender and expect a decent job with stable income, youre better off making mmd porn.

[Anonymous No.684131]

>>683449
If you want it, you'll find a way to do it. I started as a camera assistant, learned how to edit videos, I became a video editor, learned how to do motion graphics on the side, and now I'm a motion graphic artist. I learn JavaScript, AHK, Python and C4D on the side and now I'm competent using them as well.

Granted you won't be super good at something unless you specialise, but it's super satisfying to get a lot of creative control.

[OP No.684219]

>>684089
>>684131
Maybe. OP here again. I come to the Uni campus some days ago just to familiarize with the career before i get in and talked with a student there. She told me it would be good to drop Blender and start practicing with Maya and ZBrush however i've seen multiple times people saying is stupid to start with those if you don't know a fuck about 3D and are just starting. So should i?

[Anonymous No.684226]

>>684219
Yep, follow her suggestion. Ask faculty if you want further confirmation, but that's your best bet for now, if you want to become employable.

[Anonymous No.684240]

>>684219
Yeah do that.
The less fumbling around with software, the more you can spread your creativity's wings. I've seen tons of people have great ideas and drawings on paper, but then they can't replicate it in a program because they don't have a good understanding of it. Having even a basic knowledge of the programs will help you get started, and will probably put you ahead of those students that are starting from 0. There's probably others that have used the programs before school for a good while, and you'll be able to tell.
A good word of advice is to not be biased about software, there's tools for just about anything you need to do, most skills transfer over once you get over that initial hump of learning how the new program works.

[Anonymous No.684242]

>>684219
you only need to start learning one UI at a time, maya is just fine to start on:
https://www.autodesk.com/education/free-software/maya

if you have a .edu account, sign up and get a year free. if not, try the trial when you have two weeks to dedicate to learning.
if you need a .edu, sign up with the college just in general and you can use the .edu they supply you for the free usage

zbrush you'll have to find another means of getting

[Anonymous No.684285]

>>684242
You don't need a .edu email address for a student account, gmail is just fine

[Anonymous No.684507]

>>684089
>>684226
>>684240
>>684242
Sooo. That thing about Blender being an useless piece of software for faggots was not just a meme from this board?

[Anonymous No.684525]

>>684507
>Blender being an useless piece of software for faggots
I wouldn't go as far as saying that, but you wouldn't go to apply for a graphic design job saying you only know how to use GIMP. They've got their expectations same as any other employer.
Industry standards are just what people are using. Whether it got adopted 20 years ago or later, that's the workflow that the company decided to use. You can't expect a company to adapt their workflow around you just because you can't be bothered to learn or refuse to learn what they use. If everyone is using what they think is best, it'd be pretty chaotic. It could probably work, but things will definitely slow down.

As far as Blender being a useless piece of shit, probably not. It's perfectly capable, it's just important to know where its weaknesses lie and how to make up for them. The thing about it being open source and relying on donations, is that shit doesn't get improved unless someone pays for it to be improved, or it's something that HAS to be done. So there's shit here and there that's pretty modern, but other stuff that's been forgotten about. It's not too different with paid software, but at least they try to keep things up to date (or at least pretend to).

I think overall it's just important to learn 3d as a whole. Learning programs is just like learning to use different tools. Workflows are pretty uniform across the board. Only thing that really changes are the little quirks each program has, and the capabilities of the program you're using. Zbrush is great for sculpting for example, but you wouldn't be using it to animate characters. Even so, knowledge of concepts carries across the board to both.
So to sum it all up, Blender is still trailing behind the big boys, but for the low price of free, it ain't too bad to pick up modelling techniques and to get your foot in the door.
I use Blender myself, but have experience with Max and Maya too, I just can't be bothered to pay for it outside of work.

[Anonymous No.684528]

>>684507
There are some areas where it falls woefully, crucially short and you will suffer trying to make up for it.
- Hair and fur
- Rigging
- Animating
- Scripting

Then there are some areas where it tries to offer integrated tools that are inferior to the commercial alternatives but usable if necessary.
- Sculpting (vs Zbrush)
- Texture painting (vs Substance)
- Compositing (vs Fusion, Nuke, AE etc.)

[Anonymous No.684584]

>>684528
Comparing Blender texture painting capabilities to the likes of Substance Painter or Mari makes zero fucking sense, mate. Blender is good at 3D modeling, especially hard surface.

[Anonymous No.684590]

[Anonymous No.684661]

>>684584
Free software autistic Blender users do this all the time with their sculpting tools vs Zbrush, their compositing vs Nuke, etc etc.

[Anonymous No.684663]

>>684584
somebody please tell this to blendlets

[Anonymous No.684738]

>>684661
I think the worst offense is all the bragging about how it's open source and shit and how they refuse to use anything else. Just jerking themselves off because of buyer's remorse even though they bought nothing.
Or seeing something mildly well done and going "Wow Blender is so powerful!", or a feature that's been in the biz for years that Blender's just now getting and saying "Incredible! Blender is going to be so powerful and become industry standard in 5 years! It blows everything else out of the water!"

Like damn, I use Blender out of necessity, but I'm not going to be jerking myself off because someone else did something that looks halfway decent. It's not like the people making those comments are going to do that or have the skills to do it. Yet they tout it up like some grand achievement for the program because it's able to do shit that other programs have been doing for years. It's like praising the fucking special kid for tying his shoes.
It's software, I get validation from my own work, not the capabilities of someone else, or little bells and whistles that get added.
I must be the 3d equivalent of a self hating Jew at this point.

[Anonymous No.685944]

OP here. So i downloaded Maya. Could i convert my Blender projects to Maya? What is that Arnold thing, seems to be a rendering engine but i didn't installed it because i thought it was not necessary and Maya had it's own engine.

Also i miss the Blender interface, seems to be friendly and prettier to me :(

[Anonymous No.685968]

>>685944
dude just learn the thing and stop whining

[Anonymous No.685970]

>>684738
finally some sense in this whole /3/ clusterfuck

[Anonymous No.685991]

>>685944
You gotta be fucking kidding me.
So first: maya is kind of standard interfacewise. Its blender thats different. Double click or shift click on buttons to get deeper action. The way you get blender scenes to maya is by exporting them to an FBX file format, and then importing that into maya.

Arnold is a render engine. Its a plugin thats included with maya, that can make shit look good with the shader you make in the hyoershade window. Keep in mind that each render engine has their own set of lights, so if you maybe use redshift in the future, use specific redshift lights, and use arnold lights for arnold. Thats also true for shaders as well, there are specific to the render engine.

If modelling is getting slow, remember to delete your history. Thats basically the same as baking the modifiers you made in blender onto the mesh.

Thats about all you need to know for starters, anyone have anything else or if I done did something wrong, feel free to add.

[Anonymous No.685992]

>>685944
Also you better install arnold, the standard maya render engines cant do shit.

[Anonymous No.685998]

>>683449
I've been a Blender user for about a year now. I'm entirely self-taught, and I also work full time. It's not impossible to learn while working, man! I made this over a few weekends. Everything made from scratch in Blender. Also, some materials made in substance.

Before anyone criticizes, yeah, I know it's sub-par work. I have no dreams of being a pro. It's just a handy skill. Like pic related was a preview for friends who wanted to get a liquor cabinet.

[Anonymous No.686298]

>>685998
Oh that aint all bad! Just learn bevel those hard corners and itll look ALOT more professional

[Anonymous No.686299]

>>685944
Fell for the maya meme baka.

[Anonymous No.686301]

>>685944
Use whatever you're most comfortable with. I have people at my workplace still using softimage. As far as modeling goes, software really doesn't matter.