Fish out of water

Snader

TLDR; I wanna figure out a completely freeware workflow to make games. This thread will be the diary of that adventure.

The workflow needs to be:
-Freeware.
-Easy to understand.
-Touch all game-dev aspects on a basic level.
In other words: to make game development as accessible as possible




So - I wanna make games as a living, on my own, but can't afford commercial versions of Photoshop, 3DS Max, or other similar expensive software. So what am I gonna do? Learn Blender, Gimp (probably, unless there's a better alternative?) and so on. I will post all progress in this thread, both for education and motivation. In the past, I've already opened up Blender before, gotten scared, and closed it again. But now I wanna do a bit more, and hopefully get up to about two-thirds of my speed in Max, in Blender. And similarly, I wanna get my Gimp up to about two-thirds of Photoshop.

I would also like to document every issue I come along across the way, and in the end wrap it all up into a comprehensive 'how to do this shit' tutorial for another project. The idea is to end up with a workflow that is simple enough to grasp relatively easily to make a small project like a mobile game - with just one person, or with a very small group.

I'm planning to use these programs(all running on Windows):
Engine - Unity3D
Models/animations - Blender
Concepts/textures - Gimp
Music/Audio - LMMS
Organization - Google Drive

But please, do recommend software you think is better. (I'm still kind of unsure of Gimp and LMMS)

Latest updates:

Pixelsnader wrote:

So I opened blender again today, and I made this:



Yes. It's rather poor. But it's something, at least.

Snader

So I opened blender again today, and I made this:



Yes. It's rather poor. But it's something, at least.

WEe

Hey! I like it how you are trying to do things yourself! If you are a student, you can get 3ds max with a student license.

Anyways, lets get down to business. Id say that try to draw some concepts or look references from the internet before just modelling "something". For blender, look some tutorials on youtube for example. I personally worked with Wings 3D, but I think I'm going to switch to 3Ds max while I still can. I do use blender sometimes too. If you want, I can post a few tutorials I made. Even though I used Wings 3D, they can be applied to Blender when you just get the hand of it. I go through basic modelling, creating AO, normal maps, creating your own metal texture and such.

I personally worked on a quite a big mod alone for a long time. Sometimes people joined/helped and left. Most was done by myself. It wasn't too easy, but it is possible when you just apply yourself

Snader

Yes I am aware of the 3DS Student licenses. I have been using Max for a few years now and have grown quitw fond of it, but I am not allowed to make money off of anything made with said student license. This is why I'm forcing myself to learn Blender.

I'm aware of most lowpoly modeling techniques and sketching isn't a problem either - but I will have to learn where all the buttons and tools are in these programs I've not used before. This project is not to get started with modeling, but more to make the transfer from expensive professional software to freeware alternatives. Along the same lines, the documentation I intend to write will assume that the reader has at least some understanding of the basic principles such as anatomy and topology. Although I will probably include some information about optimization etc, it's not intended as <i>"game making 101"</i> but more focused on applying already learned knowledge through new software.

Sorry if my initial post was confusin in that respect.