SO I have decided to learn how to EVERYTHING. Advice Needed!
polycounter lvl 12
A fiend and myself are making an indie game project and we've elected to use the Unity Game Engine. It's going to take about three or so months to get the technology we've built so far up and running on the new engine. In that time I need to become something less than proficient, but more than a bumbling cretin, at the tasks of Modelling, Rigging, Weighting, Unwrapping, Skinning, and Animating. 3 months.
I know that such a task is impossible, but I have to start somewhere. Frankly I'm tired of leaning on others when it comes to making my dreams happen.
What I need:
A Capable 3D Modelling Program
Which one would be the best to start with. The game itself is planned to have very simple models, think Megaman Legends style objects. A free program would be great but I'm not above shelling out some cash if it will improve the end results.
Enough Tutorials To Choke A Donkey
Suggestions are great, but are there quality tutorials out there? Knowing what program to start with would also be a great help in this I suppose.
Advice (I am not a proud man)
I am going to stumble over myself attempting this, so knowing where to go in the forums for honest advice, not an ego boost, would be great.
And now I'm off to download unity, wish me luck!
I know that such a task is impossible, but I have to start somewhere. Frankly I'm tired of leaning on others when it comes to making my dreams happen.
What I need:
A Capable 3D Modelling Program
Which one would be the best to start with. The game itself is planned to have very simple models, think Megaman Legends style objects. A free program would be great but I'm not above shelling out some cash if it will improve the end results.
Enough Tutorials To Choke A Donkey
Suggestions are great, but are there quality tutorials out there? Knowing what program to start with would also be a great help in this I suppose.
Advice (I am not a proud man)
I am going to stumble over myself attempting this, so knowing where to go in the forums for honest advice, not an ego boost, would be great.
And now I'm off to download unity, wish me luck!
Replies
Blender has enough tutorials to choke a elephant with a mammoth, Theres sites like CGcookie that supplies the best ones for blender (Some free some not) Youtube is a good place to start for some
A place for getting Honest Advice would be Making work and Getting feedback in the Pimping and Previews
I was a stray dog strolling over Mod forums and supplying small teams with Models just for practice for the last 4 years until I found this place I realized I was doing everything wrong
Also If you haven't read the wiki then start learning here first
How you model dem shapes Thread Helps a lot with modeling too
Set goals, finish projects/Study Times, don't half ass anything or put things off, it'll bite you in the ass HARD
Both are free if you're a student at an accredited university, if you are or know someone who is it's pretty easy to get for free. There are many ways to get your hands on these programs even as a starving artist.
You sound pretty pumped and ready to "learn everything" and this is a common mistake in indie dev, underestimating the entire pipeline for these disciplines. I would suggest sticking to either rigging/ animation or straight up modeling and texturing. If your game is coming along you could always recruit another artist or animator to help out once things are looking up.
Crazyfingers: I understand how difficult everything is, and I'm certainly not making light of the skill needed to make something of worth. Thing of it is the project is just myself and a coder and I dont think for a second what I make is going to be that great. I'm more of a designer than an artist, so my hope is to eventually find an artist who's style gels with what I'm looking to do. With any luck the game will be interesting enough that someone will want to buy in with us, but we'll see!
If you by chance need to use another one in the future you'll learn the basics quite fast.
Blender - What to read up on...
By default you need your school's e-mail address for an educational version of free autodesk dcc apps. I would say all of their apps but unfortunately the extras from the creative suites like Turtle are not available on the educational site. You can buy an educational version of the suites at a major discount though. An advantage to buying an educational version of Maya Max Softimage when there is a free version, is that you can upgrade to a full version of Maya at a hefty discount! The catch 22 is that you can not upgrade from the creative suites to a commercial version of a creative suite. There is also no educational versions of Autodesk gameware scams. I'll apologize and eat my shorts if they fold Gameware into Maya Max and Softimage like they do did with motion builder fbx. You can register as a developer and now download all the new 2013 gameware trials presented at GDC.
More importantly, you may not need to be attending school for the educational versions. If you google contact info they had a policy for hobbyists and out of work artists who want to expand their knowledge keep up to date and freshen up their portfolio. You have to know to ask. And you have to email and ask. I am almost positive that at one time there was a special that allowed you to upgrade from the free version to commercial? And then again, I sort of remember that even the paid educational upgrade offer was a temporary affair. Considering there was no notice when they axed the Personal Learning Editions, as far as I know everything I just wrote is no longer true.
I suggest Maya,
or Max. And I suggest treating extensibility as the most powerful brush solution an artist has instead of something separate from creative thinking.
Unity supports Modo (.lxo) files too.
http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/Manual/HOWTO-ImportObjectModo.html
Theres also Blenders Home site that has some learning material for free http://www.blender.org/education-help/tutorials/
I stand corrected!
As someone who's used all 3 seriously at some point, this just isn't true. If you count Bmesh I'd actually say Blender is my preferred software (don't let prices deceive you as indicative of quality).
As far as time it takes to learn, just about always the first program you learn takes the longest. To learn Blender quickly I'd say to go through the most recent Blender for Dummies book or something like it, actually do all of the tutorial parts, and then start making things. Watch lots of tutorials to see how different people work and what shortcuts they use.
VoidWorld is another great program for modeling which is currently free.
Modo is also super expensive for an indie.
I will say you should look into Zbrush, or if you just want to do organic sculpting Sculptris (free) is very good. I've heard that Blender's sculpting has come a long way, but there are certain approaches that you can take in Zbrush that you won't find elsewhere.
If you own a kinect, you can use it to get a ton of useful data. iPi soft has markerless motioncapture software that can use one or two kinects to get some great raw data. I've also seen software used to adaptively create a mesh by moving a kinect around an object, but I forget the name atm.
I'm curious why you and your friend are intent on creating a 3D game, especially with no prior 3D experience? As indies with limited time it would seem like a much better option to make a 2D game simply because 3D artwork takes much longer to produce than 2D artwork.
Check out this blog post by Derek Yu: Finishing a Game
You're going against the first bit of advice there by choosing to make a game that you aren't good at making (yet) and by doing so you're making it that much harder to actually see it to completion. Just throwing that out there for you to think about.
@Eld:
Thanks for the second, I've got it downloaded and it's making a good bit of sense already!
@Dr Jekyll:
Thanks for the advice but I'm not in school and I don't know anyone currently attending college. I am thirty years old and I work a low paying job, so the cheap maya solution is pretty much off the table. Blender seems like it's going to do ok, and the fact that it syncs with Unity seems pretty win-win.
@MadnessImpor:
Yeah I've been checking those out. I just need to learn how to snap and fuse verts together and I'll be off to the races!
@Zombie Acorn:
Right now I'mm looking at very low poly counts, blocky characters with simple textures on them. Basically a visual out of Megaman Legends on the PS1. I've been following Polycount for the last... how long has it been around? Since it was shipping packs of Quake 2 models at least. I understand the basics, such as edge loops and adding extra polys on joins to allow for animation distortion of the texture, so I should have at least some sort of head start. Also I'm not going crazy with these models either as I mentioned so I don't think I'll be needing ZBrush just yet.
If I'm being honest though, I don't even really understand what ZBrush is. It's kind of like Mudbox right? You use the stylus to work the model like clay in the 3D space?
@Gestalt:
Thanks for the heads up on Modo's cost. And no worries about the organic sculpting just yet. The environments in the game are going to be pretty blocky, and the characters will likely follow suit.
@Ben Apuna:
Yeah it will be harder to make than a 2D game, but there are a couple reasons we've switched to Unity.
1. Unity isn't dying like Flash.
2. Unity can be ported to pretty much anything.
3. What we were building in Flash will work in Unity and be more stable.
4. The 2D game we were making can be presented on billboard polys.
5. At any time we can swap out the 2D with 3D objects.
Those reasons were compelling enough for my coder to bite the bullet and make the jump to Unity, and potentially a 3D game. Seeing as we both have day jobs though it's going to take him a while to get everything up and running. Three months in his estimate. That's three months where I'm basically twiddling my thumbs and potentially losing interest in the project that I helped jump start. I don't want that to happen so in the interest of keeping busy, and being ready to make the jump to 3D if and when it happens, I'm going to put my balls to the bandsaw and force myself to learn something I should have ages ago.
Seriously I've spent like fifteen years on this site and ever actually tried to model on my own, how fucked up is that.
Anyway Rather than firing blind I threw together a concept piece, though it could use some improvements I'm sure.
I snapped up the 32 bit version of the current executable.
I'm assuming a Bmesh build comes with a starter base humanoid mesh to work with? While that would speed up my ability to model something presentable this work is all going toward an eventual commercial release. I wouldn't feel super comfortable using something someone else made in the game.
Or am I totally missing what you're referring to?
along with other things it offers are ngons and a proper bevel!
Your plan sounds good and your target fairly reasonable. Like you said, it's a good opportunity to learn new skills and stay motivated.
Best of luck!
Hey thanks I'll check that out. Considering I'm still wrestling with the base mesh I don't think I'm really in any hurry to further complicate things though.
@Ben Apuna:
Hey thanks for the vote of confidence!
Also if anyone wants to follow the progress on the character you can find the thread here: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=96073