Beginner 3D Artist Tools and Texts
Hello!
I'm a very very beginner in 3D Art and was wondering if you guys could point out which tools (3d modelling/sculpting tools, extra tools, etc.) that would be good to learn and use and which texts, documents and base concepts would be good to read and learn.
Thanks in advance!
-S
I'm a very very beginner in 3D Art and was wondering if you guys could point out which tools (3d modelling/sculpting tools, extra tools, etc.) that would be good to learn and use and which texts, documents and base concepts would be good to read and learn.
Thanks in advance!
-S
Replies
http://wiki.polycount.com/
How about you narrow it down a bit.
How artistic are you? Do you have a strong traditional art background or do you come to game art through a love of playing games?
Do you plan on doing characters or environment art?
Do you already know some 3D packages or are you just starting out and need to understand what all the buttons do?
Autodesk's 3ds Max is the most commonly used 3d program in the video game industry, in the United States. There is free student versions on autodesk's student website. Maya is also popular, and you can't go wrong with it. If you are looking to make money from anything produced with a 3d app, you might want to look at blender, but I wouldn't recommend it if you want to find a job at a major studio. Modo is a powerful and cheaper alternative to Autodesk software, and is becoming more popular because of its power subdivision tools.
You'll also want to learn a sculpting program such as Mudbox or ZBrush, they are both really powerful for different reasons, though for just sculpting ZBrush tends to be more popular. Sculptris is also a free and works well but is really mostly for concept sculpting, though you can get polished results from it.
You'll also need a program for texturing, photoshop is the most popular here, but there's other free programs like gimp.
Also you'll want to use a game engine if you are looking to make art for video games, its really the only decent way to show off normal mapped work. But there is also viewport shaders that work well for single characters or props. UDK or the unreal engine tends to be the most popular here, followed by the cry engine and unity.
So if you want to learn game art to get a job at a studio
- 3ds Max http://students.autodesk.com/
- ZBrush http://www.pixologic.com/zbrush/
- Photoshop http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop.html
- UDK http://www.unrealengine.com/en/udk/downloads/
If you want to make a game and sell it with free to use software
- Blender http://www.blender.org/
- Sculptris http://www.pixologic.com/sculptris/
- Gimp http://www.gimp.org/
- Unity http://unity3d.com/
Well, I'm not that artistic, I like drawing, but I'm not good at it. I don't have a background besides it and indeed the interest in 3D Art comes from playing games and seeing people do amazing things.
Well I would like to be able to do both, but I do like making more environment art.
I attended to some classes about Maya and give a shot at Blender. I did really like Maya and would like to try the 3DS Max (as I saw on the wiki, thanks to Jonathan pointing it out), but the prices are prohibitive for me at the moment. I made some things in Blender and really liked it, but I don't know if, in the future, I would bump into some big wall of not-having-feature or the not-used-tool on the market.
While trying Blender, I did found myself in situations that I think that I really need to learn basic concepts about 3D (not related to tools, that's why I posted in general, thought it would be a better place than in the tech area).
Sorry for not elaborating these points in the thread.
Thanks!
-S
ZacD, thanks for the information about the software. It will be surely a north for me to determine which tools to learn.
The insight about the tools industry will be looking for was a good thing to have in my mind.
Thank you very much!
After you learn about what all 3D apps have in common (snapping, grids, extrude, bevel, etc), learning another one becomes more and more straightforward.