Your Way of Learning Game Art (Time Investment / Skill / Process)
polycounter lvl 7
Hey Polycount!
I’m new to 3D/Game Art. I absolutely love it and all your contributions motivate me to go on this journey.
I purchased Maya LT and started to learn with tutorials from Pluralsight and some Youtube.
Right now as everything is new, I’m a little confused and overflown with information. Should I do high-poly, render, texture etc etc. Don’t even know what everything exactly means. I work a full-time job but I want to dedicate a lot of my free-time to get into Game Art.
It would be really interesting to learn about your path, upcoming and how you learned 3D (time, effort, process i.e.) or if you could share your basic workflow. I still try to structure a lot in my head as I go along learning.
Thanks for all your insights and wisdom 
Replies
Sorry for the upcoming mistakes in english, not my native language.
As you know, the most important thing it's constancy and trying to achieve quality over quantity, also is asking for feedback ofc.
As I am not in a profesional level maybe I can be wrong on some advices, but atleast I try :P
First of all I usually invest in modeling/texturing at least 2 hours a day (usually more, it depends on the circumstances), but I try to do it everyday, remember Slow progress its better than no progress. I also recomend to choose a program and stick to it for a while, for you it's MAYA LT, I use 3DS Max, probably in the near future I will learn a bit of MAYA just in case. For baking and texturing I use Substance Painter (had a lot of FUN with this tool, fun = good time invested) and for rendering I usually use Marmoset Toolbag 3 or putting it into Unreal engine 4 for now.
I highly recommend to just focus in one prop at time, you want to achieve a good quality so take your time at each step, don't rush, it's never a good choise, maybe a prop can take you 3 weeks at first depending on the time you invested, but you will have a good looking piece to show to your mates, ofc you will get faster on each prop you make, be patient.
What is usually my workflow:
Software I know how to use: 3DS Max, Photoshop, Substance Painter 2
Learning right now ; Substance Designer, Zbrush
1 - First of all, I start by gathering all the references of the piece that I want to do. This is one of the most important steps at least for me, take your time finding them and if you can preparea Turnaround of the object you want to make in Photoshop to help with modeling/Texturing.
2 - Making the silhouette of the piece and find the right proportions to the model.
3- When I am happy with the silhouette I start detailing it a little bit reaching the polycount that I want.
4- After making the low poly asset I usually UV and settup the smoothing groups.
5- Now it's time for making the high poly model to achieve a good looking normal map into your low poly, so I make a clone of my low poly model and I start to high poly it.
6 - After highpoly and lowpoly is done, I usually export them into Substance Painter 2 to bake. I bake by mesh name so you don't have to explode your model into a lot of pieces (low poly objects are : "NameOfTheObject_low" , and high poly "NameOfTheObject_high" just google it if you dont know, they will explain better than me haha )
7 - Time to clean the normal map, some times you will have some errors in your baking, I usually fix the normals inside Photoshop using RGB channels black/white.
8 - Texture my object in Substance Painter 2 following my references.
9 - Finishing texturing by adding scratches , human ussage and such.
10 - Once I'm happy with it I can tell you that it's finished, so I export my model into Sketchfab, Marmoset Toolbag 3, Unreal engine 4...
11- If I see a big error I usually fix it, but it depends, probabbly you will make your next model better.
This is a huge post, sorry, I wish it's usefull for anyone.
Remember, be patient, be constant, try to achieve good looking pieces and ask for feedback
PS: Keep doing this that you find fun and interesting at this stage of learning, thats my advise, don't do things that you think people wants, you won't have the same quality while learning.
Thank you so much for your reply man! It is totally useful for sure!
How long does that process take you for a full prop? A week, a month? I never know what my timeframe should be for creating a full piece.
Made this prop in about 18 horus, had to make it in 3 days, but usually if I want to make a more quality asset, I spend like a week , depending on the asset.
Break it down into specific categories, modelling, subd modelling, UV, texturing, materials etc. And use a combination of mini exercises and short studies to go through them.
Mini exercises where you focus on a single category like unwrapping, and then learn and fail, learn and fail and hopefully overtime less failure.
In between exercises do a short study like making a small prop where you bring together the combination of all the skill sets you've gone through during the exercises.
As time passes you'll increase the complexity and raise the quality bar.
Over time later on when you reach a particular level you'll then create specific 'Portfolio' projects with the aim to get hired, these projects are more about the content and the finish as you would have done most of the learning via the exercises and studies.
I recommend having a small notepad and jot things down especially during your journey to and back from work, or during your lunch just to keep you actively thinking.
Hope that helps, good luck.
Awesome man, thanks for the response!