What online courses/3D atelier are recommended?

bluubird

Hello there, nice to meet you all. I'm just a rando beginner who's been interested in art for a long time and decided to strive to become a 3D artist after learning it for half a year.
I always wanted to have an art career but due to concerns about risk and fear, I would usually not try to think about it. Right now I'm working at another job (not related to art) and after 8 months of doing it, I gradually became more and more unsatisfied with it and where I am with life; so I want to try having a job in art.

The question I want to ask is, as the title says, what 3D courses to you guys recommend for a beginner?
I discovered a few months back and now that I have trouble learning on my own; mostly because I don't have a teacher with me that I can ask specific advice for.

One course I found that sounded promising was CGMA 3D academy, I'm hoping to spread my options more.

Also I know it's not a guaranteed that an online course will fix all of my problems or magically turn me into a good artist after a year or so; is there anything a beginner should do to become a pro?

aryarie

Hard to say without knowing what you have learned so far (and not knowing what your eventual goal is - game artist? If so - environments or  characters? Films? Arch viz? Maybe you want to do animation, or vfx... or something else?). So without knowing what it is that you want, since "3D artist" is such a broad term, I can't really suggest anything.  

The only advice I can offer until you give some specifics is that you do a thorough check of any tutorials/courses to make sure that they are legit and that whoever has authored the tutorial or course has had real experience before dropping any money. And also, don't rely on those courses/tutorials to teach you everything; you'll have to make up some of your own projects so you can practice.

I did start with Pluralsight. I think if I was starting again from scratch I would have skipped that and gone straight to 3dmotive... but that is very specifically game art related, and I have no idea if that's what you're looking for.

IMO, CGMA seems incredibly expensive to be considering at a beginner level (I've also been learning for around half a year and I certainly wouldn't consider it at this point). The beginner stuff you can learn for free or significantly cheaper.

Biomag

Courses with known artist are in my opinion not really the best starting point. You pay a big sum for the name and the AAA-techniques that you anyhow can't comprehand as a beginner. I've seen so many beginners struggling in such courses, falling behind and missing out on the actual key points and basically getting only information out of it that any 2nd year student could have given you for free.

If there are introduction courses (I think CGMA has those too), then things are different. But jumping on something as specialized as a 2 month character creation course is the wrong way to go for 99% of the beginners. Try to find courses that teach you the basics of the programs used if you are someone who (like me) needs a tutor to learn those basic steps. Afterwards take some time to add to this by going through the tons of free material. I wouldn't waste any money on master classes in the first 1-2 years. Once you really have a solid foundation and know the whole pipeline only then move on to master classes like the CGMA's advanced classes.

I know the CGMA has a whole character artist program that last 1 (or 2?) years. Something like that could be beneficial, since it is meant to teach the whole process. But you still might want to get used to 3D packages and basics of either character art or enviorment art, before committing the time and money to it.

Bletzkarn

90% of tutorials are absolute garbage and I detest them! I lump tutorials into 1 of 3 categories.

1) Make it up as you go A.K.A "The Youtube"

Usually created by a really intelligent guy who knows unfathomable amounts about a program. However the tutorials have zero structure and are unedited. Resulting in 20% useful knowledge and 80% avoidable mistakes and back stepping, spanning over 50 hours and 98 videos. the difficulty of each tutorial jumps drastically between each video and often times the entire series just stops in the middle of it.

2) Make it look pro A.K.A "The Faker"

The most common type of tutorial, can be found on any dedicated tutorial site. Digital Tutors, Lynda, LinkedIn. This tutorial has very high production values and usually costs money. Suspiciously however they usually only run for 90 minutes and claim to teach you how to master a program. Best viewed at 2x speed for the 2-3 good tips it will contain.

Here is a basic run down of these goes.

"Okay guys, now we're going to model the level, so just download this level I made early and drop it into your scene. Good Job!"

"Next we have to create the materials, download these textures I prepared earlier and enter these exact values. Now you're doing it!"

"Finally we set up the lighting, I'm not going to burden you with all these confusing numbers, just download the scene I created earlier and hit render. You are now a pro!"

Bonus: Tutorials often written by 15 year veterans with horribly outdated workflows.

3) Make a good tutorial A.K.A "The Unicorn".

Extremely rare, but is comprehensive, informative, well written and challenging. Will actual teach you vital skills that you will carry for a lifetime. I've only come across a handful of these tutorials. All on udemy.com.

Ben Tristam is a shining examplar of how all tutorials should be. Often take several weeks to finish as they run for 20-30 hours. However due to the challenging nature it will take you twice that long to complete.

Larry

From my experience i tried learning stuff from youtube but that was too random and got me demotivated. Some years later i subscribed on pluralsight (former digital tutors) and for 30$ per month i could see unlimited courses. Some stuff are not explained in every course though, but they are mentioned so that you understand the terminology and be able to find information about it. It will require some problem solving (which is minimal compared to the problem solving required to work as a CG artist) but it is a really good starting point

Bletzkarn

Unfortunately these days not even a university education is going to teach you everything you need to know.