How much do you practice different skills?

YF_Sticks

Hello fellow Polycounters

So I'm learning Substance Designer right now and I love it. I'm really focusing all my energy on it at the moment to really get the basics down. Recently I've been asking myself those questions about "Shouldn't I model something as well? To keep practicing.." "Shouldn't I sculpt in ZBrush as well...what if I don't practice it enough..". My goal at the moment is to learn SD for the next one - two months until my CGMA Class starts. 

My question is, how much do you guys "practice" your skills in different software? Do you focus some time on only one skill to really get better at it (like I'm doing now with SD) ?

Thanks for any advice. Happy to learn

Taylor Brown

Personally, i seem to do best by having a few core pieces of software (Maya, Zbrush, Substance Painter) that I use for most projects and then once in a while I'll take some time and explore something new if I think it can offer something thats lacking. Id say its great that youre exploring and as long as it is still deliberate and thoughtful practice then it's going to be beneficial.

Alex_J

I find that I have a finite amount of attention I can give each day. My brain is kind of like a car. It takes the most energy to get it going, but once its on a straight road, it can cruise without too much energy consumption. But if I try to change directions, stop and go again, that uses more gas, which means I get tired more quickly. 

So I try to introduce new skills on an as needed basis, and maybe during downtime I specifically go hunting something totally new to learn. As needed basis means like, the other day I was modeling some rope, and I figured there must be some better way to do it than regular block modeling which was slow and clunky. So I watch a few videos and read documentation about what you can do with curves. So after an hour or two, now I know a new tool and start implementing it. Maybe 5-10% of my total 3d time is spent like this. But then I am pretty new to 3d and have more to learn than others.

YF_Sticks

Thanks for your input guys! Yeah at the moment it's about exploring and finding a good balance between proper work/execution and learning new skills.

Ashervisalis

I use the same programs for every project, usually in the order of: Maya > ZBrush > Maya > Substance Designer > Substance Painter > UE4 > Photoshop. Once I had this workflow down, I was basically forced to use each skill for *almost everything I made (almost, unless the model doesn't require sculpting).

Brian "Panda" Choi

More often than not, I let project needs drive what I dip into.  It's a friction between the familiar and new.