What's my next step?

Peppek1993

Hey guys. I've been playing around with 3D for a good while now, but it wasn't anything that I did every single day. I had phases when I focused on it more and I had days, weeks or even months where I didn't even touch it.

Anyway, I'm fairly certain I already surpassed the "begginer" phase. I know most of the tools inside 3DS Max, I know all the basic terminology, I've done a bunch of tutorials from simple box modeling to something more advanced like a stylized character creation etc. I've mainly used Pluralsight and basically everything I've done so far I've done off of a tutorial. I'm kinda scared and hesitate to try to do something completely on my own - not sure I can handle it.

Anyway, I've done pretty much every tutorial on Pluralsight that was appealing to me and that I figured is worth doing and now I'm kinda stuck. Do you guys have any recommendations to any good websites I can continue learning?

Most of the stuff I found online is super outdated - that's my main issue. I know there are sites like Gnomon Workshop, Eat 3D etc. and I have no issue paying money to continue learning, but what bothers me is that it's sooooo heavily outdated.

There are tutorials there that use 3DS Max 2010 and they want 50$ for it. I'm sure "the game" has changed A LOT since 2010 and I don't think it would be beneficial for me to learn off of a tutorial that was produced 8 years ago and has completely different workflow compared to what most people do nowadays.

Are there any legit, helpful resources out there that are updated frequently that I can use? As I said, I don't mind paying for it, I just want it to be worth my money.

Brian "Panda" Choi

First question to help us help you: where is your portfolio or body of work?

Ged

Hi! That really depends what you want to learn, some things are foundational and don't change much over time. For example anatomy or colour and light theory. Do you want to learn about zbrushing characters or UE4 environments etc? maybe people can recommend something specific if we know what you are into. I would personally recommend checking out the polycount gumroad list as these are often industry professionals and have in most cases been done fairly recently http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Gumroad_Tutorial_List

Peppek1993

Brian "Panda" Choi said:

First question to help us help you: where is your portfolio or body of work?

As I said, I haven't done anything on my own so I found it kind of pointless to make a portfolio full of things that are completed with a tutorial and looks either identical or very similar to someone elses job. I just followed the steps and learned the tools, nothing to brag about and to seek criticism.

Ged said:

Hi! That really depends what you want to learn, some things are foundational and don't change much over time. For example anatomy or colour and light theory. Do you want to learn about zbrushing characters or UE4 environments etc? maybe people can recommend something specific if we know what you are into. I would personally recommend checking out the polycount gumroad list as these are often industry professionals and have in most cases been done fairly recently http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Gumroad_Tutorial_List

Hey, thanks for the answer I'm mostly looking into making 3D Assets for Game industry. My goal is to find an internship somewhere once I make a solid enough portfolio to start applying somewhere. I'm set at using 3DS Max, Zbrush and Substance Painter. From what I researcheed, that's a solid start. I haven't yet touched Substance Painter, but I've done some basic sculpting in Zbrush and put in dozens of hours into 3DS Max.


What I guess my endgame goal would be is to become a 3D Environment Artist, making assets from scratch, texturing them and making game environments out of them. I'm not looking that much into character creation right now since I think it's much more difficult and complex. I'm trying to stick to hard surface modeling. 

Hope you can further try to help me
And will check out your link definitely, there seems to be a lot of stuff there. 

Taylor Brown

Look up Tim Bergholz's tutorials on Chamferzone as well as Simon Fuchs' gumroad. They will get you further with Max and SP. Or if you feel like branching out to Maya there are honestly far more tuts though if youre strong enough in Max you can easily follow along and substitute tools/methods as needed.

My advice is to take what you've learned and apply it to your own project. You will learn exponentially more through trial and error and resesrching your own issues. I did the tutorial thing for ages and once I changed to my own projects, I felt myself leveling up.

Ashervisalis

Don't be afraid to try stuff out on your own. I'd suggest finding concept art and trying to replicate it. Polycount has both a character and environment challenge every 2 months which I'd highly suggest joining; they're in the 3D Showcase section. If you've done a ton of tutorials, it might be time to step out of the tutorial zone and challenge yourself!

Brian "Panda" Choi

3Dmotive is super cheap and super effective.  Ott has made a really good website.