Looking to Hire Maya, Substance Painter, Unreal Engine Tutor
Hello, I am a game art student who is looking for a tutor. I am currently struggling in college with Maya, Unreal Engine, and Substance Painter. They really do not have tutors right now at the college I am at, and I am brand new to everything, so I have tons of questions! I also am a hands-on learner, so patience is needed. I am not sure what tutors are going for right now so I really cannot set a price, so it is just what you feel is right. I usually start my day at 9 am for studying and go to bed around 11 pm, so I am not working unless I have an emergency run for supplies. I am basically a full-time student and I love my studies; my future is my everything. I use discord.
Replies
Hey there, welcome to 3D art! It's very difficult and has loooooots to learn, but keep at it. While I don't have time to mentor anybody myself, I can give you a tip.
Join communities! Instead of giving money to one person, you can have a ton of experts in with diverse specialties who can give you direction. I learned so much on Polycount's Slack community, which is a bit on the smaller side.
Alternatively, the Polycount discord has a ton of active users.
https://discord.gg/Bb9PgsWv
Really, just bury yourself in these communities and you'll quickly meet a lot of people who are down to give advice, without expecting cash in return. It is a bit intimidating, but by going in there and talking every day, and asking questions, you'll learn so much. Its easy thinking that paying money will get you a better result, but I wholeheartedly believe this to not be the case. If this mentorship was just going to be for a few months and really, really focused, and you weren't going to school, maybe a mentorship would be a good idea, but over the course of a few years, I believe community help would be better. You also would network and get to know so many other people.
Best of luck :)
a mentor is good for if you are beyond beginner and working on something very specific and want some dedicated, committed help for problem solving and direction.
Otherwise I agree with @Ashervisalis in that you'll learn more and quicker by getting involved in number of communities. It's probably most efficient it to be most active in just like one or two smaller ones so that people can get to know your name. Once they recognize you and know that you are somebody who is really making an effort, they'll be more inclined to offer higher commitment help.
All that said, I do think a mentor is one of the best things you can have, however it's just that if you are getting to grips with the A,B,C's of 3d it's just way easier for both you and the mentor if you pick that stuff up from the wealth of resources already available.
One other tip - you mentioned that you are struggling with some software. I'd suggest to not think so much in terms of learning software. That is not something you can easily measure progress in. So it becomes very demotivating. Instead, focus on completing bite sized projects. Just learn whatever is needed to complete the projects as you need.
There is too many different things you have to know and you cannot remember it all. So, the real skill you'll be developing is just how to research and learn quickly, and just getting to grips with how computers work in general so you can more intuitively solve problems. If you tackle some larger projects you'll quickly understand what I mean - spend 500 hours learning the in's and outs of some workflow, by the time you "get" it you realize you can't remember the ten other workflows that you also have to use.
Anyway, it won't be that ridiculous if you keep your area of focus reasonably narrow but point is, try to only take small bites at a time so you can finish work, see progress, and have more fun.
I appreciate the both of you, for the advice and help! I do not want to rip someone off and if I can help someone for helping me out, I will. I just need someone who I can message most the time during the day for questions and some point in the day being around to help me with things. I am hoping I can find this; I am struggling hard in school and professors and not always around which makes the learning curve a bit harder for me.
Hobbs is maintaining a list of mentors.
https://twitter.com/JLHGameArt/status/1566422712431648769
it's good to have tutor, can find them almost anywhere, some of them even have courses in the forums