Necessary budget for building a PC to become a 3D Game Character Artist

Neramin

Hi. I'm planning on working in the game industry as a 3D Character Artist (it could be AA, AAA or indie, though I'm focusing on stylized characters so maybe AAA is off limits). I'm currently on my way to finishing my first decent-quality character for my portfolio.

My current specs are:

- Motherboard: ASUS H170I-PRO

- CPU: Intel Core i3-6100
- RAM: 16 GB
- GPU: NVidia GTX 1050 2 GB VRAM

- Drive: SSD 256 GB

- Monitor: 1080p

I have a limited budget (around 500 dollars, maybe more if I get some more somewhere), and am planning on buying a GTX 1660 Ti and a better drive, since I need the space. Are M.2 drives important? What about having 1 TB space? Can I buy a regular 500 GB SSD drive and focus my budget on everything else? Also, is it possible for me to work in games while only buying that specific GPU and drive while maintaining my other PC components, or is it absolutely necessary for me to have a lot more budget for a better PC? Thanks in advance.

poopipe

It's absolutely not necessary to go buy a giant workstation to make 3d models and hasn't been since about 2008. 

You can probably do the work you need to do on that machine quite comfortably - I used a worse one when I was working on first party PS4 titles.
You may want more ram for zbrush but in general I'd suggest not buying anything until it's obvious you need it (like the disk for example) and instead saving up for a whole new machine a few years down the line

Having said all that, it does depend on what you intend to do with the machine. 
Eg. If you want to muck around with unreal 5 you're going to need 64gb, fast disks, at least 8 fast cores and at least a 3070 because it doesn't work properly if you don't. 

zetheros

if you ever get more $$ and want to splurge on something, get big monitors, preferably multiple so you can have references up without having to alt-tab all the time, and will also allow you to zoom in super close to models for precise detail work. My main monitor is an Alienware 34" curved OLED, and I find myself using all of that space for art.

Noren

Think about a backup solution, at least for your work files. 

As for more affordable extra monitor space down the line, you sometimes can get decent used monitors really cheap from office liquidations etc. Won't have the greatest color accuracy if they've been running for a while (especially if that was at full brightness), but depending on the seller, you can check before you buy. There's a web tool from Eizo that let's you check different properties quickly. Less of a gamble than with other hardware that way.