I need some help with the learning path

Dastan

Hello,

Nice to meet you guys! Eric Testroete told me about this forum.

My name is Alexandre and I am a student of Game Design in Brazil; I’m new to the game industry. I have very little practical experience, and was hoping for a little advice. I’ve learned some modeling and animation; but there are so many areas of study to cover that it is difficult to know how to get started. I' ve always loved games, and I'm passionate about a career in game industry, I dream of being part it someday.

In order to practice, I’ve worked on projects found books and training software. While these are useful for learning the skills, I’m left with nothing for my own portfolio. However, if I were to start a project of my own, I know it would not be good enough yet. I was wondering if you could offer any advice on how to get started in the industry. I still have a lot to learn, but I’m hoping to start building my portfolio at the same time.

I am pretty good on traditional low poly modeling but I am new to digital sculpting and texture creation. It is too many things to study, I am kind of lost... I also expect to get used to normal maps creation, engines and a lot of other stuff.

I am using Photoshop, Maya, Mudbox (started this week), and trying to learn Unity Engine, since I am a Mac user and there is no UDK3 for it.

I hope you guys can help me. I really want to dedicated this years of college to a full time study and practice, I am going to do my best.

Thanks,

cryrid

If you don't know where to begin, I'd say to start off small and progress from there. You don't even have to go all out at first. Try making a simple pillar or wall. Take it into mudbox and give it a random sculpt/paint job (doesn't have to look pretty and it doesn't have to look like you gave it much effort), and then work on getting the texture/normal maps generated and everything imported correctly into Unity (there should be enough online documentation to cover such steps). Basically just work out your pipeline so you know what is required.

Once you have that, just go back and redo it, but actually put time into making it look prettier. If/when you run into a specific problem, google it or go online and ask someone. When you've produced something, post pictures of it and get comments.