I was curous to know what persentage of people are self taught. By self taught, I mean you learned by yourself, outside of a univeristy, highschool, or any class like setting.
I was curous to know what persentage of people are self taught. By self taught, I mean you learned by yourself, outside of a univeristy, highschool, or any class like setting.
~ People who are in the industry and went to university are still basically self taught anyway.
I was curous to know what persentage of people are self taught. By self taught, I mean you learned by yourself, outside of a univeristy, highschool, or any class like setting.
I did go to a University..but honestly..all it ever taught me was what programs to use and what a helpful websites to look at, and gave us assignments. Mostly everything is from here, the wiki, or Youtube videos.
I've taken a couple of Max classes, but the instructor was an absolute gobshite and had no idea what the hell he was doing. He also found a way to drone on and on and onnnnnnn for five hours straight while people just completely ignored anything he said so that they could actually learn how to use the program.
I learn alot from trial and error (mostly error). I did college and everything but whilst there I was only really taught animation and 2D stuff. I pretty much ended up teaching the tutors 3D by the end of the course. Most of the stuff I know is from tutorials. Now do you consider doing them self taught or not, probably not, as someone is teaching you still.
So in fact i'm probably 50% self taught from trial and error, 50% from sitting through tutorials.
I consider myself for the most part self taught even though I went to college for 3D art. Even though it was specialized it was more of less just fundamentals of 3D and art related classes like color theory and what not.
The important things I learned I learned outside of school through online tutorials, polycount and just doing shit on my own.
I still put Not Self Taught for your thing since you were asking for people who didnt go to a college/university.
I had a few ok classes to learn max and maya, and more cinema/broadcast related stuff (compositing, storyboard, editing etc), but all the actual game art/tech I learned on my own (mostly through reading polycount and such).
I was making game related stuff before any of that though, mostly quake and quake 3 levels, started out when I was 14 making stuff for Rise of the Triad, and later on Duke3D.
In high school I taught myself how to model and us photoshop and such, then went to college for an associates in animation. I had studio max classes which helped me make the switch from Blender3d to max, But i learned most of what I know from tutorials, and polycount.
Not a single person would be able to say they were "taught" half the things they know about game art. Thats not what universities do, you are meant to study by yourself and not expect them to do everything for you.
Thats not what universities do, you are meant to study by yourself and not expect them to do everything for you.
90% of my college would disagree with this. They expect universities to teach them everything they need to know so they can get an amazing job right out of school while they do nothing but play video games all day.
Started on LightWave at the start of 2002 (I think) with a lecturer at college showing me the basic controls... and I went from there, absorbing a ridiculous amount of stuff from lurking on Polycount and working on mods.
I'm self taught because of the fact that there aren't any courses or uni Majors related to 3D. Other than that, I learnt by experimenting because, for some reason, I can't stand watching tutorials.
learned some max in highschool and then taught myself the rest really. most of the current techniques and tricks I learned on the job and kinda just added them to my toolbelt. never went to post secondary, said fuck it to spending 30-80k in tuition
90% of my college would disagree with this. They expect universities to teach them everything they need to know so they can get an amazing job right out of school while they do nothing but play video games all day.
Yup. I'm at university, I consider myself self-taught. Some of the people in my classes don't seem to give a shit - they expect everything to be handed to them. I say 'in my classes' - these guys don't tend to even bother turning up.
when I started learning there were not many tutorial resources and I was still in half a mind whether to continue with traditional 2d illustration.
From what I remember there was jeremy birns site 3d render.com and not much else really.
I think you need a natural sense of curiosity to learn 3d and i found the whole learning process really exciting, but frustrating too
So yeah definitely self taught but its easy to miss out on valuable insights if you have no one teaching you, so I supppose I learned a lot of bad stuff too.
self taught here too didnt touch 3d until I left Uni but when I finally got in the studio I learnt so much my brain hurt plus theres not alot of places that teach the awesome stuff in the uk. None near me anyway
I learned qwerty for maya at school.
I learned I prefer maya over max at school.
The 18 hours a day I spent at school experimenting ahead of the course material I did on my own accord.
5 years later I re-learned maya and a new way of navigation, controls, normal mapping, texturing, and virtually everything that wasn't popular or heard of at college during the time of maya 3.5-4.5 from polycount and forum based friends.
I think for the most part people who go to school and actually have the drive to make it are the popular definition of self taught are 80% self taught./B]
If you consider being self taught having a forum like polycount to hold your hand and kick you in the nuts when you need it being self taught, then sure. Using tutorials and forums, is learning from someone else, even if they aren't holding your hand. Its just part of pushing yourself and keeping up with the bell curve.
So in short, I kind of find this whole deal about "self-taught pride" kind of ridiculous...but then again maybe I just don't get it.
But theres my answers
(If you want to go to a uni make sure its somewhere you can make good contacts!)
At college I learned quite a bit about color theory, composition, life drawing, painting, printing, content layout, art history, and some basic html and flash.
Once I got out of college, I had to teach myself 3D modeling and animation, texture mapping, scripting, coding, digital painting, video editing, advanced flash, Actionscript 3 programming, advanced web programming, CSS, advanced HTML, SQL, PHP, and several other disciplines.
I did value my college experience, and have never regretted it. I learned and experienced quite a bit. I also went to a fairly inexpensive college and also had a scholarship, so I didn't break the bank on my education. One of the most valuable lessons I learned in college was how to think for myself, and acquire information and skills on my own. Whenever I asked my professors something that they didn't know, I ended up having to learn it on my own. I was able to apply this lesson outside of school to further my education even after graduation.
90% of my college would disagree with this. They expect universities to teach them everything they need to know so they can get an amazing job right out of school while they do nothing but play video games all day.
Yes, but "they" are not the people who visit communities like polycount. "They" are the people who will fail to get a job in the games industry.
The ones who succeed are the ones who study and practice in their spare time.
I voted "yes", though technically I went to school and have formal training. The majority of my relevant skills were learned in a dark corner of my apartment.
I have business degree and took a single 10 week Maya course to learn the software after having used Max for 3 years. I don't think it is useful to list a degree in games or computer graphics/animation as "self taught" even if the classwork was horrible.
Self-study beyond classwork is pretty much required to excel in any field, and we're a highly desirable field where employment is a sign that you excel compared to the bulk of the people who 'trained' in the field.
~ People who are in the industry and went to university are still basically self taught anyway.
Not really. This is the first time I contradicted to your statement I apologize for that, but people who've gone to University / College (many of them) were guided through, and rest of them improvised in terms of perfecting their skills (self taught).
In other words 50% were guided through 30% relied on others to help them even if they were guided through and 20% were self taught and wanted a piece of paper everyone's been talking about.
A huge difference between guided through and self taught is that. Professors that are pros will guide one through a step by step procedure, give him an assignment and expect him to do those steps correctly (and rarely expect any extra work) where as, if professor gives an assignment to the one who is self taught (means he know what he is doing, and know how to the tools work) will do that assignment accordingly and in the add, he/she would improvise.
Not really. This is the first time I contradicted to your statement I apologize for that, but people who've gone to University / College (many of them) were guided through, and rest of them improvised in terms of perfecting their skills.
In other works 50% were guided through 30% relied on others to help them even if they were guided through and 20% were self taught and wanted a piece of paper everyone's been talking about.
~ I was making a sweeping statement, so yeah I do agree with you.
I just mean that most if not all courses teach you so little its kind of ridiculous. You get more from google really, so I consider most ex students I know pretty much self taught.
~I just mean that most if not all courses teach you so little its kind of ridiculous. You get more from google really, so I consider most ex students I know pretty much self taught.
I think a major take-away from all of this is the importance and usefulness of knowing how to learn on your own. Anyone who goes into a university expecting to learn everything they want, or even need to learn is in for an unpleasant surprise. I should know. I went to college, and the college simply didn't teach everything I wanted to know.
Even now, my current job is in Web Design and web coding. I barely learned any of that in college. Every day I use maybe 1% of what I learned in school in my daily job. 99% of what I use I learned outside of college. College is great, but more for broadening your horizons than actual job training. My college experience forced me to explore knowledge and subjects that I probably wouldn't have touched on otherwise. And that has helped to enrich me intellectually.
Being able to learn on your own is an incredibly valuable life skill, and should be encouraged.
I really enjoyed the traditional art classes at college, as well as art history and the cinematography classes. I feel got quite a lot out of them. ...not soo much from the 3D classes though. Except for the 3D part I felt pretty well prepared...but 3D is just practice practice practice. No matter if self taught or college, you'll fail without practicing what you learn.
I am self taught to a certain extent, but without school I would not have even known I wanted to do 3D, all I knew when I started out is that I wanted to do ART, going to school helped me discover what specialty I liked best. Then I went from there and learned whatever I could from school and on my own.
I don't think it's that cut and dried. I went to college and learned a lot but I still feel like most of my learning and skill has been personal.
There's only so much the instructors can do with a class and eventually every one is just a few big projects, mentoring and a tutorial session here and there. With each class occurring only once a week almost all of the time is spent working on your own or with classmates.
I learned a ton about non-digital/3d art in school. Figure Drawing classes and concept art/matte painting classes were the most valuable in that regard. The 9 months of figure drawing was huge; an extremely positive experience. That's the teaching/training I got the most out of. The later 3d classes and digital classes were largely mediocre, save for a handful by the best instructors. The lame ones were full of irrelevant info and outdated techniques, mostly aimed at 3d art for films. The whole time I was going ahead of the curve learning the software and everything about art specifically for games.
As they say, you get out of it what you put in and I think 3d art college is a great platform to make self-learners progress even faster due to having more resources at their disposal.
I really don't care where or how you learned so long as you know your sh!t when you apply.
If I had to lean one way or the other I would lean toward self reliant, self taught people. They are more likely to take the 3min to search the help file or use a search engine rather than constantly come ask me how to do something. I don't mind helping out but come on let me get some stuff done, take 3min, think and do a little searching.
Luckily I don't work with anyone like that but I have in the past and its annoying, especially when there are a lot of them and they stack up outside your office.
With that said I'd rather someone come and ask me a simple question rather than spend all day and ultimately fuck up whatever it is they're doing, not say anything and leave it for me to discover and fix later.
I am self taught, I began with Anim8or, then was introduced to 3DS MAX at Hydrant Studios, then they gave me a copy :P. After that one of the members of Hydrant showed me some websites and that was it.
Well I guess I'm a bit of both, mostly self taught but it's kinda like 70/30.
Stared building levels for Doom2 and Duke3d then went on playing around with the old 3ds R3. Then basically doing load of stuff on Half Life mods. never got accepted into any art related university, just studied Art History for a while out of pure interest.
I spent a year in school for 3D, where I was taught this neat trick: if you apply self-illuminated red, green and blue textures to your highpoly, you can bake 'm down and have neat masks in Photoshop.
i love how nobody wants to answer the question in the spirit it was asked.
you should probably change the question to "did you attend an art school" or something similar.
well i took it as have you been taught any 3d which no never, if we extend it to art then yes.... my Mum taught me not to shit my pants (mostly) where does it stop
I spent a year in school for 3D, where I was taught this neat trick: if you apply self-illuminated red, green and blue textures to your highpoly, you can bake 'm down and have neat masks in Photoshop.
just bake out a diffuse mask you don't need to self illuminate, don't bake complete maps they're complete(ly) useless. bake diffuse instead
~ I was making a sweeping statement, so yeah I do agree with you.
I just mean that most if not all courses teach you so little its kind of ridiculous. You get more from google really, so I consider most ex students I know pretty much self taught.
Indeed. Reason why I am not going to college for this.
Its Google and subscribed tutorial sites really. It's also based on your portfolio, style of arts, work-flow(s) and "passion for games / 3d arts"
I was just telling you how does it work in Colleges only. Once the person gets started (after being guided through) he/she would eventually have to improvise and keep up the practice to get better. Thats where self teaching comes in.
And for some odd reason believed that people who've gone to college will have a better chance at getting the job due to good links they made through their professor(s) and class mates, than people who do not(they would require a certain proof like portfolio, test(s) and 3 interviews).
Replies
~ People who are in the industry and went to university are still basically self taught anyway.
I did go to a University..but honestly..all it ever taught me was what programs to use and what a helpful websites to look at, and gave us assignments. Mostly everything is from here, the wiki, or Youtube videos.
I learn alot from trial and error (mostly error). I did college and everything but whilst there I was only really taught animation and 2D stuff. I pretty much ended up teaching the tutors 3D by the end of the course. Most of the stuff I know is from tutorials. Now do you consider doing them self taught or not, probably not, as someone is teaching you still.
So in fact i'm probably 50% self taught from trial and error, 50% from sitting through tutorials.
The important things I learned I learned outside of school through online tutorials, polycount and just doing shit on my own.
I still put Not Self Taught for your thing since you were asking for people who didnt go to a college/university.
I was making game related stuff before any of that though, mostly quake and quake 3 levels, started out when I was 14 making stuff for Rise of the Triad, and later on Duke3D.
90% of my college would disagree with this. They expect universities to teach them everything they need to know so they can get an amazing job right out of school while they do nothing but play video games all day.
Yup. I'm at university, I consider myself self-taught. Some of the people in my classes don't seem to give a shit - they expect everything to be handed to them. I say 'in my classes' - these guys don't tend to even bother turning up.
From what I remember there was jeremy birns site 3d render.com and not much else really.
I think you need a natural sense of curiosity to learn 3d and i found the whole learning process really exciting, but frustrating too
So yeah definitely self taught but its easy to miss out on valuable insights if you have no one teaching you, so I supppose I learned a lot of bad stuff too.
I learned I prefer maya over max at school.
The 18 hours a day I spent at school experimenting ahead of the course material I did on my own accord.
5 years later I re-learned maya and a new way of navigation, controls, normal mapping, texturing, and virtually everything that wasn't popular or heard of at college during the time of maya 3.5-4.5 from polycount and forum based friends.
I think for the most part people who go to school and actually have the drive to make it are the popular definition of self taught are 80% self taught./B]
If you consider being self taught having a forum like polycount to hold your hand and kick you in the nuts when you need it being self taught, then sure. Using tutorials and forums, is learning from someone else, even if they aren't holding your hand. Its just part of pushing yourself and keeping up with the bell curve.
So in short, I kind of find this whole deal about "self-taught pride" kind of ridiculous...but then again maybe I just don't get it.
But theres my answers
(If you want to go to a uni make sure its somewhere you can make good contacts!)
Once I got out of college, I had to teach myself 3D modeling and animation, texture mapping, scripting, coding, digital painting, video editing, advanced flash, Actionscript 3 programming, advanced web programming, CSS, advanced HTML, SQL, PHP, and several other disciplines.
I did value my college experience, and have never regretted it. I learned and experienced quite a bit. I also went to a fairly inexpensive college and also had a scholarship, so I didn't break the bank on my education. One of the most valuable lessons I learned in college was how to think for myself, and acquire information and skills on my own. Whenever I asked my professors something that they didn't know, I ended up having to learn it on my own. I was able to apply this lesson outside of school to further my education even after graduation.
Yes, but "they" are not the people who visit communities like polycount. "They" are the people who will fail to get a job in the games industry.
The ones who succeed are the ones who study and practice in their spare time.
Self-study beyond classwork is pretty much required to excel in any field, and we're a highly desirable field where employment is a sign that you excel compared to the bulk of the people who 'trained' in the field.
Not really. This is the first time I contradicted to your statement I apologize for that, but people who've gone to University / College (many of them) were guided through, and rest of them improvised in terms of perfecting their skills (self taught).
In other words 50% were guided through 30% relied on others to help them even if they were guided through and 20% were self taught and wanted a piece of paper everyone's been talking about.
A huge difference between guided through and self taught is that. Professors that are pros will guide one through a step by step procedure, give him an assignment and expect him to do those steps correctly (and rarely expect any extra work) where as, if professor gives an assignment to the one who is self taught (means he know what he is doing, and know how to the tools work) will do that assignment accordingly and in the add, he/she would improvise.
~ I was making a sweeping statement, so yeah I do agree with you.
I just mean that most if not all courses teach you so little its kind of ridiculous. You get more from google really, so I consider most ex students I know pretty much self taught.
I think a major take-away from all of this is the importance and usefulness of knowing how to learn on your own. Anyone who goes into a university expecting to learn everything they want, or even need to learn is in for an unpleasant surprise. I should know. I went to college, and the college simply didn't teach everything I wanted to know.
Even now, my current job is in Web Design and web coding. I barely learned any of that in college. Every day I use maybe 1% of what I learned in school in my daily job. 99% of what I use I learned outside of college. College is great, but more for broadening your horizons than actual job training. My college experience forced me to explore knowledge and subjects that I probably wouldn't have touched on otherwise. And that has helped to enrich me intellectually.
Being able to learn on your own is an incredibly valuable life skill, and should be encouraged.
Dreamer: Love your new avatar!
There's only so much the instructors can do with a class and eventually every one is just a few big projects, mentoring and a tutorial session here and there. With each class occurring only once a week almost all of the time is spent working on your own or with classmates.
I learned a ton about non-digital/3d art in school. Figure Drawing classes and concept art/matte painting classes were the most valuable in that regard. The 9 months of figure drawing was huge; an extremely positive experience. That's the teaching/training I got the most out of. The later 3d classes and digital classes were largely mediocre, save for a handful by the best instructors. The lame ones were full of irrelevant info and outdated techniques, mostly aimed at 3d art for films. The whole time I was going ahead of the curve learning the software and everything about art specifically for games.
As they say, you get out of it what you put in and I think 3d art college is a great platform to make self-learners progress even faster due to having more resources at their disposal.
If I had to lean one way or the other I would lean toward self reliant, self taught people. They are more likely to take the 3min to search the help file or use a search engine rather than constantly come ask me how to do something. I don't mind helping out but come on let me get some stuff done, take 3min, think and do a little searching.
Luckily I don't work with anyone like that but I have in the past and its annoying, especially when there are a lot of them and they stack up outside your office.
With that said I'd rather someone come and ask me a simple question rather than spend all day and ultimately fuck up whatever it is they're doing, not say anything and leave it for me to discover and fix later.
Well I guess I'm a bit of both, mostly self taught but it's kinda like 70/30.
Ditto, but it cost me my soul.
you should probably change the question to "did you attend an art school" or something similar.
well i took it as have you been taught any 3d which no never, if we extend it to art then yes.... my Mum taught me not to shit my pants (mostly) where does it stop
yes, that illustrates my point quite nicely. :poly124:
just bake out a diffuse mask you don't need to self illuminate, don't bake complete maps they're complete(ly) useless. bake diffuse instead
Indeed. Reason why I am not going to college for this.
Its Google and subscribed tutorial sites really. It's also based on your portfolio, style of arts, work-flow(s) and "passion for games / 3d arts"
I was just telling you how does it work in Colleges only. Once the person gets started (after being guided through) he/she would eventually have to improvise and keep up the practice to get better. Thats where self teaching comes in.
And for some odd reason believed that people who've gone to college will have a better chance at getting the job due to good links they made through their professor(s) and class mates, than people who do not(they would require a certain proof like portfolio, test(s) and 3 interviews).