Moving from CS to CG

seraphthrone

Hey all,
I'm new to the forum and to CG in general. Having seen all the amazing stuff you guys did here, I wonder how you all achieved it.

I became really possessed by CG and stuff after watching the live modeling sessions in a game show but moving from a computer science background is rather pretty difficult. So I wonder if any of you had a similar experience and can share some insights.

I learned drawing for a few years but have abandoned it for school. So I don't have quite a strong background in drawing. But I found I can pick things up quite fast. And one thing I know for sure is that I'm determined to master CG. I'm currently learning modeling in Maya.

Just to show a bit of the stuff I'm working on:

Just for reference, I'm trying to model Tyrael from Diablo:

Ben Apuna

I did this exact same thing. If you really want to progress quickly then continue to learn more traditional art skills. Drawing, painting, sculpting, design, photography will all help immensely.

When I switched to CG from CS I took a bunch of traditional art courses alongside the CG courses that were required for my degree. Drawing helped me a lot when it came to identifying shapes and forms which directly translated into models that had more interest, were more accurate, and made with me spending much less time trying to "figure out" any 2D reference that I was using. Traditional painting helped me a lot with texturing, though obviously I could be a lot better in this regard. The only course I missed out on that I wish I had taken was a course on color theory, and maybe one on industrial design.

If you're not in school any longer you can still learn the traditional arts just search around there are a ton on online resources available. The forums at http://www.conceptart.org might be a good place to start looking.

seraphthrone

Thanks for the advise. I think that's a good idea too, since right now I seem to lack a sense of space.

Here's an update on this thing I'm working on

makecg

It's a long road to master CG but if your determined and patient enough you will get there. It looks like a pretty good start good luck !

Ben Apuna

When I first got into CG especially 3D, I thought it was like a magical shortcut to making great looking art since the computer rendered everything perfectly.

Later as my skills with various apps improved but my art didn't I realized that the real key to making something good was experience with art in general and that there weren't any shortcuts. That's when I started making more effort to learn the traditional forms of art.

If only I could go back in time to when to my early teen years when I was loosing interest in art. I would tell myself not to play so many games and to keep on improving at drawing, I'd probably be at least 10X a better artist than I am now.

I guess what I'm trying to say is learning art and becoming good at it is a life long process, so it's best to start with the fundamentals early on and keep at it so you don't stunt your growth.

As far as what you've got right now it looks promising, try post your progress in the Pimping and Previews sub forum here to get more feedback. One thing that might help with space and forms is to get a "base mesh" of a human to work with in the background to make sure everything is right about where it should be and that the proportions of things don't go astray.

sama.van

Keep shape simple at the beginning, do not got so far into each body parts and detail.

More there are tri, more that will be painfull to modify proportions once the entire character done.

Once you done on this step, you can keep going on details o_<.

seraphthrone

Thanks for all the replies. I will definitely try to improve drawing. I will keep my progress posted so you guy can help me along too.

Appreciate the advises:)