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How did everyone here get into the 3d world?

Sup,

I was wondering what got people into 3d animation and how they started in their adventure.

To be honest, I wanted to be a chef in high school but changed my mind when I got a huge love for art and video games. I just wanted to create new worlds and give life to the ideas just rotting away in my head. Now, im going to be getting my AS degree soon and will have a lot of free time learning udk and getting my art skills to the next level. (Sorry if this sounds cheesy but whatever)

Story time ^^/

Replies

  • EarthQuake
    I got interested in games back in the early days of shooters, playing Wolfenstein, Doom, and then later when I was about 13 I stumbled onto a site called q2pmp (http://web.archive.org/web/19990128161923/http://www.planetquake.com/q2pmp/ - q2pmp, what we now know as polycount) I realized you could make custom models for games. I made a few weapon models with some really crude modeling apps, and then later started using lightwave and joined a quake 3 mod called urbanterror. After highschool I started doing freelance work, and eventually got my first full time onsite gig, and have been working in the industry since, for about 10-11 or so years.
  • Bek
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    Bek interpolator
    Heh, I played a bit of Urban Terror (and a lot of quake 3 — although not in its prime years).

    I first got interested by mucking around in the TES IV editor, made some dumb mods, then wanted to make a map for my Quake 3 clan, after which I decided to check out a more modern engine (UT3). After realising you now needed to make 3d models to make levels, I decided to start getting good at 3d stuff. I haven't really gotten back to much level design since then...
  • Chev
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    Chev polycounter lvl 11
    Loooong ago there was a game called 7th guest, one of the first prerendered CD games, that spearheaded the use of 3D Studio for videogames. So I pestered a computer-savvy friend until he got me a copy of 3D Studio 2 (and for the younger ones here, that's 3DS 2, not 3DS Max 2. Max is 3D Studio for Windows ie more or less 3DS 5). Ah, the sweet days when it took two hours to render 30 frames of a 320x200 anim that looked less good than why you can render in real time today...
  • ExcessiveZero
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    ExcessiveZero polycounter lvl 12
    Modding, RTW, GTA3, mostly just textures and code, then started working with some indies as an texture artist, got introduced to the 3D world and started tooling around with it, but then I recall a very spiteful comment from one of the guys I was working with "Leave the 3D to the 3D artists" and well that pissed me off enough to really start learning it and it just kind of snowballed, I am pretty sure that guy is now a "chef" or something of the sort....maybe someone told him to leave the cooking to the cooks lol.
  • SuperFranky
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    SuperFranky polycounter lvl 10
    By a twist of fate.
  • Anthony
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    Anthony polycounter lvl 2
    Almost 10 years ago (this september) i went to the local collage to do a media, games design and animation course that lasted 2 years. Got a GNVQ out of it. Learned using Maya while in collage (but didn't get as much into the program as i could have, and we didn't use zbrush), after i finished collage, i got an educational perpetual liscense of max 8, and i've been a max user ever since, though purely as a hobby. Though i need to find an alternative now.
  • Shiniku
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    Shiniku polycounter lvl 14
    When I turned 13 my parents paid for me to go to this computer-camp type thing run by a Lan center. Well, basically you built your own computer, played games, and kept the computer. The PC was just good enough to play Halo on the lowest settings at the time.

    Anyway, I took interest in art and so the guys who ran the shop installed Maya personal learning edition 8 I believe on my PC and recruited me to their game dev project. Which was pretty much a blatant starcraft ripoff and didn't go anywhere as far as I know. But since then I dabbled in 3d art, although for my teenage years it was mostly just 1 model of a sword or helmet in a different free 3d program every year.


    I wish I had done more with it, but even being slightly familiar with working in 3d helped me a lot down the line.
  • praetus
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    praetus interpolator
    I had always really enjoyed games, but growing up in Daytona Beach I spent most my time at the skate park or surfing with friends. In high school I was put on acutane because I had really bad acne and a side effect of the medicine is you can't really go outside as it dries out your skin and can really fuck you up if you get burned, so I needed an indoor hobby. Started learning about modelling in my spare time and decided to go to Full Sail to learn more.

    I got a job doing MilSim stuff four years ago. I do hard edge realistic modelling at work and usually do more fantasy or hand painted stuff at home to break things up.
  • Torch
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    Torch polycounter
    Wanted to have a career doing something PC related and started with web design but quickly got bored, always had a passion for games so started thinking about a career in the industry. Picked up 3DS Max (think it was version 7 or something pretty ancient) and spent days tinkering with it, working on mods, etc.
  • JustMeSR
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    JustMeSR polycounter lvl 4
    I was playing a lot of games at the time and was highly interested in any "making of"s, wireframe images, concept art, code and pretty much anything related to games i could find although I wanted to become programmer.

    Once there was a new game announced which main selling point (,or the only reason some people noticed it) was that my country actually published a game (a small F2P title). I liked that idea, so I started being active at their forums (game then died and only 3 people remained on its forum: my old cringeworthy me, brony and nyan cat guy....pretty cool people :) ).

    My brother started liking the idea of being active at forums, so he jumped to as many forums as possible. On one of which there was guy working in Google Sketchup at Fan art section. Bro showed me his work and I gave sketchup a shot. When it turned out far better than expected.

    From jealousy my bro found "one of actually used" modeling packages (blender). After about 3-5 hours of learning he gave up, "because he can't work with broken mouse wheel" (another story)...I moved to blender.

    I wasn't still regularly practicing and working only when feeling like it. That changed thanks to Feng Zhu and very creative fandom that I become part of after bro "converted me" (he became part of the fandom because the brony at my first forum convinced him to give the show (and fandom) a chance).

    I got onto polycount and found Feng Zhu's youtube channel thanks to reddit (which he found, again thanks to the fandom).

    Tldr: Me getting on a forum caused my bro to become "that guy" on gaming forums (that also ended up on 4chan), and me because of that getting into 3D and getting onto polycount.
  • Kevin Johnstone
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    Kevin Johnstone polycounter lvl 19
  • dempolys
  • huffer
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    huffer interpolator
    Discovered 3dsmax 6 demo from a PC magazine CD (didn't have internet acces) and spent some time on it, then tried to learn Blender (as a freshman in high school), as the whole 3D-thing seemed awesome. Took many breaks, later picked up drawing and 4 years ago got my first money from 3D (archviz). Not sure when I got attracted to gaming industry, but I've been doing a bit of that too lately. :D
  • TAN
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    TAN polycounter lvl 12
    Normally I was a level designer. I had used Age of Empires 2-3's, Warcraft 3's and Crysis' Level Editor to create maps for contests and even joined a couple mod teams.

    Then there came a time I felt that I had to make a decision about choosing a more " fundamental" role for myself. Then I went ahead and made the mistake of my life and got advice from a person I should have never gotten from.

    He said " Yo mate go and be a "modeller" , programming is like suuuper hard and it is all math like ..." I was convinced at the time. It became clear later that anything art related was something I should have stayed away.

    At the end I was able to figure things out make good character models "BUT " it took "TOO GOD DAMN LONG" because I had no idea about the subject and had to start from A.

    It took 4 + years.

    I recently started coding in CryEngine, which is said to be hardest to learn. After 2 weeks I was able to create almost any entity that almost does anything I want.


    Moral of the story:


    Kids.... Never listen anyone else about your future. If you feel it doesn't sit well with you... quit it. The sooner the better.
  • The Mad Artist
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    The Mad Artist polycounter lvl 13
    I was always involved in art and excelled at it since a very young age. My parents saw that I enjoyed it and always supported it, and I had a few art teachers in grade school and beyond that always pushed me to really pursue it, or in the case of grade school, tell my parents to push me for it.

    I took a college level art class in high school, but really didn't know what I wanted to do with it. Thought about comic books or something similar. The Art Institute of Houston was something I had always heard about, and after getting out of high school and not really knowing what to do, went up there and talked to them. Showed them my portfolio and they said I should really either sign up for the Graphic Design program or the Animation Art and Design program. I went to the portfolio show and saw the animation reels and felt like that was something I really wanted to do. I just really jumped into it and felt like I had found my calling so to speak.
  • respawnrt
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    respawnrt polycounter lvl 8
    I think i got Wings3d on one of those cd-magazines that were popular back then.
    Since my pc was neither good at runing the newest games and also by not having an internet connection i started playing with Wings3D...love at first sight.

    After a while a neighbour provided me with a pirated copy of...3ds Max and i've started doing most of the tuts that were in the help.(awesome tuts btw).

    Time passed, i got an internet connection, joined a few 3d sites even trolled some ...i was the worst shit :p but that was quite a long time ago.
  • MeshModeler
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    MeshModeler polycounter lvl 11
    the art institute
  • Scizz
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    Scizz polycounter lvl 11
    Back when Halo 2 was popular, I was around 12-13. I got into the modding community. At first it was swapping properties and adjusting values for weapons( Making a plasma rifle shoot rapid fire sticky grenades for example) and then it evolved into changing the textures on weapons and vehicles(ala Golden Warthog) My first from scratch mod I did, was I reskinned Containment with South Park pictures everywhere, and made my plasma pistol shoot giant bridges which I used to make race tracks.

    The idea of thinking of a place, and then being able to actually make it real within the 3d world was and still is so amazing to me. At the time though, I was limited because of the modding tools and what not and it was pissing me off, so I said, you know what, how do I make shit from scratch. I want to make my own things and bring my ideas to life. A few years later, around sophomore/junior year in high school I discovered UDK and the amazing people from 3DBuzz (Zak Parish is awesome) who started me on my journey to environment art. And with the extremely helpful people from Polycount I'm where I'm at now :D
  • DrunkShaman
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    DrunkShaman polycounter lvl 14
    I was born on a wacom and my first words were "Maya."

    On the serious note. I have been a fan of what goes behind the scenes in making games since I played the first game on CGA computer which was called "Digger," (it wasnt as interesting now that I think about it, but it thats what got me starting to look in to Graphics design and coding.) along with many other CGA games that I cant remember from the top of my head. What got me interested was the idea of how everything comes together the CG, animation, coding, TnL, etc. I only started taking CG side of things and 2d art seriously 2 years ago because I had ideas that were hard to describe and it was time for me to start doing something about it. Therefore I entered the 3d world. Before that our professors in Centennial college gave us a bad image of the 3d artists because he was all about promoting XNA game studio and he was also a suck up for Microsoft. I would've started earlier but my professors kept on telling us that CGers makes only 8 bucks an hour aday (man I laugh at that conversation everytime I recall it. lol)
  • MainManiac
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    MainManiac polycounter lvl 11
    Always toyed with VFX and ArchViz, rendering out scenes from IKEA catalogs and stuff. Or things like this: http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2010/305/9/4/castle_making_of_by_frell262-d31zeim.gif Which I did when I was 14.

    Eventually I wanted to be a part of something more interactive so I switched to games
  • Perlinfalcon
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    Perlinfalcon polycounter lvl 5
    I got here through a rather unconventional path, I suppose. Throughout my young life I always assumed I would grow up to be an artist. Even though I mostly liked drawing creatures and animals and characters rather than doing more "artsy" stuff, I ended up going into Fine Art when I went to art school. I learned a lot there and tried to fit in to what I thought was expected of me as a fine artist, but I ended up getting discouraged and didn't even try to make a living off of it once I got my degree.

    So I took the obvious path of becoming a professional falconer, of course! I scared seagulls off of runways and landfills for over a decade, driving around in a truck with my trained falcons and pyrotechnics.

    But then a friend of mine in the cg industry suggested I look into 3d modeling as something I might find interesting. Within the first few minutes of that first shitty youtube tutorial on Maya I was hooked. I had this feeling that I had finally found my destiny. So I dropped everything and moved to Seattle where I took some classes at the art institute for a year. I learned some basics there, but got most of my knowledge online and from a certain forum ;)

    So here I am two and a half years after I fist found out about the world of 3d modeling. I just finished my internship at Arenanet and I feel so happy that I finally figured out what I wanted to do with my art. Even if it is a little late in life.
  • nak1411
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    nak1411 polycounter lvl 8
    I picked up a 3d Artist magazine at an airport when I was about 15. It had a copy of Gmax bundled inside with a simple tutorial. That was how it all began.
  • vargatom
    Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park.

    Yeah it's been a while ago.
  • Blond
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    Blond polycounter lvl 9
    Am I the only one who read

    how did everyone get into the third world?
  • pheonix561
    Doesn't everyone generally answer this question with "I tried it and loved it?" Or is that too broad?
  • TAN
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    TAN polycounter lvl 12
    Blond wrote: »
    Am I the only one who read

    how did everyone get into the third world?


    Ohh. So it was that :D

    You get unlucky before even born. That is how you get into 3rd world :D:D
  • Joshua Stubbles
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    Joshua Stubbles polycounter lvl 19
    Got my first PC in '98, shortly thereafter started playing CounterStrike (beta 3!). Found out you could make your own custom weapon models and off I went, learning as much as I could, and making mods. Buying books and looking online (wasn't much info back then) I taught myself. In 2001 I got my first official job in the industry working at a tiny place in Illinois called Magic Lantern.
  • walreu
    My earliest experiences with making games were coding some simple short text adventures with C64. I liked playing games a lot. I remember Dune II ,nintendo 8bit stuff, Alone in the Dark, Doom.

    But yeah, nothing super special how i actually got into the industry. I was just wondering what would i want to do with my life and making games sounded cool. Happened to get to a school on animation / games studies and i immediately realized this was my thing. Another short (3 months) games studies after that and internship at Remedy. Aaand im still here.
  • heboltz3
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    heboltz3 polycounter lvl 9
    I used to make cheat maps in starcraft and mod player stats to have marines just mow down hundreds of ultralisks.

    I took it sort of serious when I saw the "making of Oblivion" dvd that came with the Special Edition of the game. Bunch of guys were sitting around a table with swords on it talking about how one would actually go about swinging them, and they were getting paid for it, I was sold.
  • DrunkShaman
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    DrunkShaman polycounter lvl 14
    Blond wrote: »
    Am I the only one who read

    how did everyone get into the third world?

    1 liter of golem's blood
    1 branch of oak tree from netherlands
    10 fire imps from mount doom.


    oh wait you said if I read third, no sir I read 3D world.
  • PyrZern
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    PyrZern polycounter lvl 12
    Used to play around a bit in 3DS4 all those years back when I wasn't playing the original X-COM. Fast forward 15 yrs later, picked up an Intro to Maya class in Uni. Self taught since :)
  • NegevPro
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    NegevPro polycounter lvl 4
    heboltz3 wrote: »
    I used to make cheat maps in starcraft and mod player stats to have marines just mow down hundreds of ultralisks.
    I did the same thing haha, man I miss that game.
  • poly_bob
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    poly_bob polycounter lvl 3
    About 2 years ago I was trying to start my own clothing brand. I realized that nothing was going to come of this and was totally lost on what I wanted to do with my life.

    Then I met a friend of a friend of a friend at a hookah bar. Just hanging out and chatting. And he talked about how he just graduated from Uni and got an internship at Disney. That he'll be moving out to Cali for it. He even whipped out his phone and showed me his demo reel. Which, at the time I had no idea what that was.

    I told him that was really cool. And how like every kid "I wanted to make video games when I grow up" But never had the talent to do something like that. But he reassured me that I could learn. And he gave me a free lesson in Maya. And 2 years later...I'm in the industry.
  • AlexCatMasterSupreme
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    AlexCatMasterSupreme interpolator
    I was working at a computer shop and as it slowly went out of business in February 2012 I did 3d in the back all day then decided in February 2012 I got a digital tutors sub, as for getting into games I started working on a Halo mod in Cryengine.
  • cgmonkey
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    cgmonkey polycounter lvl 18
    3d studio MAX 2.5, Quake Army Knife, Polycount, Skindom... I was around 12 years old and I'm now 30. A damn long time to do 3D. Lost the spark after a couple of years doing it professionally... Started my own business. Best thing I ever did!
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