Environment wannabe artist looking for advice :)
polycounter lvl 7
First of all i would like to say hello to you all, this is my first post here and sorry if this post is not in the right section 
Also sorry for my english, i'm not best at it. 
A little story about me.
I started modeling approximately a year ago, maybe a little more, but what i did was mostly following tutorials, and getting information on all the terms and programs used in game industry. I settled on 3ds max, cause i think it suits me the most. So along with my college studying i learned modeling in 3ds max, unwrapping, baking, sculpting(zbrush mostly) etc.. I have gotten to a point where i understand how everything works, did few works, with or without the tutorials, but i would like to concentrate on one thing, and that is environment. I figured out, i'm not very interested in character design, it's simply isn't my cup of tea. But i do enjoy when i see good environment in games, like Vanishing of Ethan Carter or Murdered: Soul Suspect, Metro 2033(which is my favorite) and many more.
So my question is, what are you advises on that area, where should i begin, what to to watch, read, listen, or anything else i should do to get better in that section? I'm planing to buy Environment Modeling for Games with Nate Stephens, i heard it's good.
Any suggestion, or past experience, or helpful comment or anything else would be very appreciated and i would be very grateful. I really want to get serious with this.
Thanks in advance to all of you, it's great to be here
Sashow
Also sorry for my english, i'm not best at it. A little story about me.
I started modeling approximately a year ago, maybe a little more, but what i did was mostly following tutorials, and getting information on all the terms and programs used in game industry. I settled on 3ds max, cause i think it suits me the most. So along with my college studying i learned modeling in 3ds max, unwrapping, baking, sculpting(zbrush mostly) etc.. I have gotten to a point where i understand how everything works, did few works, with or without the tutorials, but i would like to concentrate on one thing, and that is environment. I figured out, i'm not very interested in character design, it's simply isn't my cup of tea. But i do enjoy when i see good environment in games, like Vanishing of Ethan Carter or Murdered: Soul Suspect, Metro 2033(which is my favorite) and many more.
So my question is, what are you advises on that area, where should i begin, what to to watch, read, listen, or anything else i should do to get better in that section? I'm planing to buy Environment Modeling for Games with Nate Stephens, i heard it's good.
Any suggestion, or past experience, or helpful comment or anything else would be very appreciated and i would be very grateful. I really want to get serious with this.
Thanks in advance to all of you, it's great to be here
Sashow
Replies
what I've learned so far is enviro takes a lot of patience to bring a project to a finish. You have to go the extra mile to show your assets some love. It's easy to get carried away with the scope of a new project since blocking out an enviro is so quick, but you'll learn better technique at a smaller scale. You might be tempted to start a bunch of projects blocked out and have all sorts of crazy ideas for them, but it takes dedication and time to make a real environment. I still have to learn this lesson, but I've been making more progress since I dedicated myself to 1 milestone at a time.
When I was learning I subscribed to 3dmotive for a couple of months. They have good videos on modularity and the foliage technique. Although some of the info may be outdated (UDK), still worth it. The Gnomon video looks nice too (didn't see it thou). When you make your own environments however it's best to follow your own intuition. And a lot of times there will be problems to solve that tutorials won't teach which is where searching the forums comes in handy.
Just try to stay motivated on a project, helps a lot. If you get bored or discouraged you can focus on a different part of the enviro or take a short break and make some other art. But stick through with it. There's always a point in the project when you feel the amount of work is too overwhelming. Making 1 or 2 props might seem like a big achievement early on but making a whole enviro is a much bigger beast. Make a WIP thread in 3D Art Showcase & Critique and post every other day or so, not like every once in a blue moon and people will start to notice. Yeaaah enviro is so cool have fun dude!
Yea i get that making one pretty good and realistic environment takes time and patience, so i'll try making one, and try sticking to it until i find result that i'm ok with. I'll start with simple, not too big environments, without too many complex stuff, and progress from there.
I checked 3dmotive, and really they have some really interesting and useful stuff, so thanks for heads up. I think that's a nice start for me. I always try to go my way, and i also make many mistakes, but for now, i always get back on the road somehow. And this forum is of HUGE help. I'm here for a short period of time, but have seen some excellent tips, tricks and other stuff on hand painting textures, normals and many more.
I will, i'll do my best to stay focused and not give up. Yea i kinda do that, when some thing get a little boring, i start new project, but sooner or later, i finish all what was left behind(except one axe, i can't remember where is the scene file
As for the props, you are right. When i made my gun, i was soo happy, i put a lot of effort into it, then i come here, and see soooo many fantastic works, and then i'm not so happy anymore
Choose designs well. Don't just do something because you think it's cool. You should try to recognize why something is cool.
And when I say design, I mean make sure whatever you make has good composition, lighting, gestural, lines of action or movement, and not just a story. Actually, in a lot of ways, art theory and foundation generates good story from a very basic premise.
Technical skills can always be improved, and it's expected. But good design? That's relatively special.
Let's talk about a scene that's fairly simple in terms of technical neeeds.
This is a movie still from the movie "Road to Perdition."
Let's take this at face value.
There's car. There's a bunch of black silhouetted bodies. There's a couple buildings to the side. There's rain. It's blue-ish in lighting.
It seems whatever just reading it, but looking at it, even without the context of the movie, I feel like it's a powerful image for several reasons.
1) The only standing human figure is the man near the car. The rest are on the ground, bringing focus to the ONLY individual standing. You're left wondering what happened.
2) There's a visual weight that's erring towards the left side because of the mass size of the car taking up the frame. You're feeling this sense of asymmetry.
3) The frame is obeying a rule of thirds. Notice how the focus of the image, the standing man and the car, is standing on the upper left intersection of a Rule of Thirds graph if overlaid on top of the frame.
4) A sense of depth is simply added because there are small YWLLO lights in the background. You can't see the building in the back too well, but you know this is a long street simply because of those lights. Long street, a long way to go, a long way to run, perhaps nowhere to run since this is all laid out in the open on what seems to be a street. No escape. Just rain.
6) There's really only 4 light sources in the frame, but it's being used very effectively to lead your eyes to focal points and disseminate depth information.
Notice I didn't take any time to discuss how accurate the car looks, or if the coats the men are wearing is materially defined. As a game player, or just as a visual consumer, your initial couple of seconds rarely contemplate speifically those issues. You're more worried about where to focus. This is what good design does in some ways.
Study the discplines of composition, how to light scenes, why silhouette matters (and not just with individual objects, but whole scenes). It's these ideas that push really nice looking environments to environments that asked to be explored.
I had in my plans to study all those things. I learnt at my college a little on all of that, but not nearly to be close to a professional work of any sort. I have a few books, and after reading your comment, i found some more ebooks and tuts on that matter, so no worries there, added to my to-do list. I have some scenes i was planing to recreate, i can post them here and if you have the time, i would like to hear your thoughts on them.
For some reason, it isn't showing me the picture, but i found it on google, so i know what scene you posted. Yea i must agree, it does leave you with a question of what happened. I can't say i saw everything you saw, but i understand all of it. Will try to focus more on those aspects of the scene, and not just technicality.
Thanks again for taking time to write this, it means a lot to me as a beginner in the industry. I'll be taking time to study all of this, one by one, along with modeling, and i hope i will see you on my thread, giving me critiques