Stuck because of Software
polycounter lvl 3
Hi all,
I have a problem further developing my skills. I started using 3d programs on the side in high school, and now that I'm in university I still do. However I have since moved on from the free software to teach myself Zbrush on a cracked version (sorry
), because yeah, I do it on the side for practice and I think it's a useful skill to have next to trying to get a CS degree (being able to produce art and code has to be worth something right?).
(Don't get me wrong, I know pirating this stuff isn't the way to go, but it was the most obvious choice for someone in my position)
However, now that I'm fairly confident with Zbrush and wanting to move from my high poly stuff to animating in blender, exporting to Unreal etc., I still needed to retopo. Zbrush is horrible for this in my experience, so I looked up some alternatives that got suggested in tutorials, mainly Topogun and 3dCoat. But this stuff is really really expensive, and I've been trying to look for alternatives, but I also don't want to teach myself to use obsolete software.
How did other people like me, who do this stuff for themselves as hobby or self-improvement or whatever reason besides a college course or their job get familiar with this stuff? Sure, Zbrush was easy enough to get, and once I got the hang of it I didn't look back. But not being able to get to a point where I can use my models in personal work has really put a dent in my motivation.
How do I get experienced in the software that is necessary in a proper workflow, if I can't get my hands on it? The only thing they offer is a 30 day trial, but that's not enough to get real experience.
Let's say my goal is to have some nice models in my portfolio to show off to get an internship at a game studio or something. They can't be just images of some high res sculpts I made, right? And following the pipeline from Zbrush to a game in Unreal is so full of hurdles that I think I might never succeed. Every tutorial out there just uses all this stuff that I have no idea how to get.
Or am I just being unrealistic? I honestly don't know anymore.
I have a problem further developing my skills. I started using 3d programs on the side in high school, and now that I'm in university I still do. However I have since moved on from the free software to teach myself Zbrush on a cracked version (sorry
), because yeah, I do it on the side for practice and I think it's a useful skill to have next to trying to get a CS degree (being able to produce art and code has to be worth something right?).(Don't get me wrong, I know pirating this stuff isn't the way to go, but it was the most obvious choice for someone in my position)
However, now that I'm fairly confident with Zbrush and wanting to move from my high poly stuff to animating in blender, exporting to Unreal etc., I still needed to retopo. Zbrush is horrible for this in my experience, so I looked up some alternatives that got suggested in tutorials, mainly Topogun and 3dCoat. But this stuff is really really expensive, and I've been trying to look for alternatives, but I also don't want to teach myself to use obsolete software.
How did other people like me, who do this stuff for themselves as hobby or self-improvement or whatever reason besides a college course or their job get familiar with this stuff? Sure, Zbrush was easy enough to get, and once I got the hang of it I didn't look back. But not being able to get to a point where I can use my models in personal work has really put a dent in my motivation.
How do I get experienced in the software that is necessary in a proper workflow, if I can't get my hands on it? The only thing they offer is a 30 day trial, but that's not enough to get real experience.
Let's say my goal is to have some nice models in my portfolio to show off to get an internship at a game studio or something. They can't be just images of some high res sculpts I made, right? And following the pipeline from Zbrush to a game in Unreal is so full of hurdles that I think I might never succeed. Every tutorial out there just uses all this stuff that I have no idea how to get.
Or am I just being unrealistic? I honestly don't know anymore.
Replies
The Sculpting part is for sure not as good as zBrush but you can do some with it as well and basically everything else.
I learned how to retopo in 3D-Coat in 2 days. Just read the tool descriptions and click stuff. Its only 99$ if you just want to learn with it too.
The software is not important. You could shine using Blender and no one would care it is free software at all. I am not sure why people think because software is open source that it is less good. Look at what can be done with it. If your work is great a studio wont mind if you take a little time to get used to their tools, some studios make their own software or change standard programs so much there is little left over that isn't custom. Also, mentioning you use cracked apps means a ban here.
Forget the software, concentrate on making brilliant work.
Also, from a moral standpoint, why are you willing to pirate Zbrush but go legit for the rest of the pipeline? If I was you I would ditch the pirate copy, and fast. Again, 3D Coat may be your friend here.
i dont see any other way for all lot of people trying to get into the industry than pirating. this is only an observation, im not saying it should happen. but i belive its true.
we can all say, "get it at a sale" or student version or something, but a lot of times that is not possible for the best software. and who is willing to cripple their chances by learning anything other than the best? then pirating is the only way out.
as far as i know, most software companies is aware of this, and simply dont care, since the real moneymaker is the game development companies, having to buy the software their artist wants, ie the software they learnt by pirating it before they got hired.
and somehow that system works, the software companies are alive and well. what bothers me is that they all cant just drop the charade and do the unity4/udk way and make it free for non comercial puproses. would be better, in my opinion.
off topic note; i wish it was possible to have a proper discussion on polycount about piracy, the current rule is unnecessary i think. clearly sharing links and such should be forbidden, but simply saying "i pirate my software" shouldnt be against the rules. wether or not you think its morally wrong, the person is going to do it no matter if they can say it or not. if anything a discussion could change that persons mind, and make a legal consumer out of him/her. and wether you like it or not, its a often occuring phenoma in our industry, and thus a discussion about it should be possible.
The reason I downloaded it in the first place is that I was trying to integrate sculpting into my Blender workflow, found sculptris, found it really lacking in tools but it had a great feel to it, then I found Zbrush, which I didnt use for months after installing it since I couldnt get used to the interface. Now that I am, I'm determined to get it legally asap.
Thanks for all the input
Also, I've got a student's license for max and maya and other autodesk stuff, but I come from a blender background so I'm trying to use that as much as possible. Maybe someday though.. :P
http://www.blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?355154-Addon-Retopo-MT
Be sure to export a "Midpoly" version of your Highpoly to get good perf inside the Blender's viewport.
Topogun it's not a "magic" topology tool, and I wouldn't invest in it (I'm not a pro though).
And if you have a bit of money (I don't know if it's efficient but it sure looks cool^^ ):
https://cgcookiemarkets.com/all-products/retopoflow/
Now of course it is probably overkill for someone just getting into all this.
maya LT is $30 a month
modo Indie edition is $14 a month
Now I'm not saying don't learn these tools, because by and large they are amazing tools to have and to use, and WILL increase your productivity and efficiently, lower your frustration, and allow you to focus more on the fun parts of art. I'm just saying don't get caught in the trap of learning 100 different tools at once before you're at least comfortable doing it "normally." (My advice sounds so hypocritical to me, as everything in 3D is always changing and evolving compared to every other art form/ "normal" is subjective) Sort of like how a painter can have a 100 different brushes for different things, but they really only need to learn at first how to use one to understand the principles.
This is coming from a guy who started out immediately getting quixel ddo, ndo, zbrush, mudbox, sculptris, Max, topogun, photoshop, corel painter, crazybump, UDK, Unity etc. and tried to learn them all at once thinking he needed to know everything before he even knew how to make a proper UV map. YES I thought the unwrap UV modifer and flatten mapping was the only way to make UVs, I didn't know there was a uv map modifier because the tutorial I watched just flatten mapped and stitched a box together. YES I SPENT HOURS STITCHING BACK TOGETHER 20,000 triangles because I thought that's what you do because a guy did it with a box!!!! (Oh younger me, how you make me laugh, and cry....)
Is it easier and faster in topogun? Sure. Is it something that's absolutely needed to work and improve? I don't think so. I'm sure there's plenty of people who create quality retopo'd work within a main program.
Basically to this statement "How do I get experienced in the software that is necessary in a proper workflow, if I can't get my hands on it? The only thing they offer is a 30 day trial, but that's not enough to get real experience.
Let's say my goal is to have some nice models in my portfolio to show off to get an internship at a game studio or something. They can't be just images of some high res sculpts I made, right? And following the pipeline from Zbrush to a game in Unreal is so full of hurdles that I think I might never succeed. Every tutorial out there just uses all this stuff that I have no idea how to get."
I seriously doubt knowing how to use something like topogun is NEEDED to get a job or finish a game model. And to me it sounded like the OP thought he/she couldn't progress any further because they lack the ability to afford a particular piece of software.
I hope that makes more sense on what I was trying to get at, but feel free to disagree
max and maya are both free for students (and really anyone can fill that application out and get the software) both of which have retopology and animation tools, and both are widely used in the game industry so there is no point in not giving those a try either.
It's true, studios may want you to be familiar with particular software such as Zbrush, Max, Maya, etc. but that's due to work being passed between different artists using a specific company pipeline. I haven't heard of any studio requiring you to do your re-topology in a specific 3rd party program. Artists use 3rd party re-topology software because they have found it is quicker and easier to do.
For portfolio work all that matters with re-topology is the end result. Blender can get the job done. It may not be the fastest or easiest way, but it will work.
That's a bit of a loaded question - it really depends on whether or not you have tried a dedicated, streamlined solution like Topogun to compare it to. If not, you might be digging something just because you haven't tried something 10x better
That said, I haven't checked the most recent iteration of the Zbrush topology brush. A couple versions earlier it was far from usable for anything more complex than retopoed panels, but if they did improve it significantly recently I am more than willing to give it another spin. And of course I understand the appeal of being able to stay within a single app.
Every software that offer modeling tools and a decent scene management combined with a basic retopoly tool, bit topogun in my opinion.
@yougotdirked : the situation that you are in (getting stuck at the sculpt stage with the rest of the gameart pipeline looking like it is full of hurdles) is unfortunately a consequence of too strong a focus on always starting things straight in sculpt as opposed to planning things out in a "regular" 3D environment. In other words : had you learned regular polygon modeling first, many of the alien concepts you are now facing would have been progressively and naturally assimilated. Of course I do understand the appeal of sculpting first, but you are right in your assumption that a game studio requires more skills from a game artist candidate.
So, rather than spending hours/days trying to wrap your head around a sculpt-to-game model pipeline, I would rather advise you to build a low-poly game model from scratch in your 3d environment of choice. Say, something between 5k and 10k tris, with a single 1024 texture for the body and a 512 for the head. These are of course "old school" specs but it will give you a nice, lightweight model to work with that you can built over a day or two, and that you can take all the way to ingame without feeling like you are "messing up" with a carefully sculpted piece that you spent weeks on. And it doesn't really have to be pretty or high fidelity - a simple robot or a lego character could do. And from there on the next step would be to apply all this new knowledge to a more advanced, normalmapped asset.
Of course it would be possible to go the high fidelity route and just keep trying at converting a sculpt to a game model until it works, but I believe that the process can be so complex that it might end up being very frustrating if you are new at it. Also, I am not saying that starting a model straight in sculpt is necessarily inappropriate - just saying that doing so without knowledge of the nitty-gritty aspects of game art always causes issues, as explained by the OP.
Good luck !