well money wise it depends. there is no across the board amount you are guaranteed once you are in the industry. but there is a lot on the wiki about the getting started in 3d and eventually getting into the industry. Game Industry http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Game_Industry#How_to_Get_In Environments…
Jacob knows whereof he speaketh! You could also take a look at texturing workflows for large landscapes. I haven't updated these links in a while, but they should point you in the right direction. * http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/MultiTexture * http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Terrain_in_The_Last_Of_Us *…
Smoothing : http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Normal_Map_Modeling#Smoothing_Groups_.26_Hard_Edges Modeling for games is a fairly complex subject, but this might help: http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Normal_Map_Modeling Info about grabbing highpoly details: http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Texture_Baking
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/MultiTexture and http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Modular_environments and The Ultimate Trim - texturing techniques of Sunset Overdrive
I'm not really a character guy, so there's not much on characters on the wiki. Check the examples section though, some good stuff there. http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Character#Character_Examples Like this: http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Roguedevelopmentdiary Also some stuff…