Hi,
I wonder if anyone could help me a little. I'm confused about where I should put my energy on. My goal is to go into the game development industry...eventually.
I still hesitate between 3d artist or level designer, but I think I will gravitate more towards one as I continue learning.
My question would be, what are the things that I should really focus on? Is there some skills that would be more of a waste of time to learn? I have the tendency to freeze when i'm unsure of what path to take and it's slowing my learning process.
Does anyone have any advice? :)
Thank you!
I'd say you start with everything to do with modeling. I know I did at least. For me I found it all very overwhelming, tackling modeling, then UV and shading, nodes, rigging, animation, those were all very new concepts to me and my brain was melting with just all the gotchas of modeling alone. So I said ok ok ok ok, I'll just focus only on modeling, let me tackle that and master it first, I don't have the mental bandwidth for all the other craziness. So for the first 3 moths I only tackled everything modeling, shut my brain for everything else until I was comfortable enough to pass to UV Unwrapping. Modeling is after all the basis of it all, so I guess you can start there and shut everything else down while you get use to modeling.
I'm in a similar boat myself - I believe I want a new career in 3d, however I'm unsure which area/s I want to get into (Thus doing the fundamental courses to find what I like most to start with). I started listening to Andrew Price's podcast (Blender Guru aka the donut guy). In the first few episodes he discussed learning methods and advice on finding what you are interested in. It isn't just focused on Blender, but if anything I've found it really motivational and encouraging - especially hearing his conversations with industry professionals and enthusiasts.
Look up the Andrew Price Podcast on youtube for the videos versions (however not all of them are on there. The first many are on Spotify at least).
I hope this helps!
Modeling, Shading, UV Unwrapping, Texturing, Baking, Rigging, and Animating are all used in game development. Lighting and Rendering are good for the concepts, but in game development that is done thru the game engine and controlled more by the developers. Exception to my last statement:If you are pre-rendering cut scenes or intros or overlays then Lighting and Rendering can be useful.