Hi guys I've always been curious about other people's stories on how they got into cg and became pros. I think It's interesting, why don't we share our stories?
Me, for example, I've always been interested in being a biologist or scientist, something involving nature that i love a lot, on the other hand i loved going to the cinema and i pretty much went there 3 times a month, i watched every big movie that came out and someday when i was 10 (2010) i was with my brother just chilling in a cafe waiting for a movie to start and suddenly he started talking about an area that, even though i went to the cinema a lot, i never thought about it wich is film vfx (he brought transformers as an example, a movie series wich i like a lot) and the more he talked the more i fell in love with it and so i just thought that's what i wanna do when i grow up.
When i finally passed 9th grade all my friends kept in the same school following what i wanted to follow before, science. It was hard to say goodbye but i followed my dream and went to a multimedia professional school, there in the first year i learnt programming websites, making posters and such things... when the first year was over i thought where the hell is cg and when the 2nd year came i finally got introduced to cg and the software we used was blender. In the introduction class we watched videos about it and the way my teacher spoke about 3D completely ignited my spark again and as soon as i got home I searched where to learn blender and i found cg cookie, i went through the blender basics flow's free videos, i liked it a lot so asked my mother for a subscription and by the end of the month i was already better than my teacher, he even let me do a class about cycle's node editor. Now by the time i'm writing this i finished 2nd year of multimedia and there're 6 months left before i make a year of blender.
So... i hope you guys liked it, now i want to hear about you. Share your stories please!
Thanks for starting this thread and sharing your story ttabbyr! I really enjoy reminiscing about this kind of thing.
I shared my story a couple years ago on our blog. I updated it just now so it invites users to share their story either in the comments there or in this thread.
That's awesome! The moment that you get your cg spark is always a great memory.
For me, it happened about a year ago when I got a summer internship at an architectural company. Initially, I was mainly in charge of picking photos for their social media page and taking out the trash. But after a week or two one of the employees gave me blueprints for a pavilion and a link to Jacob Lewis's blender tutorials for absolute beginners. You can take a guess at which one of the photos below was my first project. My adviser didn't care how bad it was because he knew that I was just starting out. But I was enamored with this magical software, that could make seemingly anything and everything in the most beautiful ways. Blender could even do fluid simulations! That blew my mind. It seemed like a giant toy box, where the only limit was how much you knew about the software. By the end of the summer I had watched so many tutorials that my models had improved significantly. Now that I'm on my second year of the internship, I finally bought a cgcookie membership (a longtime dream) and am looking forward to working my way to the top no matter how long it takes, if only to create my own sense of awe every time I look at the power of this awesome software. I'm going into my senior year of high school now, and I'm looking to follow a major that focuses on 3D modeling, like digital engineering or digital arts and sciences.
I've always loved anime, been watching it for over 30 years now. The skill and dedication of Japanese animators has always inspired me. They bring such wonderful worlds to life. I found out early I suck at drawing lol. As a kid you don't see the benefit of repeating a task and failing over and over. Its not seen as a learning experience just failing which leads to frustration. Drawing quickly lost its appeal unfortunately. I became interested in CG and 3D modelling in my teens. At this time though, learning 3D modelling wasn't an option at school for me. So the dream takes a backseat and life takes over. However, now in my 41st year on planet earth. I have time to dedicated myself to learning 3D modelling and Blender being a free program gives me this opportunity. The instructors on CG cookie have taught me a great deal in a short amount of time. I'm still very much a beginner but a good foundation for understanding the fundamentals is provided here. My hope is within a year to make a short 2-3 minute animation with characters I've created and animated. I'm late to the party, hopefully this old dog can learn some new tricks.
I drew a lot as when very young (mostly cars). Gave it up for decades. Somehow I heard mention of Blender and managed to find it via Google. Very first moving object hooked me. I gave up for a year in frustration, then discovered CGCookie and started making progress (and enjoying it) again.
First "official" project I can find from July 2012, added to my Polybook for nostalgia:
I tried 3DS Max in the 90s but couldn't get it to do a single thing. I tried Blender, no success. Years later, I was managing 3D artists who used Maya to create models and videos for Hasbro and Verizon. We put together some amazing animations for marketing on the first GI Joe movie and first Transformers movie and so much more. I was so envious of their ability to create all of that, that I tried Blender and failed. I tried it again years later and failed again. I scraped and scrapped together YouTube tutorials to learn. I took a week and just watched Lynda tutorials. Finally I found a small series on the basics on YouTube that helped me learn the software.
I kept returning to the basics and watched how people did similar things in different ways. I tried not to get too ambitious but couldn't get past the initial beginner level. I was stuck. I couldn't create anything I wanted and felt anything I tried to do, ended up looking all messed up.
Finally, I decided I should get serious when my company got a large gaming project and I took it as an opportunity to learn 3D so I could help out my 3D artists. CG Cookie took me from novice to professional and the game turned out great.
I then gave myself a 20 day challenge to create one model per day, that took an hour or two. Sometimes it went over but I tried to keep it around 2 at most. That challenge put me over the top and increased my confidence exponentially. It was hard but forced me to practice and to explore different things. Get out of your comfort zone or you'll never change.
Now, I mostly use Blender to create game assets in Unreal Engine 4 and since my background is in programming I have almost everything I need to create these from scratch. I credit a lot of that to this website since that's exactly the areas they cover these days. That's led me to not only create more games, but to also teach 3D game development (using Unreal Engine 4) at the local university as an adjunct professor.
Coincidence, but today is my 2 year anniversary on CG Cookie! I just checked. Thanks guys for everything!
Like @theluthier I will be posting a similar article detailing my entry into CG, and more specifically my path into game development. That said I did start off with 3d modeling, back when 3D Studio Max was still owned by Discreet. I dabbled with Maya, but mostly stuck with 3D Studio Max, didn't even know about Blender or whether or not it was actually around at the time.
Unfortunately I had a relatively late start with computers, I didn't own a modern computer until I was 17. Prior to that I had a computer for a few years prior that could barely run word processing programs and had one educational game. Within a year of getting a Toshiba laptop I was up and running with various software including Photoshop 7, Macromedia Flash, and did some freelance web work. Had I stuck with 3d modeling I'm sure things would be a lot different now, but I eventually stumbled onto game engines in my mid twenties.