Blender and sculpting - are there jobs?

Do you think I will be able to find a job if I reach skill level in sculpting in Blender similar to this? http://i.imgur.com/7BWQ0PZ.jpg “Similar to this” < I mean being able to do character sculpts with proper anatomy, mainly fantasy characters or some stylized monsters and such. This may seem like a dumb question but I specified: IN BLENDER. I see ZBrush everywhere, everyone works in ZBrush, everyone wants ZBrush sculptors, but I can’t afford this software. I know Blender for a couple of years already and I think I could learn sculpting, I really like it, but I don’t know if there is a point.

you’re more likely looking at not much of a view… anyway all commercial digital sculpting tools have demos available (zbrush & sculptris, mudbox, 3dcoat…)

depends on how liked your creations are & how much time it takes you… Don’t have a portfolio yet? :confused: after you’ll start to ‘see’ your market value
even as a freelancer
for a job
offer your service on the free market, to studios or check with agencies

It’s not a matter of software. If you can sculpt awesome things in Blender, you will be able to do the same or better in ZBrush.

But I can’t buy ZBrush and I also won’t move out of town to work somewhere else on their software. I’m stuck with my computer and Blender.

A “job” as in a “full-time position”? Probably not. Look at which jobs are actually being offered on the relevant sites: Blender is not really in demand, nor are there many positions for just “sculptors”. There’s also a lot of people looking for jobs to model “fantasy characters and monsters”, so competition is tough.

Will you be able to score some remote freelance gigs at that skill level? I suppose you could, but again just the sculpt is usually not what people want. They’d need to hand off your work to someone else to do the texturing and possibly retopology. Also: How cheap can you be? You’re up against people from all over the world, some people in e.g. East-Asia are quite skilled and have low living expenses, so they can charge less.

That sounds like you’ve set yourself up for failure. Nobody cares about what you can’t or won’t do. You’re up against people whose dream it is to be CG artists and they ready to do whatever is necessary. You should be more flexible.

I would be ok with 3$ per hour. I don’t know if it’s competitive enough, but I heard that most digital sculptors want like 20-30$ per hour. 10$ per hour is crazy money for me.

Okay, that’s a strong economic advantage at least.

I still think you’d be better off by offering the “complete package” (i.e. finished textured and retopologized models) in a standard format (e.g. FBX, not .blend). Create a portfolio and show what you can actually deliver at that rate for a given amount of money (nobody likes paying sculptors by the hour).

The next thing is figuring out how to work self-employed from where-ever you are and sell into the markets that are willing to buy from there. For monsters, your market is almost exclusively going to be game development, so look at forums like the ones of Unity/Unreal, make some contacts, figure out a workflow to deliver what those people need.

Having said that, nobody can guarantee you success, it is a tough market (too many people want to do it) and if you don’t want to be a CG artist anyway, I would advise against trying to make it a career. Your skills will only take you so far, you also need to be comfortable with marketing yourself.

You’d have no problems to achieve your goals with Blender. Companies don’t generally care what you use especially when it comes to sculpting apps as end product of these products is .obj export later used in main app(e.g Maya). I personally prefer Blender over ZB that I used since R3. I will admit though you need good hardware and lots of customizations (python, hotkeys) to match even default functionality of ZB. With some determination though you will have no issues and when time comes will have a choice to get ZB(that any sculptor should know) or a good cpu/gpu for same money.

Hi Torquem,

I don’t think it matters what software you use. It’s the skill that matters. If you don’t have zbrush, don’t bother about it for now. If you want to use Blender to start learning the basics of sculpting, get started with it. Learn anatomy, the brushes and how to use them. From my experience, softwares don’t matter. They are just tools. Once you understand how to create high quality work, your experience and knowledge can be applied to any software you need to use.
So if you want to use Blender, do so and if you get enough money for ZBrush, u can switch to it but your knowledge stays with you.

Some people who use Blender for sculpts:


Also, there are file formats that you can export the Blender file as .obj and fbx are fine and they can be imported into ZBrush. There are artists that use Blender and ZBrush together so don’t sweat it.

Most clients are interested in the end results not the process so if you create a sculpt they are happy with, I am sure the file format won’t be a problem. OBJ or fbx files will probably be just fine. The most important thing is the quality of work. If you can achieve that with Blender, it probably won’t matter or they might make exceptions because of how good the work is.

Sorry i can only speculate as i am a beginner myself… Heres my thoughts though. Theres definitely many jobs in 3D graphics accross such a wide spectrum, from tv adverts, animation, product vis, arch vis, simulations, freelance work for internet adverts, game developers would want everything from concept artists, to animators to character creators and even specialists that just work on texturing and uv mapping or just work on skeletons/rigging or just work on particle simulation, or other aspects, CGI for everything from cheap low budget movies to hollywood they want everything from compositors that just work on the final compositing like color grading and such, to every aspect, they have specialists in each aspect.
If you build a portfolio of stuff you can do in blender, and you pay for a professional course and learn the correct workflow(this is very key) then you can apply for a job, and yes you will have to switch to another software and jump in the deep end but it wont be that bad you will learn soon enough on the job.

Or let me play the devil’s advocate here: You organize yourself a copy of zBrush for “free” (wink wink) for learning like 99% of other artists who you compete against. Once you make actual money with your skill buy the software. How do you think all those cgi artists started out before they worked professionally? Do you think they bought expensive software they wanted to learn by chance?

There is a reason Autodesk is letting basically anyone download their software. It doesn’t really make a difference and somehow people have to learn it. Another hint: you can download mudbox for free and semi-legally (with an Autodesk student account. You can just make one, they don’t ask for actual proof that you are a student) without visiting any shady websites. There you can also get maya, max and all the other Autodesk stuff. If you really want to work in the industry and want to work with and for other people you should be at least a bit familiar with the tools that are used in a professional environment, even though it’s true what the others here say: what you use as your main tool is ultimately irrelevant, your portfolio gets you the job and skill is usually not bound to specific software.

Don’t make things too hard for yourself, BeerBaron said it very nicely: In the end no one cares why you can’t use X or don’t do Y. They just give the job to the next dude. There are a lot of really talented people out there sitting in Ukraine or Malaysia who can pump out amazing work with their illegal zBrush copies for (very) cheap. If you want to start as a CGI-freelance mercenary these are the exact people you are competing against and boy is it tough down there.

Could someone of the Moderators PLEASE delete postings and ban
all those which here promote illegal activity? Or is this forum fine with such malicious thinking??

Just a tip; there are jobs out there for artists which happen to use Blender,
you can of course make money with using Blender and then use the earned money to compensate others for their hard work.
Its the honest way and its possible, ZBrush is worth the money and you can pay for it via doing one or two smaller
(depending on where you life and your skills) Blender jobs.

Professional freelance artists and small/single user studios do indeed purchase their software, legally and fully when they start up. A small business loan (many governments provide low- or no-interest ones), or online fundraising, are also common starting points; even those using a full-time job to build a warchest require assistance. Except for rare wildly successful ventures, every single business spends at least the first year or two “in the red” as they cover not only day-to-day operating costs but also start-up costs and building towards future expenses.

That requires at least a modest amount of planning and budgeting, knowing where money is going, how much, and how much money needs to come in to cover that. Failure to do so is one of the leading causes of businesses closing their doors.

It would be silly to expect clients to pay for your work when you’re not paying others for their work.

Just as a little moderation note folks. We’re right on the line of the forum rules for inappropriate content here. We don’t advocate or endorse software piracy on this forum and we expect our forum members to behave likewise (legally and ethically). Please do not recommend that other members violate software licenses.

It’s worth remembering that Blender itself has a license that is based on adhering to and respecting copyrights. If you’re not willing to respect a proprietary vendor’s license, how can we expect them to respect Blender’s?*

*[sup][sub]This is a rhetorical question. Please don’t answer it. Just carry on with discussion and adhere to our Forum Rules.[/sub][/sup]

I working exactly in this field, I’m a freelance miniature sculptor, and I use 100% blender for my work, I started using Zbrush 2, Softimage, Modo, Silo, but now only blender. I work for many companies (Dust Studio, MAntic, Infamy, Boyd’s Toys (a new and very good startup). What lack in blender for my need? More muscle on viewport, edit multi objects and a Multiresolution that don’g going crazy when rigging my models. I turn back to Zbrush only when customers ask me a ZTL file.
Here my resume and an extract of my portfolio (both not updated): https://francesco.artstation.com/
My clients take for granted I use Zbrush, but when some new client ask me some work they look to my portfolio not what software I use.