About learning 3DCG, Blender, Career Paths, and Other Things

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
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Hello guys and gals.

I don’t know if it’s the right place for this topic, but I want to ask a few pretty profound questions about general CGI and the 3D field, learning, and career paths. I myself am a beginner -ish guy who touched Blender and messed with 3d Modeling for about a year and a half. Almost all this time I was learning it in a bubble, no IG, no Twitter, no social presence, I never asked people about anything, and it was just me closed inside my small room breaking my head trying to learn this thing called thredee modeling from the Youtube tutorials. But this year I haven’t got any other choice and started to socialize with the people of the internet. There is a war started in my country, and now I need to think about monetizing my work, as my expenses rose up, and now my parents couldn’t continue to support my broke ass. And I felt kinda lonely trying to learn something all by myself, so now I got a few :dizzy:frens :dizzy: from this forum, so money isn’t the only reason, yeah.

But enough with introductions. I will ask my questions, and if you can help me - i would appreciate it so much!

1. When you started your 3D learning journey, do you already knew your field of interest, specialization (3D Prop Artist, 3D Motion Design, ArchViz, Environment Artist)?

I started learning 3D without some specific specialization in mind. For these 1.5 years, I just modeled random things and had fun. I am still not sure about my future specialization, because I still hadn’t touched animation, low poly modeling, rigging, archiviz, sculpting, character modeling and etc. I want to hear about your learning experience, and how you ended up doing what you do.

2. Is it possible to have at least some income while continuing to learn and trying different sides of CGI making, without seriously burying into a specific field?

I’m not talking about big numbers, just a minimum income of around 400$/month would make my life possible for some time. I hope this is an appropriate question to ask. I’m not on the edge of dying in any way, just curious.

3. Finding work in various 3D modeling fields: how different it is?

For me, finding a client is some magical thing, if to be true. I always thought that without 5+ years of experience and a perfectly polished portfolio full of brilliant works it’s just not possible to find work in any field. But apparently, a few weeks ago I modeled and rendered a Keychron K2 v2 keyboard for fun, posted it on social media, Behance, and Artstation, and after some time got two work requests on IG and Behance. Two of them were successful, and I got about 250$ for rendering work for Amazon. I wonder how it is different in other fields, maybe 3D rendering for e-commerce is extremely easy to get into, or I’m just lucky? I imagine you need years to monetize your skills in Prop Modeling, Environment, or something like that

4. Is it possible to make a career in an extremely niche 3d specialization?

I still don’t know what I want to do, but I know two things I truly love learning: environment modeling (not playable for games, still shots for whatever purposes) and hard surface modeling of some mecha Gundam Evangelion things. This is a pretty specific thing, and I wonder if it’s possible to make these things your career.

https://www.artstation.com/arsenixc

https://www.artstation.com/sachiko15

https://www.artstation.com/felixeris

https://www.artstation.com/vvcephei

Like these people are making cool stylized backgrounds for games, anime, and other purposes I don’t know. Is this type of work really somewhat demanding?

5. How happy you are doing the thing you do?

Short question for the end. If you are an experienced artist with thousands of hours of experience, how happy are you doing what you do? And how often do you think like "Damn, this insert any 3d specialization that’s not the one you are into so cool, I wish I would be able to do this instead of insert any 3d specialization that’s the one you are into. Do you ever have these thoughts or you are completely happy?:>

Thank you kindly. I appreciate your time and would be happy if you could help me figure out any of these questions. Write or ask anything you want, I will be happy and interested to read about your paths and experiences, whoever you are, beginner artist or experienced senior specialist. I hope this thread will be helpful not just for me, but for many people with similar struggles. Thank you!:>

Find me here!

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The problem I can think that there is no correct answer and not one correct way of approaching this. So you can think it as a long term plan, that you re-examine it again and again for the next years to come while continously learning about how things work and how you can become more clever. But indeed in times of great need you will need to get a part time job somewhere else (kinda helps you to avoid desperation and slump – that will hit at some point) to have a small income and otherwise keep getting better without vacation or off time.

  1. I generally liked monster and scifi movies and practical effects mostly. So kinda learning 3D with the prospect of getting some ideas down. Good thing is that I still have the initial ideas and after so many time now I have the knowledge, but not enough time. Ironic that in the beginning there is plenty of time but no skills and then it goes the opposite way…
    So with this prospect I kinda I just jumped from topic to topic (compositing, weight painting, unwrapping) and one-by-one I was able to become convinient in them. Gradually though I have started excluding one-by-one and now I am interested only in sculpting and sketching, perhaps I might get bored at sometime and switch two prefab characters… Who knows. Perhaps in the future I will try something else.
    In broad terms I consider that is a good idea to be a generalist, to know how to do everything (that they can be done) but not essentially to dedicate 100% of the time to master them. Then you can move around freely and try things.

  2. There is another way to skip jobs and be able to create products that can be sold. Such as tutorials (other artists will study them) or assets (for game developers). There is also another chance to create fan art or something else that is targeted to the general public (patreon). But these are supplementary or optional income, it may or may not be on spot. But at least trying it once to test the waters and see how it goes is a reasonable plan to follow, nothing wrong about it.

  3. The job market is always unstable and always fluid. Since 3D is a creative field (as any creative field) there are no standard procedures and no regular patterns. Everything depends on the fashion, once for example the fashion switches into a different genre then everybody will have to follow for better or worse. Also if you take this and add a touch of technology-dependency (for 3D artists) is also another huge deal that causes polar shifts every decade or so.
    So in this sense the most standard approach to jobs is that from your core interests and skills you hop from job to job to reuse your skills or experience. So any change and any other unexpected factor that pops up will meet you prepared.
    But otherwise, if you have a core interest along with a you can adapt from project to project without any problem.

  4. This also depends such as for example, these are indeed very narrow industries. Such as for example mecha can only be sold as figures (rarely you get to see mecha games or movies) and anime scenery only in movies (or RPG games). So indeed you will have very a very narrow focus with these. But the good part is that you can approach it both ways, both in terms of focusing on the narrow industry and also in terms of moving away from it (and keep only the experience and skills).

Generally I am not 100% happy with these answers, because the topic is very dense and there are lot of things that are missing for a full answer. So you kinda instead of taking an absolute approach you think in relative terms (one thing leads to another) and then try to see how much you go for the big goal. :slight_smile:

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Wow, thank you for spending your time and writing so much helpful stuff! I really appreciate it! I will continue to discover different sides of 3D modeling, I think I’ll manage. You clarified a lot of stuff that was complicated for me before. Thank you again!

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Thanks, good to hear that this advice helps. The more you start look into things the more you will figure out good approaches on choosing how to work on things.

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This reminds me of the time when I first got started in 3D back in the late 90’s. I started with LW3D and like you did do a bit of everything from character modeling, hard surface modeling, animation by learning through VHS tape(you probably won’t know what that is lol). Fast forward to the future, I got a bit serious and a lot better at modeling, one of my first client was for advertising/marketing company, I got them thru the forum(not this one) after they saw one of my Youtube video on modeling a cellphone. So it definitely pays to stay active in the community.

I would recommend focusing on a specific skillset so you can progress quicker and hopefully land a client/job asap, without money you can’t survive. Figuring out which one is a hard one, I was a 3D generalist with somewhat strong hard surface modeling skills so it made sense to focus on that, which did land me my first and many clients. So which of skillsets are you really great at right now? Sometimes you have to do somewhat “boring” work to pay bills, but you can still focus on other aspect of 3D on your free time.

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Thank you! Haha, my first 3D software was LW3D too, though it might be strange in 2019. I was working on a Visual Novel, and I bought some LW3D project file with a bedroom scene, and I rendered it for the game’s background. Dragging things around in LW and the rendering process felt extremely cool for me, and I think it might be a reason why I started my 3D journey a few years after.

Thank you again, I think this is really solid advice. I asked 3d artists I know about my works, and almost everybody told me that my strongest skill that pops out is my lighting and rendering skills, making the shot presentable. I can’t really see it, but I think it will make sense to move in that direction :>

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Depending on which area you want to really put a strong focus on, really helps you to redirect all of your learning effort in a much more organized way.

I just remembered (with my random access memory) one answer I gave a while back ago. Some guy wanted to get into 3D package-product visualization ASAP. I consider that this example is great in terms of having a specific hard goal and an end-result to meet.

Tell me about 3d illustrations. I make some art in 3d way - #2 by const

This makes things hundred times easier, not in terms of trying to make things sound easy (become a 3D pro in 24 hours), but in terms of being able to create a work schedule for the next 3-6 months and stick to it daily and having a hard goal to hit.

If someone has figured all things out from the start and has the superhuman dilligence to get through the schedule, the only problem is what color their Lambo should be (yellow or pink? :P).

From what I understand so far 99% of all difficulty is to figure out why doing things in a certain way vs another way, or why some recipees work and others are nonesense… And it is all figured out through experimentation unfortunately that takes time.

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Now you are talking! Lighting is really hard for me. So now you should maybe figure out what industry you want to work for, games, movies, or advertisement? Then create a portfolio that target’s that specific industry. I can not speak for games or film industry, but if you want to advice on the advertisement industry, which is easier to get into(get work, often online) - I offer some right now.

What to include in a advertisement portfolio.

  1. Car render, something modern like a Benz or a BMW. Don’t pick a WW2 Jeep lol.
  2. Motorcycle, again something modern
  3. Package design, something that is folded(i.e. soap box). I do alot of this often they would give me dieline drawings to work from.
  4. Watches, i.e. Rolex
  5. Liquid rendering. While this is rear in this industry sometimes the client needs their soap bottle render, often with color liquid. Or it it could be a clear bottle with orange juice. Learn how to shade/render/light “nested dielectric”. This is one of the more challenging things to render in this field.
  6. Cell Phone.
  7. Digital Camera, i.e. Leica.

Create a video that shows you can handle different render passes for one shot(this might be good for the liquid rendering shot).

Animation in a advertisement rendering/lighting portfolio isn’t important but basic panning and slow movement should be enough, no need to do a exploded view animation, though it wouldn’t hurt.

I don’t recommend trying to model all of this stuff, only do it if you really have too and use existing brands, don’t try to design new one(this is misplace energy). Either buy models or find free ones you can use, energy should not be spent on modeling or texturing. As a lighting artist you need to know shading/materials in this industry - they often won’t have a separate person for shading/material - so you’ll need to do this also.

One last advice, as far as lighting or art is concern, make something everyday - in this case it could be a clay render or rendering clear glass, something advertising related . Clay renders are often ask for by clients in this field.

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“From what I understand so far 99% of all difficulty is to figure out why doing things in a certain way vs another way, or why some recipees work and others are nonesense… And it is all figured out through experimentation unfortunately that takes time.”

I completely agree. Thankfully it is alot easier to light a product shot then say something like a environment, essentially you dealing with a studio setup with softboxes and what not. Tools like HDR Light Studio really speeds up this type of lighting, but it can be done with addons or just vanilla Blender. Another way to learn it is to look at traditional non CG advertisement and try to mimic it in 3D with the goal of trying to getting similar lighting/look/feel.

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Thank you so much for your help. That’s great advice from my perspective. I always felt like the advertisement and e-commerce industries are pretty easy to get into as a render artist. I don’t think It’s my dream job, but I feel I have enough energy for doing this for some income while working and developing skills in another 3DCG field that I’m more interested in.

I thought about creating a portfolio, and I even managed to add my first project to it. Hope it’s somewhat suitable. I will continue my work in that direction. Thank you again, your help is extremely appreciated :>

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I think that quality of render on your first project is great! I assume you are using Cycles? You should look into Luxcore renderer, IMHO it can output more realistic looking renders.

edit: it seems you have quite a few product renders on your insta, seems like advertising/marketing industry might be a natural fit for you.

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Couple more encouraging words:

The world of 3D graphics is now vast.
Now that computers are truly powerful enough to do it, and because of the presence of programs such as Blender (which can actually do it and do it well …), there are now all kinds of companies who need this kind of expertise from people who can deliver. You can spend an entire career and never touch the front door of “a major movie studio.”

And, yes, many professional companies have standardized around Blender.

It is almost always a team effort.
No matter how “good” you are, you can’t know it all and you can’t do it all. Most people are specialists of one kind or another. They work under the auspices of professional project managers and directors. And, they share the work with their team, and are always learning something new from their co-workers. “Many hands make light work.” (Well, “lighter, anyway …”) Most projects out there are not “sized” for any single individual to complete effectively, and you sure can wear yourself out very quickly if you try. Much better to hitch on with a team, and then do your part to help them dazzle the customer.

This business will never stay the same for long.
“Moore’s law” predicted many years ago that the power of computer hardware would just keep multiplying, and this shows no sign of stopping. Which means that you will always be confronting new challenges. Many decades ago, a columnist wrote a regular article called, “Taking A Sip From the Fire-Hose.” I always appreciated that metaphor, because it has always proved to be correct. This business will never stop challenging you, and you shouldn’t expect to ever feel that you have “caught up.” Your laurels will never be a resting-place here. But, this also means that it will never become (too …) boring.

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This is so important I think for anyone to keep awear of getting into anything to do with CGI.

I mentioned this in more length on another thread. But be cautious about this term ( Industry Standard ) There are industry standards of course but they change all the time. Sometimes the change is steady over a few years, Sometimes very sudden indeed. As an example Maya taking over industry dominance from Softimage was incrediby swift. Nothing is set in stone very long in CGI. It’s best to keep an open mind and attitude as you will be learning new skills and apps all the time.

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“2. Is it possible to have at least some income while continuing to learn and trying different sides of CGI making, without seriously burying into a specific field”

Sure, one of the benefits of global inter-connectivity is the means by which you can publish work for profit without having too leave your place of residence i.e Sketchfab, Blender Market, CGTrader, ArtStation, Unreal Store, Unity…and so forth.

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Thank you! Yes, this is a really good piece of advice, I agree with you. I think right now industries changing so fast that it’s going to be extremely difficult to maintain a career knowing only one specific field. And again, AI evolving with lightning speed…

Thank you! This is really motivating, informative and encouraging! Thank you, and sorry for a late answer, I was moving from place to place :face_exhaling: