Before any of you start off with the whole don’t go to school bit, I am fortunate to have a situation that I have all my school expenses paid for as well as getting a comfortable income for being in school, the only catch is it must be an accredited school.
With that out of the way, I’m looking for a school that I can learn everything I need to create my own VR game using specifically Blender (not Maya), Unity (not Unreal), C# (not C / C++), and Adobe Substance Painter.
I’ve combed through search results but I’ve not found anything that actually leads to a program for learning what I need from a school that qualifies.
Seriously, what you’re looking for doesn’t exist. Game art programs at colleges use Maya. I have many friends in college for game art right now- it’s all Maya, all the way down. Even if you can find a game art program that teaches you Blender, it’s not going to teach you C#- although YouTube will- because C# has nothing to do with game art. (They do offer introductory programming classes at the various art colleges my friends go to; they use JavaScript and Processing, sometimes Python. Not C languages.)
For example:
Maya. No programming. No Unity.
Maya. No programming. No Unity. No Blender.
Maya. No Unity. No Blender.
Not sure which 3D software they use. No programming.
Because Maya is the industry standard. Unity is dead in the water, most major studios dropped it long ago and moved to Unreal. C# is an outdated and uncommon language- most companies moved on to Rust long ago.
The real question is- why are your requirements so strict?
i already have an employer who will hire me if i learn those, and i want to work at that studio. ive already got a stable livable income so i just want skills for work ill enjoy, not some scrummy grind
You have an employer who requires a degree, not a portfolio, in these things, that’s willing to leave a job opening slot open for you for four years while you get said degree, and this employer requires a degree in non-industry-standard software? Are you sure this job offer isn’t a scam? It smells like one to me
the employer doesnt need a degree, but the VA will only pay for accredited schools. VR&E is paying my tuition, that’s where the accreditation limitation comes from. The employer is able to hire me even years down the road, but ideally i’d like to just get the relevant knowledge as quickly as i can. I make enough on my existing income to live alright but not enough to cover courses that look promising typically $800 - $4000 depending on how extensive they are. though given how poorly my search for something the VA can pay for is going, I might just have to budget for something like that and drop the VR&E deal altogether.
It’s not a scam, it’s a friend who has both the experience and position to do such a favor. Obv. I won’t say who, but they are more than capable of making this happen IF I can demonstrate that I can pull my weight. (it would be lower pay than more experienced professionals, but that’s fine as I have a livable income already and I’m mainly doing this for the experience to put toward my own hobbyist stuff.)
I think its awesome to get a structured education in 3d. Finding an accredited school that teaches Blender as its primary 3d platform might be tough, though I haven’t searched in a few years. When I looked I did not find any but again that was few years ago.
I was in a similar life position a few years back. I was a decade into my second career after retiring from the military but my GI Bill was about to expire so decided to go back to school. I wanted to get a better foundation in Blender, which I had been using for about 8 years at that point, but did not find any schools for it.
I was incredibly lucky that I discovered there was a 3d animation and VFX accredited school near me. Not cheap but my GI Bill covered the cost.
I did learn Maya, Zbrush, NukeX, Fusion360. There was zero programming in the course. The institute I went to did offer a separate game development certificate/degree which may or may not have provided that.
A community college may have programming available.
I was able to use a lot of what I learned back into Blender. The user interface and individual process workflows are different but most times similar enough. It’s just learning different software packages. There are folks on here that are competent on multiple 3d modeling packages.
Finally, best of luck.
And for non-US folks, a benefit from the US military is providing higher education using different programs but the institute, college, university must be US education accredited or they will not pay.
What you want is a school that teaches you gaming and VR not Blender. You will need to look into learning things like Godot, Unreal, Unity, programming/scripting, story development, environment design, character development etc Blender is not going to be your main purpose in this path, it is going to be a side tool for you to create and author assets when needed. As a game developer you will live inside your game engine more than you will use Blender. There are some game engines that are integrated in Blender, but I recommend picking up more mature open source or commercial engines. I am developing my side game project in Godot4 atm.
Some of the commentaries in this thread were not well directed. I recommend you to check out some internet courses on game development first, so you understand what you actually need to learn to create your own games then finding the right school will be easier since you will know what you need.