What is good, actually?
And I’d consider myself as…okay. Nevertheless, I’d like to be much better so that I could really realize all the images in my mind. If I could do that, I’d consider myself as “good”. Whatever that means 
I suck.
At least right now I do… maybe in a year I won’t.
Good 3D people out there: A fair share. I see a lot of young people who do stuff that makes Pixar/Dreamworks look like hobby stuff.
Good professional 3D people out there: Far less. You do not get to be a pro by being good, you become a pro by being persistent, having connections, doing some good jobs and showing them off, etc. Most who are good are good because they devote themselves to being good, rather than ‘wasting’ time showing off (I have no clear stance on whether that is a good thing or a bad thing…). And, as a result, most pro 3D folk out there are overpaid, underachieving, arrogant semi-salespeople. IMO, and from experience, they charge through the roof because all the really good 3D people are high school / college kids who would rather be good at their stuff than peddle their abilities to the highest bidder. I like the genius kid better than the savvy semi-salesman pro, should anyone not have noticed.
Myself: I am pretty good. I am just slow and lazy and very, very non-comformative. So I make a lot of neat stuff, but I am basically reinventing the wheel every time because I am too stubborn to follow well-founded convention. Sucks to be me (not really, I enjoy being a rebel without a clue).
I would say I am way above Decent so I would be in percent wise around 86 % out of 100 % good in the entire game engine =) around there thats what happens when your using blender for 5 years Lol On the Rendering engine I am like 4 % out of 100 % good on it =( Never really bothered looking into that part of blender… I am awesome at modeling models but the rendering engine I suck at would be everything but the modeling part 
Anyways thats me cya
I’m not as good as I’d like to be - But i still enter the weekend challenges from time to time.
Oh folly!
So…what you are saying is…that those who get well paid for their 3D work
is just a bunch of mediocre overpaid underachievers? LOL!!!
Do you really think that some private owned company would hire
people just for fun and pay them way too much money, or simply
because they don´t know good stuff when they see it?
Have you ever thougt how they GOT the money to run a huge
successful company in the first place? It´s because they EARN money,
and they don´t earn money by hiring unsuccessful staff - they earn
money by hiring COMPETENT staff. And competent people who work
with 3D for a living don´t have to brag about their stuff because they
already work hard for a living - delivering deadline stuff every single
working day.
Think about it for a second (maybe even more!).
Let´s take a hypotetical situation where YOU are the boss,
imagine you have a new cool product and that you wan´t to
sell your product. You already have a company with a lot of
marketing experts, these marketing experts already know
YOUR CUSTOMERS - these customers want to be entertained
so your company and your marketing department hires
some 3d/2d graphics artist to do some illustrations…
…now in YOUR world…you might want to hire that
highschool artist that are far superior to anything
else done by the “pro 3ds” …and so you hire him!
And then you discover that he wants to work on
that first piece you gave him …forever! In other
words…you have 2 days to finish the artwork
and your “kid” is still just out of highschool, he
has no idea how to deliver on time because he
just do it for fun, and he certainly are NOT used
to producing on command.
So you fail, and you go broke, because you
did not meet deadline.
Next time - you hire a pro! Maybe the “Kid in highschool”
have delivered stuff you see on CG-Talk that gets a
long impressive community WOOOW…
…still…you have NO IDEA if that person is capable
of working as a pro, even if everything looks like
a million bucks. Thats the truth dude!
I think you need to spend more time under the Gallery section and less time in the ‘off-topic’ section 
This is exactly what I think too. Every now and then there have been posts in different CGI forums from staff seekers & employers, that they would consider a demo reel with objective “time to complete” information VERY useful and positively affecting your job credibility. Sadly, not telling the making of information is common practice.
There was this one employer telling that they saw really promising demo reel on the artists homepage and they hired him. Later it came clear that this person had used MASSIVE amounts of time to complete his reel. No need to tell what happened to this artists career in that company. If I find that post again I’ll link it here…
Indeed deadlines are rarely thought about among hobbyists. Also as you said, it is quite difficult to be creative on command. In my opinion a successful 3D artist is something like this: he has to be creative, talented, team player and to be able to work under pressure. It also helps to have a know how about where to compromise to get the work done in time… these all features are needed to be a good professional artist.
bah, id like to quote SomeArtist in here, right now:
student: I sometimes feel down and intimidated after looking at great artworks by great artists. Is this normal?
teacher: Very normal.
student: Am I the only one who is feeling this way?
teacher: I was one.
student: Wow. How did you got out of it?
teacher: By simply changing the way I look at things.
student: It must be hard isn’t it? But why do we feel intimidated?
teacher: We feel that way because we don’t see the big picture.
student: What is the ‘big picture’?
teacher: The big picture is that anyone can do anything regardless of age, race or gender. By ignoring this you are ignoring what you’re capable of.
student: Then why I can’t do it?
teacher: You don’t have the right mentality yet, it’s all in the mind. To say that someone is skilled is actually saying the person is thoughtful. Without a single thought what can you do? With the right thoughts what is there you cannot do?
PS. link to the someartists blog can be found in my sig. as the elvis/rock’n’roll smiley :RocknRoll:
Indeed those are wise words, but frankly too ideal to work in real world just like that. This would be the situation in utopia maybe, but really there are limits what one can do, and those limits change from person to person. The thing is to search and know where your own limitations are. I mean this particularly when we are talking about professionally working in the industry, not all are cut for it.
Indeed having the right mentality is a must if you are going to be considered a great talent. Talent is also something that should most often be replaced by words “hard work” and thus you can’t learn to master anything without the right mentality, not giving up and being persistent.
I don’t know about majority, but every time I see a great work from someone, I don’t feel intimidated at all… I feel urge to study more and maybe learn some new techniques. So many times when I feel exhausted I go and see some great galleries to feel energetic again. I also feel that “good for you, nicely done” for the artist that made some marvelous work.
yes, but my point is that, in graphics artistry, it does work that way
oh, and go read hes blog… :mad:
With the fear that this might well turn into a long debate on things that will never be irrefutably proven, I will answer both ‘yes’ and ‘no’. There are an abundance of mediocre overpaid underachievers out there, in 3D graphics as well as in others (webdesign is riddled with them). Not all are, but there are plenty of them. You make part of my point yourself: Companies do not just hire 3D artists, they hire 3D professionals. The difference is that a pro has put a lot of resources into doing it as a profession. A succesful pro probably has put more into it than most non-pros realize! You make a quick implicit assumption that pros work by simply going out and taking the most well-paid jobs that fit what they feel they can deliver. That is not the case, not by a longshot. A lot of effort, the effort that truly seperates artists from pros, goes into getting clients. Yes, big companies have experts for marketing etc., but we are not talking McD here. Most 3D outfits are either created to serve a bigger company (Pixar, Dreamworks) or are fairly small, making the economics-of-scale required to hire on-staff marketing specialists non-existent. Your standard 3D outfit is 1-8 guys that take they hobby to the market (some with relevant education in between). That means they have to slack on the work to be great artists and put resources into selling themselves to people who have 0.1% idea what 3D work truly involves. The ones who turn hard pros, with large returning clients and a shot at growing beyond ‘a bunch of guys’ (male/female) need to put a LOT of effort into all of this non-3D work, and inevitably, their work suffers for it.
Your example of the high school student pretty much nails it. (S)he did not attain the non-3D talents of a true pro, and thus will receive less chance of hiring. I know many who made a few bucks selling their talents during education, but from there to pro is a big step, a point you make yourself. Hence, at some point, you will have to ask yourself, is my growing ability at my art more important than my ability to profit from it? If yes, you get another income and develop your art. If no, you inevitably sell out a bit on the artistry to become a semi-salesman.
Oh, and before someone argues that working with client 3D jobs sharpen your ability, only the really big-league guys get the big challenges. 95% of all professionally done 3D work is fairly trivial, and yes, often overpaid (IMO). Big companies (who can write big paychecks) do not like their employees / subcontractors to ‘grow’ with their work, they like them to be (or at least seem to be) overqualified, just to be on the safe side.
Not saying either path is wrong or right, just that one sacrifices the learning that comes from constant experimenting and pushing yourself, in favor of turning a profit and doing lesser 3D work for a living. Growth versus Stability, always a balance.
I’m not good at all…I’d like to think I have potential, but I can’t grow any because my current computer crashes at the slightest hint of using any processing power. I’ve used Blender on and off for this reason, I first started probably 7-8 months ago, and don’t really have any finished projects to speak of. It feels silly to blame my computer, but I literally can’t get anything done.
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I wrote a long answer…but it got lost…ARGH! ST*********** Message editor1!!!
Nothing ever gets lost… it’s CENSORSHIP I tells ya! Big Brother/Sister is watching 
what a useless thread.
i see no reason to speculate about ‘how many are ACTUALLY good’. the demoreels and portfolios should tell you enough. generalizing and categorizing pros and hobbyists based on arbitrary and totally subjective parameters will get you nowhere. the people who are actually good are those who do their homework, so to speak, and dont give a shit about their relative ‘goodness’ to other CG artists.
i agree.
Nah… aint that good. There is BIG room for improvement here !! 
That is the key to become really good…
What StompinTom said. Seriously.