how many went to some college to learn with a degree?
I saw a few posts on linkedin for 3d artist jobs showing a required degree.
which led me to find out that in UK they started programs like this.
so, how many of you and this industry are self taught in 3D and how many went to some college to learn this and get a degree?
And if you dont have a degree [my country doesnt have this] are you illegible to work in most places?
I’m fully self taught- I went to college for Strategic Communication, I have no traditional art background. I picked up Blender during a spring break when I was bored, and I quickly realized I was super passionate about it.
That being said, being fully self taught has taken a lot of discipline, discouragement, and frustration. I’m a strong advocate for self teaching, but I can’t deny that it’s not for everyone. I’m someone who really enjoys the challenge and finds overcoming the frustrations of learning fulfilling, so self teaching works for me, but that’s by no means a universal thing
I’m self taught and worked as CG-Generalist for some years.
It’s kind mixed, you find a lot of self taught people and also a lot of people who went through a school.
In the end what matters the most is your portfolio, if you’re good then it doesn’t matter much if you’re self taught, and if your work isn’t good even if you come from the best schools in the world it won’t make any differences.
CG is a craft and even if you spend some years in a school, in general it’s just the beginning and you need to keep learning on your own anyway.
Some things are easier to learn by yourself. Technical knowledge is easier to get and only a school might be limiting, even if that’s always worth if you have the opportunity. Artistic part is harder to get by yourself but still possible.
Things like drawing requires a lot of hardcore training and a school might help a lot for that. You also can make an art culture there, that is also hard to get by yourself. But still you find people that draw really well and they learned by themselves. Self learner tends to be curious about everything and really passionate, these are your best weapons. Study software but also composition, lighting, color theory, art movements, cinematography… that will help a lot in the long run. But also that depends on what you want to do in CG in the first place.
In general, you might find that concept artists, animators , designers tend to came from a school.
And people who are more generalist, FX artists ( houdini like stuff) , modelers, people doing scripting are more self taught people.
Even if you don’t fit the requirements for a job and you think you can manage don’t hesitate to apply anyway.
Job offers is a kind of best scenario, but they might find your work interesting and contact you even if you don’t exactly fit the requirements.
Yep. Started with DirectX in 1996. Just can’t stop!
If one is gonna learn blender by himself, he should prepare himself to get lot of frustrations while learning. 3d is itself is extremely hard topic to learn from technical part, learning 3d with blender has steep learning curve despite BF driving blender to be fitting “industry standart” whatever it means, but in the end blender has it’s own “philosophy”, once you get how things work in blender frustrations are slowly fading away, but still they are present. Sometimes I love blender when I get what I want, but sometimes I feel I hate it when I don’t get why things don’t work as I’m expecting. BA forum is really helpfull place to find answers to avoid frustration finding out them by yourself. Blender communiny is really friendly especially for newbies, so it makes learning blender more fun and less frustrating.
I’m self taught and learnt on the job. My first software(s) were deluxe paint, 3dsv4 and Wavefront TAV back in 1992.
You might well need a degree of some sort to work abroad. That will depend a lot on the immigration laws of your target country. I managed to get a job in Australia without a degree, but I had years of work experience on my CV to make up for it. Some of the best animators I know were refused visas to work in the USA because they didn’t have a degree.
People are going to hate me for saying this. but if you’re serious about getting an industry/studio job you need to learn more than Blender. I’m sure Blender is becoming more common in studios and will be more common in the future, but if you want to give yourself the best chance of getting a job, you need to learn the Autodesk products.
If you only know Blender you’ve given yourself a serious supply/demand problem. The supply of Blender artists is high (because it’s free software and easy to learn) but the demand is low, because pro studios rarely use it (they almost never use blender on it’s own).
That said, a world class portfolio in certain disciplines can open doors, whatever software you used to get there. Some skills are more transferable than others. If you can sculpt/model in Blender, then you’ll pick up Zbrush/maya quick enough, if you can do classical character animation in Blender you can transfer that to Maya pretty easily. But your portfolio would have to show that you’re good enough to train in the new software.
what about non character stuff? like environmental? is it also transferable?
Yes, yes. Everything works kind of the same in every program. Only the buttons are in different places.
Sure, environmental stuff might be transferable, a lot of it is modelling, and depending on the studio pipeline you might be able to export straight from blender into their engine (for games) so you might even be able to use Blender on site. But then again, they might need you to use proprietary utilities in the export process. For example, Epic uses special vertex data for shader animation of background assets in Fortnite. Those are encoded using a proprietary utility in 3dsmax. So thats it, you have to use 3dsmax for the final export.
Environmental work for film will require you to do test renders, which means you’ll need to use the house renderer, which is very unlikely to be cycles. So again, transferable up to a point.
By all means, use Blender to learn the skills and fill your portfolio with beautiful Blender art. But if you want an industry job, you will really be limiting your chances if you don’t have at least a grounding in the Autodesk products and can show some evidence of it in your portfolio.
I’m also a self taught artist.
I graduated from the Silesian University of Technology with a Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering.
I was asked for a some sort of 3d-degree only once, when I was applying to the company that made architectural stuff (but also just models for interiors, not actual buildings).
After that every other employer only asked where I attended to and no one was really interested why Biomedical Engineering. Sometimes I even felt better, because I learned all by myself.
Right now I am working as senior 3d artist and I’m working mainly in Blender. Also I am freelancing, so everything is possible without this specific degree.
The only thing which is missing without a degree in 3d is lack of the connections in the industry, that can be quite problematic.
Fully self taught worked as professional graphic designer for print for over 15 years for various shops in the Wash DC metro area
Started ”3D” with Poser& bryce on Mac
Migrated to C4D (OSX)
Switched to windows to use the Reallusion software For Character animation
Dumped Maxon for Blender when 2.8x was introduced
Completely self taught from video tutorials,never took one single “Formal Class”
Currently $$earning$$ as freelance Character animator.
I am partially self-taught (all my Blender knowledge is) and then at some point in between I got a degree where I learned to use Maya. In many places, you could in theory find some jobs without a degree, but the competition is fierce and having one can’t be a bad thing.
However, just having a degree wasn’t enough by itself. Some good elements of finding a job as a 3D artist is a contact in the industry, some prior work experience, or even better, both.
Also, degrees are not all equal. Some courses are more practical and taught by industry professionals while some others are more theoretical or are just of a lesser quality. For this reason, you have to be careful when picking a class to follow: get plenty of information and if possible, look at the work of the students.
Finally, your area of specialization will impact your chances too. Good modellers are easier to find than good animators or riggers (the areas where the expert knowledge is harder to find).
I am not currently a 3d artist.
I began back in 1987 in Dell. Started the internal video dept. And when the videos were boring, I obtained 3d Studio and ran it on a i286 with 64meg ram VGA video card output to Sony disc video recorder. Taught myself the 3d process.
Took about 20 min per frame to do simple flying graphics.
I quit doing all that to move to Ireland and get married.
Stayed in computers, but sure miss the old video production days.
self taught, started with 3dsMax 1999, switched to blender/yafary 2006, freelancer architecture renderings.
can you show me your artstation or anything?
id like to know more about archviz and what things are customers looking for
Self-taught. Not drawing professionally though. Mainly cars, locomotives, musical instruments, houses and the likes.
Self taught auto didact, dont like being beaten by a machine, same goes for music, photography science, and the list goes on…
Was in the industry, now just a hobbyist…
Are you interested to work on personal-commercial projects or simply 100%-hobby?
Don’t really derive a living via CG these days though still nibble around the edges freelancing here and there on small projects.
Basically self-taught since first picking up 2.4x back in the early 2000s while studying JAVA web dev at tech school (…of all things 
) and having my mind blown!
Though I respect formal education, because it serves a specific purpose. The real problem is if the purpose is not served…
As for example, instead if thinking the biggest problem of all is how to insert animation keyframes or how to create animation, I would say that the real problem behind the scenes, is how to do project management (on a personal level), create a project plan and stick to schedule with dilligence.
In that respect, many people think that lack of technical knowledge is the greatest limitation of all. But you can learn only once, once you learn something there is nothing else you can do other than practicing an unlimited amount of times.