Looking to get into 3D environment design

I'm a recent college graduate and I have no idea what I want to do with my life. Although, I just stumbled upon the profession of 3D environment design for video games, which is something I've always been interested in, but never actually considered doing until now. I looked around online for tips on how to get started in that field and found some articles saying to start getting familiar with some of the software, so I installed Unity and have started to get myself acquainted with that. The article also suggested learning a bunch of other software, but those all cost money and I don't want to pay for them unless I'm 100% sure I want to start pursuing this as a career. Anyway, the main point of this is just that I really don't know where I should even start if I want to pursue a career in 3D environment design, so if anyone has any tips or advice, or really just anything, it would be much appreciated. Thank you in advance!

 

Welcome to the forums!

Blender is a free and fantastic 3D modeling program. Gimp is a bit unpleasant to use, in my opinion, but it's still a plenty powerful free Photoshop alternative.

There are tons of resources on learning modeling and environment design, all just a quick Google away. Besides that, I'd recommend downloading some free models from sites like BlendSwap and examining how they're made.

And above all else... just practice. Make things. They're going to really suck at first. Then make more things. They might suck less. Keep making things, and eventually they'll kinda start to look almost good. Keep going. With time and patience, you'll see yourself making progress.

But yeah, get a real job, too. One that affords you the ability to live and have enough free time to pursue your passion.

 

@noahlevy13
Hey noah.

I kinda went through a similar experience, when I graduated many years ago. 8 years later, I taught myself 2d animation, and then 1 year later, I learned 3d modelling using Maya in an animation class. And I learned blender by myself, from watching tutorials, on youtube and vimeo. It was tough at first, but it got super easier as time went by.

If you want to learn 3d modelling, my advice is to start learning from now, and not later. You'll be surprised at how fast time flies.

As mentioned above, if you don't want to spend money, check out blender and gimp. Despite what people say, blender is not a crappy amateur 3d software. Being a Maya user, I can account to that.

Heck, even Epic games is sponsoring blender, so that says alot too.
(They probably did that to semi-spite autodesk and adobe. Tsk. Tsk.) Lol!

Gimp's user interface might be tough to understand, but it takes a while to get used too. It is very similar to photoshop, and it can do some things photoshop can't.

Hope that helps.

 

Hi there, that could be a great profession. We don't know our whole lives what do we want to do. Start now, have your experiences, and enjoy life. You could always go for another direction

 

Don't think too much, just do it!