Being a CG artist with a low budget.

Hello community, I am a fairly new member of the CG world, and today i just wanted to share a few thoughts that have been strucking me lately.

Although I only consider myself a hobbyist for now, I am aiming to go advanced. I passed the college entrance exam last year, and now I am studying Multimedia desiging in college, which is a very new major in our country. Not many people ever heard of it, and the amount of documents available is highly limited, especially 3D.

So lately, i have realized, while the free tutorials and resources found on Youtube are great, but the best stuffs cost a fortune. like i have to pay about 30$ for an HDR, and we don;t have that kind of money here in Vietnam, or at least i don’t. with 30$ that’s enough to feed me for a week! and then we have courses like the Nature and Achitecture Academy from Andrew Price (who is like my idol), but although the prices look very very reasonable, it still reaches over 200$, that’s equal to a very good salary rate that not many average people can have. not to mention all the extra tools i should have to make the great, like a Tablet, 3d scanner, 3d printer and the list goes on. i starting to realize, this industry is a rather expensive one.

So all that i wanted to ask is, am I suitable to be a CG artist in such an economic crisis that i almost always have to endure?

So lately, i have realized, while the free tutorials and resources found on Youtube are great, but the best stuffs cost a fortune.

There are loads of high quality free stuff

example,
Episcura has 4 free very high res HDRIs
the Sibl library is just packed with HDRIs

and you don’t need to buy models or packs.
While the nature academy is cool, the information is out there, you just have to search for it

yes do not worry , without paying a euro/dollar/whatever you can become a great pro cg artist. In the end its personal effort.

No you dont need HDRs or Specific Tutorials, what you need is a lot of determination and a ton of hard work. There are people out there that make 3d graphics using MS Paint and a mouse. But of course the rest of us we use as many tools and features to make our lives easier and faster and also that gives you more time to improve the quality of your work.

If you save money for anything , save it to get a wacom it makes a big difference with sculpting. It will cost more than 400 but is an investement that will pay you off as a pro later on. You dont need a wacom righ now, first get very good.

So yeah dont worry about it , you are not the first nor the last artist on extremely tight budget. In the end its just personal effort that counts, all others come secondary.

If there is a brain inside your skull, which my doctor says is essential to be alive, then you have all you need to become a pro CG artist.

Welcome to the club of pain…eh I mean … fun :slight_smile:

I think it really depends on where you’re going. If you want to specialize in say animation, than I would say you need to have the money to find good instructors. Unless you have professional friends.

Needless to say, you can become a decent modeler/renderer/vfx person for free. Generally if you get into a good company they’ll train you internally.

Once you get better you can freelance as well and afford some of the harder to get educational stuff to further you as well.

Good luck! I’m sure you can do it :3

More about software and such, but this might help you some: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=283&t=768736
For free resources, (textures, models, hdr, etc…) there is plenty of free stuff out there, you just have to search for it.

If you learn skills like making your own textures, the costs of doing your own 3D projects go way down (with the only possible costs being that of various software to fill in where FOSS falls short).

Also, it is possible to make some rather nice looking procedural skies with Cycles nodes (you can even make procedural clouds that get smaller as they get closer to the horizon).

Skills are more important than money for any artistic endeavour. If there’s anything that’s expensive about CG, it isn’t HDR-textures - it’s the computer hardware you render with. A powerful CPU gets the work done, while Tablets, 3d scanners and 3d printers are just toys.

You making any money from modeling or other CG related tasks?

I’ll have to put my foot in the door here and say that a tablet is actually quite crucial to several workflows in CG. Tasks a mouse just wont be good for therefore you can’t really do them and thus limit yourself and your skill.

Put your money towards your PC, and make a schedule to devote time to learning your art.

So long as you have a computer and free software such as Blender or GIMP, you are in a position to practice your art and develop your skills. Even if you did own Maya, ZBrush, Mari etc - they are completely useless without the fundamental skills to use them. The first year budget should be towards a PC with upgrade potential: good-sized case, strong PSU, a motherboard with potential. The following year and the others to come after, it becomes easier as you decide what individual component you need to upgrade next; for example, you can do with more memory or a better graphics card.

The skills are gained by setting aside time to learn them; Its better to set aside say 30 minutes in the morning - every day - than say burning yourself out in a single 7 hour marathon and then not doing anything for the rest of the week. Besides, you should be allowing time to “tidy up and plan for the next day”: back up your work and write a task list for tomorrows session.

Honestly, more important than anything if you want to get good is to simply draw with pencil and paper. Its the cheapest thing you can do, and although people will sometimes say that traditional drawing isn’t exactly necesarry to be good at CG, I have found time and time again, that although you can do cool stuff, there will always be something missing. That thing that is missing I believe is everything related to planning, concept art, poses, composition, lighting, colors etc. Basically everything about traditional art is required if you want to be good. That’s an area I have overlooked, and am only now realizing how much it is holding me back.

TLDR: Pencil and paper will be your best friend, and will push you farther than expensive hardware/software ever will.

Expensive does NOT guarantee you the course would be good. I’ve joined a fair share of CG Society Workshops. While some are golden, half of them are down right horrible.

My experience in art collage majoring in 3D was 50/50 as well. While I learned some real valuable skills, mostly in the drawing/painting classes, half of the digital classes was useless and horrible not worth the money as well.

I second that. You mentioned that multimedia is a new major in your country. this sounds bad, but its true. Just because a college has a program, doesn’t automatically make it a good one. Before you enroll and give up your time and money, I would look at the program further to see if it is worth it. Who are the teachers? Have they had jobs in the industry? If not, I wouldn’t recommend wasting your time. We live in a world where all information is available easily. Youd be suprised how much you can learn with just an internet connection, and some books.

well not yet, but i hope so one day. i’m a paleontology enthusiast, and in it’s community, 1 CG artist that is quite well-known is DinoRaul (not sure what’s his real name is, and he probably don’t use Blender), he make some really good models of animals and sell them to posers. at and average of 16 dollars per model, i think that if i can improve my skills level enough i can do the same as a free-lancer. i can even go cheaper than him cause i only need like 3$ for a meal, and if i can sell just 10 models a month, i had my gas bill covered, and that’s pretty much all that i pay for right now, i rarely spend any money (and seriously, everything is surprisingly cheap in Vietnam, if you convert them to US dollars)

that’s what i was aiming for when i first started, like 3 months ago. and that’s what i want to do if i can’t find a proper job, cause that might not be easy.

tablet would comes in handy, i agreed, which is why that’s what i want to save for right now.

yeah for the hardware part, i don’t have the best in the world, but it is usable, i use a Dell laptop with some pretty good spec, but it uses an Intel graphic card not Nvida so no GPU rendering for me :spin: , i’m probably gonna change it later but that’s gonna take at least 5 years of saving. as for the time bank, i maybe spending a lot more times than i should be on a computer :D. so i guess i’m off to a good start :cool:

i’m having second thoughts about it too, the educational system in Vietnam is probably worst than you can imagine. we have to spend the first 2 years learning absolute crap, things that have nothing to do with CG, and only the remaining 2 and a half years of the course do we actually learn stuffs that really matters. but here every job offering requires a degree, college level at least, without it no one would even look at my CV, so i just have to go with it.

but in recap, thanks for the kind feedback guys, i feel more confident pursuing this career now, and i am determine to make the great. enough chit-chat for now, back to blending :RocknRoll:

I don’t know how things work economically in Vietnam, but in general when it comes to CG and animation, its all about your demo reel and portfolio. In the USA at least if you have a good portfolio, it doesn’t matter if you have a degree or not. Self taught people can become successful in this field if they put in the time.

Bill, sounds like you already have what you need to get started. Sure, there is better resources one can have, but they ain’t necessary right now…

As for education - you merely have to learn from other artists, and that can be achieved by attending classes/workshops by local artists who use traditional mediums such as pencils, watercolours or clay. Some times a weekly session over 10 weeks is all you need to learn the basics, meet others who share the same passion, and an artist who might be able to introduce you to other artists. Chances are, they are cheaper and more flexible than a long, exhausting and expensive collage education. A ten-session Life drawing course is a good start, by the way!

Anyway, best of luck and above all have fun!

I have to say, I´m researching tutorials for the last couple of weeks, and there are some really good free channels and (and single tutorials) scattered around youtube, that are quite advanced.

sadly i know only 1 person who know about blender, and he’s a new-comer too, and we’re not really close either. my main resource of users interaction is here at BA, and also a game forum which i used to hang around when i was the game’s modder. however, if you guys don’t mind me saying, the users here are friendly, but to a certain extent. like when i opened this topic, i wasn’t expecting this much replies, perhaps it’s because the topic i’m addressing is pretty important. but in the showcasing section, many threads by newbie, just like me, don’t get that much luck. i have seen topics where no one replies and the owner just keep on posting updates over and over again with no one seems to care. perhaps the stuffs are bad, obviously, can you blame them? but it would be nice to help people out. so all i’m trying to say is, you guys should be more active too.

yeah some tutorials are pretty good. i love everything from BlenderGuru although i haven’t got the time to check them all out yet, and also a channel called CG Geek, he usually post some really long tutorials on creating very complex scene, and if you have the patient to follow it, you’ll learn so much

What I would do, I think, is to “let those ‘limitations’ work to your advantage.”

Focus on “finding new and creative ways to do … ‘work that other people in Vietnam will pay for, and can afford right now to pay for’ … with exactly ‘what you’ve got’ in Vietnam.”

In any profession or craft, you have to work within various “cost and budget” constraints: ones that are set by your customers, and ones that are imposed-by-circumstance on you. “Somehow, the job gets done anyway,” and, lo and behold, it is “done well.”

“Well enough.”

Don’t “look at what you see as ‘greener grass’ on ‘the other side of the fence’” (to borrow a decidedly American expression …) and think that you have to “spend a lot of money that you don’t have” in order to “be in the CG game.” Instead, think about how you might “redefine the CG game” in order to provide “CG work, done well,” to your customers in Vietnam. Work with what you have. Stretch the limits of what you have … and don’t consider them to be “limits.”

I’m not being patronizing. Blender provides a complete(!) video production capability, including a very fine compositor and at least three different renderers. There are, therefore, many ways to achieve “a particular visual result.” If you do not have the hardware that lets you “throw hardware at it,” then you must “throw ingenuity and planning at it.” Take the ‘limits’ of whatever hardware you have, and make it do things that other people would have said ‘couldn’t be done.’ :slight_smile:

And, believe me, there’s a lot of interest in “ways to produce great CG with less(er) hardware.” The day might well come when you are producing sought-after tutorials on this very topic … having experienced the challenge first-hand, and having overcome it.

Dude here is a suggestion. Get involved with making content for the hobbyist market. There are 2 programs that cater to this … Poser and Daz Studio. A lot of folks in the Blender community look down on these programs because they consider them for amateurs. They are but that’s good. Most the people that use them do not know anything about modeling or textureing and do not want to learn. That’s where you can make some money making things for them. You can become a vendor at one or more sites and they will sell your stuff and take a percentage. You wont be just selling to people in your country but all over the world thanks to the internet. I’m not saying you will get rich but you can make some cash and while working on your 3d skills.

Of the 2 programs I would recommend you start with Daz Studio because it is free. The Poser people make money selling the software but Daz makes their money off content so they give their program away so they can sell more content. As to stuff you can sell there is a bunch… props, textures for existing models, pose sets, clothing, hair, just on and on. You can make stuff in Blender import and set it up in Daz Studio and sell it online at one of the Popular stores. And you can do it with free tools, like Blender and GIMP.

Here is a link to Dazhttp://www.daz3d.com/home
you can download Daz Studio there and a bunch of free tutorials. They also have forums there you can ask question and get advise.

Other sites you can vendor at and learn from their forums:
http://www.renderosity.com/
http://www.runtimedna.com

Be sure and drop By Renderosity’s Blender forum it’s a friendly knowledgeable bunch, most of whom use Blender in conjunction with Poser and/or Daz Studio.

Good luck man. I hope this helps :yes: