What's your problem, man?

[Atom]

My problem is that I keep thinking that if I write more code or AddOns that will make my work better. But that is not the case. After 10 years of using Blender I still don’t have anything usable for my reel. I see other people seem to crank out amazing art effortlessly. I mainly work in isolation so I have no others to collaborate with.

I feel like I can do camera moves and lighting fairly well. But character animation still seems out of my reach.

I don’t have a story to tell.

[Xraygunner]

Atom, I don’t have anything to back it up at the moment, but I seem to remember you making some phenomenal stuff! I understand the feeling that you don’t have anything for your reel, but I thought everyone to one degree or another felt that way about their own work.

[Craig_Jones]

Atom, perhaps partnering with story tellers might get you to the next stage… your knowledge seems to be endless overall from all the help you have given others

[Karric]

I think I’m too much a perfectionist. If it can’t be perfect, why bother? And by perfect, I also mean logical (layout of the city, clothing, character motivations, etc). I’m trying to break myself of that habit.

[khalibloo]

i bite more than i can chew. i’m not scared of projects that could take months. and i try to come up with a solution for every single inconvenience along the way.

i don’t wanna change that. it makes me who i am… i wouldn’t even know about blender if i wasn’t like that.
but sometimes it means i’ll never get to finish one thing. i’m always branching away from my main goal and always picking on new challenges without finishing existing ones.

secondly, i’m secretive about most of my art. i’m surrounded by people who don’t have even the tiniest interest in art. i grew up that way, and i never really appreciated my skill until i started posting online. still, most of my works are known only to me

well, now i know i’m good at it, and i’m gonna keep going thanks to a lot of people here. vicky, doris, michalis, craig, jeremy bayley, hikkikamori, minoribus, harleynut, monkmonk… the list is endless
but i still get discouraged when i find that most people are only interested in art that mimics reality (photorealism isn’t my domain). i mean, i can make fairly good photorealistic art, but it’s not nearly as fun as toon art.

next issue, i hate to ask for help unless i really have to. most times, i spend an eternity trying to figure out something so simple. it’s not necessarily a bad thing since it ensures that whatever i learn remains in my head forever. i also end up learning a lot of unrelated stuff along the way… so i’m not sure that’s something i need to change.

lastly, i wish blender would give more scripting freedom to the users. a lot of things are simply not possible through addons. an api for creating custom modifiers would be a good place to start. then i wouldn’t spend all of my time learning other softwares and looking for ways to combine them with blender.
blender’s modeling power + daz studio’s morphing/clothing tools + unity’s cheap and powerful particle systems = art
this equation should be much shorter. blender could and should be all i need

[PhysicsGuy]

@Arnywar

While I wont pretend to know how the science education and professional life systems work I do think my argument still stands purely due to the fact that 3D is a digital medium that has a wide range of accessable tools that can be run on anything from a tablet to high end worstation. Most of these tools are very well documented, if documentation is not sufficient there are forums like blenderartists.org or tutorial sites like cgcookie.com or support for comercial products. The barrier for entry is next to nonexistent, when you open Blender you have all the tools needed to create world class 3D art. Information on every single one of 3D art techniques is available on the internet if not for free then for a reasonable cost. There are numerous online workshops available at any given time taught by world class professionals with whom you get to directly interact and get feedback from.

All these things cannot be said about sciences. The tools of trade are really expensive. While you can make world class 3D art from your bedroom, you cannot do the same with high end science experiments. So, yes, if you want to be a professional scientist, you need university but for 3D art you really don`t unless one of the job requirements is to have a piece of paper given by university but that most of the time is overlooked if your portfolio is good enough.

EDIT: Take note that a lot of CG veterans today ar self taught as at the time there weren`t any universities around for 3D.

I didn’t think about thatlast point. Good one!

[J_abellana]

@Arnywar

While I wont pretend to know how the science education and professional life systems work I do think my argument still stands purely due to the fact that 3D is a digital medium that has a wide range of accessable tools that can be run on anything from a tablet to high end worstation. Most of these tools are very well documented, if documentation is not sufficient there are forums like blenderartists.org or tutorial sites like cgcookie.com or support for comercial products. The barrier for entry is next to nonexistent, when you open Blender you have all the tools needed to create world class 3D art. Information on every single one of 3D art techniques is available on the internet if not for free then for a reasonable cost. There are numerous online workshops available at any given time taught by world class professionals with whom you get to directly interact and get feedback from.

All these things cannot be said about sciences. The tools of trade are really expensive. While you can make world class 3D art from your bedroom, you cannot do the same with high end science experiments. So, yes, if you want to be a professional scientist, you need university but for 3D art you really don`t unless one of the job requirements is to have a piece of paper given by university but that most of the time is overlooked if your portfolio is good enough.

EDIT: Take note that a lot of CG veterans today ar self taught as at the time there weren`t any universities around for 3D.

I agree with you somewhat, but unfortunately I live in a place where they’re unreasonable about these things. Honestly I believe in the mantra that no knowledge is useless knowledge. But on the other hand, find a few specialties that you can really be good at, (modelling texturing, rigging) Sometimes all that can be overwhelming to learn by yourself. Y

ou will, eventually, but it can get frustrating at times when you feel like your going around in circles (happened to me when I was switching from maya to blender) There’s always a pressing need to learn new things, and if you cant afford a decent online workshops then it makes it much harder- not impossible but harder.

To illustrate the BS of the Job market I am in, here’s what happened: I swear I was job hunting the other day and they were asking for someone who knew how to use maya… I said ok this is good, then I scrolled down and saw that they needed you to know photoshop, illustrator, zbrush, web development a plus… wait I thought this was work doing previz… what the hell do I need to learn web development for? aint nobody got time for all that.

[Arnywar]

In my opinion you wont get far if youre unable to self motivate. If you need university to force yourself to learn things youll probably just do the bare minimum to coast through it and in the end wont know much more than when you started.

University gives you a general overview about the industry, it wont magically make you a master in 3D, you still need to learn all that yourself. The best part of university is networking, you can meet likeminded people and forge friendships and work relationships that could last a lifetime, but the actual knowledge presented there is not that special anymore ecspecially in an industry that changes quite fast while the university programs tend to lag behind due to the nature of the institution.

[BluePrintRandom]

Got a bunch of work done tonight,

When I sleep well one night, the next night is usually productive…

I can’t wait for winter… my pc hates summer…

and yes ace dragon, I have AC units in 3 bedrooms, but my office/front room is all windows and alot of square feet, and I just can’t afford to cool it until I get the new windows in (already bought them!) but I need to hire a helper, or pay someone to do it (the window is 12 ft long)

[J_abellana]

@Arnywar

In my opinion you wont get far if youre unable to self motivate. If you need university to force yourself to learn things youll probably just do the bare minimum to coast through it and in the end wont know much more than when you started.

University gives you a general overview about the industry, it wont magically make you a master in 3D, you still need to learn all that yourself. The best part of university is networking, you can meet likeminded people and forge friendships and work relationships that could last a lifetime, but the actual knowledge presented there is not that special anymore ecspecially in an industry that changes quite fast while the university programs tend to lag behind due to the nature of the institution.

you know what man, you’re absolutely right. thanks.

[justinodunn]

My problem is that when it comes to modeling my own things, I get stuck very easily on parts such as curving parts of a mesh, sculpting, using the modifiers, and especially lighting/ rendering, because of the many features that Blender has. I overcome this problem by going to this forum asking for help or going to other websites and research about the problem. Since I am still a beginner, I plan to keep practicing my skills by watching more tutorials/ reading more guides online, make basic models such as plates, cutlery, table objects etc. Then move onto bigger scaled objects such as cars, planes, a room scene etc. Finally, with all the skills trained and learned hopefully start designing and modeling independently.

[Krice]

I think the node based material editing makes me cry also a lot.

[kazinger]

Same problem for many years, painting, colors are too bright not accented right and not blended well. This has followed me from painting with a brush into computer art and into Bender.