#just bc I want to learn how to use unreal engine

[jenicon]

sorry if this isn't ok to ask, but how did you go about working for games? do you need to build a good portfolio and then freelance it? or is it a stable job at a certain company? or both? and did you learn 3d by yourself or did you go to some school? do you need to do concept art to do 3d art? i find im not very creative and get so overwhelmed but i'd love to do both, is that a sign i just shouldnt look into it? how did you choose this career path? have a good day

hey anon! It’s totally ok to ask! I’m pretty swamped with work atm so this is a refreshing change haha

How did you go about working for games? Do you need to build a good portfolio and then freelance it? I guess I got my foot in the games industry when I first got into art school. I was in a 1 year program for game art, with the program focusing mostly in 3D art. During that time, I had my first taste of making 3d art, did a bunch of game engine stuff, and even made some assets for movie quality stuff. As for the portfolio, it is extremely important to have one. Every interview I have had they would pull my portfolio up and ask me my thoughts, process, considerations, challenges, etc. for each piece. A good portfolio website to use is ArtStation. I am not sure which part of the game dev career you’d like to pursue, but this is mostly true for the art side. I cannot speak for the software engineering facet of game dev. Is it a stable job at a certain company? or both? It can be a stable job, but it most often is not. This career is notorious for not being unionized, as well as mostly contract work. Work hours can be brutal, depending on the company, time of year, etc. My time at EA was a bit of an outlier, we had amazing benefits (including dental and vision), a gym, physiologists, personal trainers, nutritionists, a VERY healthy cafeteria, extremely diverse teams, and just generally really good with work/life balance. I barely worked any overtime at EA, if I did I was paid and also got free food. If the team was doing a ‘team overtime’ to meet a deadline, our manager would get us catering lol. Also every Friday we had a buffet and drinks (including alcohol). HOWEVER, this was short lived as I was on a 1-year contract. It’s sort of an unspoken thing where everyone is fighting to get that spot for contract renewal. You get this sense of dread the months leading to your contract termination, having to look for a new job as soon as you can, or choosing to rest because of burnout.

Did you learn 3d by yourself or did you go to some school?  Like I said above, I went to school. It was hella expensive, and sometimes it feels like it wasn’t worth it. But I got the connections I needed there, and learned the ropes with much needed support. I never did 3d before I went to school for it. It was more of a ‘fuck it’ moment for me (my mental health was not the best then), and luckily I found myself loving my work. School is good if you need structure, or like you mentioned, if you feel overwhelmed by all the information out there. I think of my time at school as a first step for me. I did not learn everything I needed to know to get a job in the industry through school, but rather, I had to do my own research using the tools I was provided with by my time in school. It is a continuous learning activity; you will be learning new things until you die. Technology improves so quickly, you have to be quick on your feet and be willing to learn entire new workflows.

I find im not very creative and get so overwhelmed but i'd love to do both, is that a sign i just shouldnt look into it? That’s prefectly fine! I have not worked on an original piece in years haha. I find I’m not creative in the traditional sense where I can come up with ideas on the fly and imagine things up. I’m creative in the way I solve problems and think up ways to achieve certain effects/looks, and it bleeds into how I make tools as well. (ever see me posting 2D art? yea I barely do that bc I suck at it) You should absolutely look into it if it gives you joy. The thrill of seeing something you make move or come alive on screen is amazing.  Being overwhelmed is normal, and is completely expected. There’s so much information out there, it takes a lot of time just to sort through it, so take your time. Just be careful of being paralyzed by it into inaction; this has happened to me so many times. Just remember to take baby steps. One tip I can give you that I haven’t seen said out there: make your own documentation. I have a whole ass google doc of just everything I know about 3D art. It’s got sections for Zbrush, Maya, Unreal Engine, Marmoset Toolbag, Arnold, Python, etc. I add to it every time I learn something new. And believe me, you will learn something new almost every day. How did you choose your career path? What can I say? I just love making things pretty :) I come from a third world country, and the prospects for making art were... bad. I did not want to get stuck living a life working a job I hated, so I came to Canada to get into this career. Starting salaries vary, but to me, they were good enough and I had my eyes set on that. If tuition was X amount for me, my starting salary was close to 2X :)

I started in games, but am now working on a TV show for [redacted]. It’s been such a fun (but very stressful ride), and I hope to continue doing this for the forseeable future.

feel free to shoot me asks, I’m always happy to help a fellow dev / aspiring dev!

[bobacupcake]

Oh yeah I was gonna probably record gifs of the items or smth bc you kinda inspired me but like...I need to learn the programs and I probably have to wait until I get a laptop that /doesnt/ have the cpu with the power of a wet towel jkdhfgdf. but thanks for the advice!

yeah of course!! and if thats the case then blender might be a great choice since even if your cpu is super slow when you render it out the final result will be just as fast as if it was done with a supercomputer. and following along with video tutorials like the ones by blender guru are a real great way to learn blender. i havent even been doing 3d art for more than 2 years so its definitely possible to pick up!! also some more recs from anon(s? im not sure if theyre the same person or not!!)

yeah i've used it before!! its similar to unity's shader graph and blender's node-based system. main advantage of unreal engine for me is its got a really good real-time lighting system, the particle system is v good too, so weigh that against whether or not you want to learn how to use it (for me most of my art is unlit so i dont really have a reason to!)

i dont use them since none of my stuff is really texture-focused but i do know a lot of people who use substance painter and substance designer a ton. if you want to focus on the actual textures on the models themselves theyre great to have but otherwise theyre a bit pricy 😭

[undeadhorse]

i really dont like how much less free time i have. 60+% of my week is devoted to going to and preparing to go to and returning from college. then like another 30% is devoted to resting after getting home. it sucks dude idk my like. ability to do art feels totally vacant today. im tired and sore but im like, tired mentally. usually im so incredibly understimulated mentally that when i put energy into art it flows really easily bc its like whoa!!!! shit im doing something. but i did a bunch of stuff for school this week and i dont have shit leftover for myself. doesnt feel good idk. maybe i should reduce how much im goin to school after all. drop half the course and do half this year half the next. i can do that without having to pay twice. i just didnt want to spend 2 years on this one course. 2 years is a long time.

if i can get like. evidence of prior learning from past courses ive done im hoping ill be able to like, reduce my workload by proving i already know how to do some of the stuff theyre teaching me. if i could just skip my monday class. thats like, general IT bullshit and i dont care for the teacher. its stuff i already know. its stuff im sure i can do its just, draining, and class is mindnumbing. idk.

im here to learn to 3D model and use unreal engine. thats all i care about. i am also feeling kind of lost and overwhelmed by some aspects of like, the digital learning aspect of the course bc shit is complicated and i feel like i missed some sort of explanation of the interface and etc. i should like, talk to someone about that.

[trunkzbriefs]

hey i was curious how u learned to code ? r u using some sort of program of anything ??

TO BE HONEST i dont know how i came to learn how to code/program since there isnt really a set point for it! when i was a lot younger i took a class for the scratch programming language, and then i eventually learned a Very small amount of javascript and literally just took off doing whatever from there and learning a little bit of whatever i needed to know for what i wanted to do at the time. im in adhd self taught hell which isnt the best way to do things lmao, im not ‘fluent’ in any programming language which is often a downside. 

id recommend at least knowing a good chunk of one programming language before jumping around to others (there are a lot of resources for learning how to program, theres like this weird idea i see ppl get that the tutorial isnt good unless its like a 3000 dollar paid course but theres good stuff out there its just a matter of how hard youre willing to look to find it) but the one you should learn is 100% dependent on what youre trying to do with what if that makes sense. i have no idea what to recommend for a ‘starting’ language but i think most people would say like.. javascript? since its similar to some other languages?…

(but personally i find asking “what should i start with to learn programming” is like asking “what language should i learn first to start learning this other language?” you may have a few of the same words or same sentence structure, but when it comes down to it youre still learning a different language, so i would just jump into what you want to jump into :v but thats literally just how I think and that might be totally backwards to some people gdhjfdhgfd)

but anyway as far as the actual game stuff im making and messing around with right now, i use gamemaker studio (the first one) and id 100% recommend it if you want to get into developing! i think my biggest mistake with things is i tried to create my first stuff completely from scratch (c++ things.. love2d nd lua… heheghh) or i tried to mess with a bigger engine (unreal, embarrassingly unity also) bc i was super super stubborn and i didnt want any “””extra help””” with things which is a very bad bullshit mindset >_>

it is by far the easiest thing ive ever used to make anything (besides maybe rpgmaker but thats very limited) it has a drag and drop feature so you can create a whole game without programming/coding at all! but id recommend at least trying to code with it because it gives more freedom.

gamemaker studio has its own programming language called gamemaker language that i feel is a lot easier to pick up than other things and theres a ton of helpful tutorials for it, (seriously shaun spalding is God tier when it comes to gms tutorials) so its totally worth giving coding a shot in your game, even if youre just using it to make your character move. i would absolutely just jump into learning GML if thats the kind of stuff you want to know how to do

downsides to GMS is that its a mainly 2d-focused game maker, and it costs money but it occasionally goes on sale on steam + the free trial has no expiration, so you can take your time getting comfortable with it before you purchase it!

on ANOTHER note, if this was in reference to things like my discord bots - first of all i am Sorry, and second they run javascript but you can also use python for them! theyre easy to make imo because you dont really need to know how most stuff works- you can get pretty far just copy pasting code if you want to have fun just making a personal bot. there are a ton of tutorials, but this one is a personal fave ehe

anyway i kind of rambled because this is a very old hyperfix of mine i am So sorry. im not the best at explaining things and i am known to trail off topic but i hope like ANY of this made sense or helped in ANY way lmao, if you (or anyone else?) needs clarification feel free to ask on a specific subject and ill answer the best i can!!! (and try not to get too excited and trail off like this jhgfdhf)

[supersymmetries]

i got some time to kill and took the liberty of transcribing it! i put it under a cut bc it gets loooong:

[I'd rather die young than old and lame," Muse's Matt Bellamy talks about fame, death, mushroom-assisted amnesia and that blue hair in the Melody Maker Interview.

When The Maker put Muse on the cover back in February, it was because we already thought that they were a great band. Their debut album, "Showbiz", was shattering speakers and busting eardrums throughout the indie world and their gigs were getting the kind of response normally associated with healing the lame and raising the dead. Since that historic week, a manic schedule of over 50 festivals and God knows how many gigs around the world has put them on course for the serious big time. When frontman Matt Bellamy sidles into a flash London bar and signs a couple of autographs, with a cool polished by months of on-the-road adoration, we know that we're now dealing with a real star. But the surprising thing is, Matt doesn't yet seem to know it himself…

With the re-release of "Muscle Museum", everyone seems to expect you to get a little bit closer to being the next big thing. How does it feel? I saw a programme on The Beatles the other day and one of them said that when they were at their peak he felt like they were in the eye of a tornado and everything was spinning around them, but where they were was very calm. We're obviously nothing like as big as The Beatles, but it's starting to feel like that. I think while I'm still writing and making music I should be able to stay in control, but if that ever became a problem I could see myself getting swept away.

How is the new album coming along? The writing is going better than ever, because being in the environment I'm in there's so much to see and you learn so much about people. It is a completely unreal situation, but I think humans are very good at adapting. If you were thrown onto a planet where there were aliens and the gravity was different, you'd soon adapt to that and find happiness. In fact, I'd love to live somewhere where there was less gravity and you could just float around. I'm learning to fly at the moment-- I've got a para-motor which is an engine with a few propellers on your back and a parachute. I want to be the first person to cross the English Channel on one.

Isn't learning to fly the kind of thing retired rock stars do when their music gets mellow and boring? Muse seem to be going in the opposite direction, getting heavier and heavier. Yeah, most bands start out really edgy and hard and then mellow out. We've done the opposite to that-- we started out really pedestrian and boring and now we're getting more powerful and direct.

Boring? Which of your singles are boring? I think the last single, "Unintended", was a bit on the dull side. Sometimes we've got lost in the production and we're just trying to bring out what we're live a bit more. You'll have a more honest version of what we're like and that's a bit more hard-hitting, maybe.

What sort of themes are on the new album? There's a song about inflatable sex dolls-- called "Plug In Baby", I was looking in the window of this sex shop and there were all these devices for stimulating you and I started thinking about all the different things people are inventing to give us pleasure. There's also a lot of songs about morphing or changing your reality to something that's totally surreal and then adapting to that and accepting it as normal, so that everything else seems weird. Generally, it's more exciting than the stuff we've done before. It makes my heart beat faster and (Laughs) the tempo is generally a little bit faster.

You've been accused of being careerist--- do you think people will say you've decided to do a metal album because metal is the current thing? Ha! Yeah, we're just going to be metal for this album, next time we'll sound like the Aphex Twin, or something, whatever's popular at the time! People think "Showbiz" was our first album, but we'd done loads of things to get to that. there are certain early songs that I look back on now and think they were brilliant, because they were so simple.

What's it like going back home to Teignmouth now that you're becoming successful? Everyone's my best friend now. It's kind of fake and I like it. There are a couple of people who blatantly didn't like me and now they go, "Yeah! Best mates!" It's good fun, I miss the people I regard as my close friends, but Dom and Chris [the other members of Muse] are my closest friends. They know sides of me that no one else ever sees.

What sides of you do Dom and Chris see that nobody else does? They know that I'm immensely shy and that I don't think I'm a very good singer. I can sing when they're behind me, supporting me, but I can't sing to them. One time I was supposed to do a festival in Exeter on my own and I couldn't do it, because I had a fear that Dom or Chris would come into the audience and realize that I wasn't very good and not want me in the band anymore!

Is it a different Matt who appears onstage to the one who appears in everyday life? I think when I'm onstage that's the real me-- I've taken off some of the layers that we have around ourselves to avoid saying anything offensive. If I was like that normally, I'd get into a lot of fights. It's the same as if you're in love with someone, or if you're having sex, or if you're with really close friends, your inhibitions go away-- we'll I'm like that onstage.

Have you ever taken that attitude offstage and ended up getting into trouble? Many times. I've gotten into a couple of fights this week. I always know I'll lose, but that's what eggs me on for some reason. Once was when someone threw some beer over me at the Elle Style Awards. Another time I went to a pizza place near Leicester Square and it was closing, so the woman gave me some pizza for free, but then the bouncer just grabbed me and threw me down the stairs. I was really faffed off with that because it hurt! So I got the whole pizza and threw it into the restaurant and then ran a mile. I think that's a blue hair thing-- people thinking, "Who the fuck does he think he is?"

Blue explosion! What the fuck is going on with your hair? Me and Dom bleached our hair in Norway because everyone had white hair and we thought it looked cool. I looked like a dick, but I found that I didn't give a toss, so after that I thought I'd try dyeing it blue. I'm just enjoying the fact that I really don't care. I've lost the security that I used to have and in some ways that's a good thing, in some ways it's a bad thing. I'm enjoying the fact that I don't need to have a fixed idea of myself, I can just change all the time.

When was the first time you realized that you were famous? Just then! No one's ever put it that way before. Usually it's, "Do you think you're famous?" It's different all over the world. In Japan, it's the same old story, women falling over everywhere. I was alone in a lift with this woman over there and she started bowing at my feet. That's quite scary. She followed me into my bedroom, but I went, "No, it's gotta stop there." I can't deal with that. I don't find that kind of thing attractive. That whole groupie thing isn't something I've dived into. Yet.

Have you ever really disgusted yourself with your own rock star behavior? No, not really. Although me and Dom went out picking mushrooms near the studio recently and three days later I woke up in a sauna. It was so steamy and hot that I was deaf in one ear. I thought for a moment that I had gone deaf permanently and I was disgusted with myself then-- risking my hearing, you know what I mean? But if you can't do it when you're young, when can you do it? That's a song by TheAudience, isn't it? Haha!

In the classic rock cliche you should be in the middle of your "drug hell" now-- how's it going? When I did the first album, I didn't drink or smoke or do anything, but this time I've noticed that I've been pretty, um, off it, so hopefully that will come out on the record.

Do you feel under a lot of pressure with so many people wanting to hear what the new album will sound like? I suppose so, yeah. You deal with it by escaping from it and not really paying any attention. What are my escapes? I don't know. (Thinks hard) It's something I've got to face. I might go and blow up the World Trade Organization, or go and see a Rage Against The Machine concert! I want to get involved in something that I can get passionate about that isn't music.

What else, apart from music, do you feel passionately about? That's what I'm looking for! All I've got is music and writing songs. I've got no religion or anything like that, so maybe I'll just go and pray on an island somewhere and see if I can find some weird entity. But I doubt that will happen. It's more likely that some demons would arrive.

You've been criticized for not being political in the past… I am interested in that sort of stuff. I'm just not sure about how I can bring it to the music. There are certain ways I'm living and certain things I'm doing that contradict my own beliefs. I'll go out and buy something from a company that you know uses slave labor in other parts of the world. It's a contradiction for me to then go and tell people what they should and shouldn't do. I'm aware of things, but I'm not quite strong enough to live up to my own beliefs, and that's why I'm not a very moral person. But I'd like to be.

You've toured all over the world this year-- what's the most extreme thing that's happened to you? Reading Festival was really weird. When we walked off after doing the signing tent there were all these people shouting random things like, "I know you!", "You're meant to be with me," and stuff like that. Some of them had this look in their eyes like, "Why the fuck aren't you coming to talk to me, you bastard?" I found that disturbing because it was England. I've seen it before in France and Japan and I could turn my back on it. But to realize that, when I couldn't understand them in those countries, they were actually screaming things like that was really scary.

How do you feel about the fact that if the new album's successful that will happen more often? I think we're approaching a peak in terms of hype. Maybe it will settle down, who knows? If it gets bigger than that, I'm not sure what will happen. If it was like that, but even more so, it would get worrying. We're not a massive band, but our fans are exceptionally keen. I suppose I would have problems if we became huge, but, you know-- people manicuring me and carrying me around everywhere-- it could be a laugh! But I doubt that will happen.

Do you think you make a good rock star? No, you have to die young to do that. I don't particularly want that to happen, although I'd rather die young than old and lame. I'd rather die than lose how I feel about things. If I live to be 40, I'll have to change. I'll have to become a different person. The only reason people talk about death in connection with us is because of Nirvana and Jeff Buckley. There are lots of other bands who you could compare us with who are still very much alive and raring to go.

Do you think about death a lot? Yeah, I think about how much time I've got and what to do with that time. I think, "Why am I doing this?" There must be more than just life and death. A couple of people close to me have had kids and they put so much into their children that they'll almost live on through them, and that's great. You can concentrate your influence on one person or you can spread it out thinly to thousands of people, and I suppose that's what we're trying to do. It's not a bad job. You get paid to explore yourself and the world and anything else you want to: drugs, women, death, life, anything, everything.

Colin from Radiohead said that you should lighten up… Ha! I think he was joking! Coming from that band, I assume he was. I would find that difficult to swallow coming from them. I'm not getting any lighter or darker, I think I'm getting more of both, more extreme sensations generally. the lows are low, but the highs are bloody high. I've heard some of Radiohead's new stuff and I think it's alright. But from where I'm standing, we couldn't be more different.

What are the lowest low's you've had? The lowest moment was when we were on tour and there wwas a huge crash on the motorway and we were the first vehicle to reach it. We just got out and went, "Fuck off!" It was just the most disturbing thing I've ever seen-- mangled, dead people and people struggling. We had to sit there for two or three hours and all I could think about what was happening and people killing each other. It made me aware of my inability to accept death, and since then I've been thinking about it way more. Since then, I've been looking for something that's going to help me accept that.

And what are the highest highs? I have very vague memories of being in the sauna on mushrooms just feeling this incredible sense of happiness. Another time was being on tour with the Foo Fighters. They've got such an ability to have a good time. Their outlook on touring and being in a band was just brilliant. Dave Grohl and the guitarist are really funny guys. You'd go in their dressing room and there'd be a couple of nice ladies doing stuff and things like that. That was always good fun!

Matt isn't saying anything more about that and it's probably time we let him go finish Muse's second album. By the time it appears, next spring, we should know whether they've made the leap to the big time, and, you never know, Matt might have found a few of the answers he's looking for.]

Someone on Reddit uploaded a mag scan of an old interview in Melody Maker from 18 October, 2000. I'd normally post a link to Musewiki because I know mag scans aren't as accessible, but this one's actually not on Musewiki. I might transcribe it later if I have time, I was able to read most of it.

credit: u/becomingmorelikeabbi on Reddit.