How about giving udk, cryengine or unity a try? I´ve found that spending time with udk, then cryengine helped me grow as an artist,especially in terms of modeling and shading/texture mapping.
It is quite rewarding to have your own character run around and to play with it. UDK is reasonably well covered on youtube to get into it and lets you use most of it´s sample files as a base for your own prototype game, including the default animation library to make bots run (at least for a start), even if it is more difficult to make things work initially, that´s a good start. Cryengine may probably feel easier to get into, because it´s sandbox and file structures are more clearly recognizeable as from the windows/microsoft world but the small print has to be read and properly understood, none of the sample files can be in your prototype, IF you plan on releasing it for free or at all. Also, atm, the sample skeletons (in sample files 3.4) don´t go well with the engine version 3.5.7, so you´ll have some grief making your own character work with the cryengine animation system (in progress/change atm, too). I would think unity is the most flexible option but I didn´t get around to play with it sofar because I landed a job on a project which (as usual) pretty much brings everything else to a halt. In terms of movie vs. advertisement vs. games. I´m a male, tripple AAA blockbuster type of guy, that´s what sets the bar and that´s where most of my money will go. Getting money out of it I find more difficult, mostly because getting access to such projects is still difficult in Germany, there´s only a handful of places to look for work at and overly generalizing, they get those high profile jobs because they try to cut into that market, not because they´ve set the reference for others. Again, that´s overly generalising and should not be understood as speaking poorly of fellow artists. A great many of my former collegues have moved away to get access to better projects&opportunities not sufficently available to them here in Germany. Myself, atm I´m at a shop I like, nice projects and nice collegues but I don´t know for how long this´ll be, simply given the amount of work available and competition for these jobs on a show in general. Personally, I´m looking forward to games, unreal engine 4 looks sickening good. If I project that linearly ahead 1-5 years, bamm. Real, in real-time. With story. Nice. tim On 02.03.2014 17:48, Francisco Criado wrote:
Same as Mauricio here, what i think is that these kind of games that have more a storyline like a movie than first person shooter games, are quite interesting in terms of production.You see all the effort and detail they put in every area, and its quite similar. In terms of ethics, selling coke, alcohol or cigarettes is the same as making a jackpot game or a fps game, in my opinion. Just thought that working in a game production would be same like film or better, animated features, completely different than tv ads, where we are always running, and if someone on the marketing office says "more red" people start crying, jumping from buildings and drinking energy drinks until they die! You know what they say, "ad, love it or leave it" F. 2014-03-02 9:07 GMT-03:00 Maurício PC <goneba...@gmail.com <mailto:goneba...@gmail.com>>: That's actually a nice input and could generate a nice discussion about it. I do agree in some extend ... MMO is not something I would want to work, but take this game for example "The Last of Us", I thought they spend a lot of time creating a good history that works like a movie. So that game I would like to be a part of. I haven't played games in years, but after seeing the documentary I got a will to play this game at least. On Sun, Mar 2, 2014 at 9:01 AM, Stefan Kubicek <s...@tidbit-images.com <mailto:s...@tidbit-images.com>> wrote: __ My very personal experience with games is that when you come from Film/Advertising you don't want to transition to games for two reasons: 1.) Money. All the places I've been in pay considerably less than what you can earn elsewhere (esp. commercials), and telling a story or vision (assuming that this is the prime motivation in pretty much any artist, whether they know it or not) is a lot harder and convoluted than in pretty much any other media. 2) Ethics. You produce something that steals peoples time on a much larger scale than any single movie or ad ever could. Online slot-machine type of games are even worse, where people can loose a fortune. I played a lot of games when I was a kid and I know first hand that they can be very addictive, and I don't want to make money exploiting other peoples addictions. To me that's just...bad karma :-) Educational games are an exception to that, but having certain expectations towards what is considered "quality" in a game (artistic and technical excellence, both of which usually require higher budgets than what is commonly available in education) will most likely make you want to do something else, or leave you frustrated. Mind you, during the making, and some time after, I considered Manhunt2 the single most rewarding game I ever worked on (Rockstar), in which you can sneak up on people and "execute" them by poking their eyes out with a glass shard or choke them with a plastic bag. How f#%&§ed up is that? While most of this was so over the top up to the point where it was already strangely funny and entertaining again from a grown up players point of view, there are not only grown ups playing these kind of games, and many grown ups are not grown up to begin with. Of course you can lean back and say: Not my problem, it's peoples own decision what they play, and parents responsibility to look after their kids and what they play. Or you take responsibility yourself and just not make that kind of stuff in the first place. If anything, making computer games made me stop playing computer games entirely. they did an amazing job! does any of you guys that work on games came from film or comercials? i wonder how to make the translation to the game industry being a generalist. F. On Friday, February 28, 2014, Stefan Kubicek <s...@tidbit-images.com <mailto:s...@tidbit-images.com>> wrote: Thanks for the link Nicolas! Naughty Dog is completely insane when it comes to details and atmosphere - always outstanding work. Interesting behind the scene of a good videogame,and some technical info (Maya) The shocking thing is that they key facial expressions.by <http://expressions.by> hand,which I found completely insane... Exclusive | Grounded: The making of The Last of Us <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0l7LzC_h8I&feature=youtube_gdat> -- --------------------------------------------- Stefan Kubicek ste...@keyvis.at --------------------------------------------- keyvis digital imagery Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3 A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien Phone: +43 (0) 699 12614231 <tel:%2B43%20%280%29%20699%2012614231> www.keyvis.at <http://www.keyvis.at> -- This email and its attachments are -- -- confidential and for the recipient only -- -- ------------------------------------------- Stefan Kubicek ------------------------------------------- keyvis digital imagery Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3 A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien Phone: +43/699/12614231 <tel:%2B43%2F699%2F12614231> www.keyvis.at <http://www.keyvis.at> ste...@keyvis.at <mailto:ste...@keyvis.at> -- This email and its attachments are -- --confidential and for the recipient only-- -- gonebadfx.com <http://gonebadfx.com> - your source for bad fx
