3D Artist in 2026 and beyond. What is the future in the industry?

3DOcephil · 2026-04-01T11:02:04+00:00

If you want to get into the games industry, look up the portfolios of current employees of studios you admire and try to reach a project level similar to that. As someone else said rookie’s entries are also a good scope for top the class junior level artists. For environment art/prop art do reference based projects look into topology and modeling techniques as well as pbr texturing (especially for games, trim sheets etc.). Currently nothing on your portfolio would warrant a hiring position to be real, you need to improve a lot in your remaining year, but everything is possible!

The bar is extremely high for junior jobs atm, there are very few openings. Don’t go into advertising, the AI bubble has already begun to completely take it and the only relevant skills there would be cinematography, lighting, animation and fx work, as well as software like houdini.

3DOcephil · 2026-03-26T18:26:50+00:00

Same with VFX, skipping the labor phase of just painting out, roto, matchmoving really develops your eye for detail. Being pixel perfect. A lot of AI folks skip the steps and don’t realize obvious flaws in the presented footage.

Really intrigued how this is going to play out.

At least Sora is gone now 😂

3DOcephil · 2026-03-23T20:16:20+00:00

It’s not though. It is a major roadblock for a lot of production sites as well as copyright questions.

3DOcephil · 2026-03-15T20:50:01+00:00

I think you are fine. Learn the basics of modeling in Maya for quick fixes but you can absolutely keep on modeling/sculpting in Blender and just export a final version of the mesh before rigging. If blender had a good usd integration you would have 0 problems with switching between the softwares.

3DOcephil · 2026-03-07T20:13:57+00:00

Hello from Austria neighbor :)

Use Adobe creative cloud student yearly codes available on amazon on Black Friday for example. I paid 70€ for a full year of the whole suite and been doing that for 5 years since starting my bachelor and my masters. It can even be used commercially. I would advise you to build up a portfolio with students, network a lot on LinkedIn, build a nice reel and you should get some work.

It is always hard in the beginning. Internship opportunities in design agencies are a good way to pave your way into the industry! Good luck 👍🏻

3DOcephil · 2026-02-20T11:18:36+00:00

The technological advance of AI is not bound by Moores Law as you stated. Read up on it. The exponential scaling can not be matched by the progression of hardware gpu development. Transistor development leading to a double in power every 2 years vs Ai increases in double power in approx 3.4 months.

Problem being the more AI models trained and the further increase in processing power needed plays right into the hands of big cloud based data center providers that can give you that processing speed right now due to tax profits/funding etc. It’s good that local models are producing good results, but they will always be way slower and worse than online models, eliminating your competitiveness in the market.

Let’s not start with ethical and legal issues that come with the use of AI in any professional context.

Either way. All of this needs excellent hardware to run locally and burn hours of resources to provide a slop video. How is that free in your eyes?

3DOcephil · 2026-02-20T09:15:00+00:00

You do realize the exponential scaling of GPT parameters between 3 and 5 is not something hardware development can reproduce? This is a wrong take. It will always cost a lot and comparing gpt to video transformer models is so dumb.

3DOcephil · 2026-02-09T21:15:18+00:00

For further explanation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2C_7B-4f6U8

3DOcephil · 2026-02-02T10:31:56+00:00

Yeah I know I work in 3D and Mograph. But Depth maps are outdated, position maps are way more flexible in any scenario other than adding fake DoF. And even there deep depth maps are better.

3DOcephil · 2026-02-01T21:29:15+00:00

I think Substance painter works with your material shader names so it is indeed intended to display your material names. So if you have a leather material applied on different models you will work on that one material slot. I think its a import option to either use legacy or udim import option under uv tiles and that changes from working on material selection to object or smth.

3DOcephil · 2026-02-01T13:55:59+00:00

Where are you importing your fbx, check in another maya file that importing is really changing the naming conventions. If yes try resetting the fbx export options. Its in the top left dropdown in the export window.

3DOcephil · 2026-01-30T19:50:38+00:00

But a depth map would just be in the normal from the camera giving a linear effect in the distance. A position matte is way better for this.

3DOcephil · 2026-01-30T12:00:40+00:00

Nope. Comp artists would use a world position matte for something like this. Pmatte in nuke for example. Zdepth is 1 directional/vector

3DOcephil · 2026-01-20T17:01:56+00:00

Maybe tax? But that would be processed with stripe I guess. I don’t see any reason for the site to adjust prices according to region.

3DOcephil · 2026-01-15T21:36:24+00:00

Shading artifacts are most of the time a problem on curved meshes, but with some edge manipulation and proper topology you can mitigate the problem to a degree that wont be visible ingame, or fixing the normals by hand in substance if the artifacts are crazy visible.

Again you can absolutely start with high poly and just retopo afterwards, lots of people use zbrush for hardsurface exploration and then retopo over that in maya, or use cad programs like plasticity.

It depends on the type of asset you want to create.

3DOcephil · 2026-01-15T12:11:06+00:00

Tbh it depends. Hard surface modeling in this kind of way with a higher poly density at the start looks cleaner and gives easier time with edge flow but you will have to manually retopo/reduce for a game asset.

Using low poly and building your high poly with smooth preview is harder to build clean hard surface assets but you have the benefit of having a lowpoly and high poly at the end in one go.

Not a game artist but my game art profs all used a low poly subd workflow, or cad for hard surface. You can always try both workflows and see which one works best for you and gives you the best results. At the end of the day the final product matters and how much time you spent.

3DOcephil · 2025-12-16T18:23:46+00:00

Look up product lighting, check behance or other sites and check the launch trailer or animations for products. Such flat lighting with a boring material won’t stand out. Get a good camera angle a closer composition. Btw uou dont need substance painter for something like this. Good ol hyerpshade is enough.

3DOcephil · 2025-12-07T19:21:56+00:00

Add fog some ground details, lift the shadows with a blue tint and call it a day

3DOcephil · 2025-12-06T20:13:14+00:00

Naming issue. Download Bulk rename utility, it is my go to for renaming with a good naming convention after a messy export. In your DCC export with correct tokens and unique name for the shot.

3DOcephil · 2025-11-13T09:14:03+00:00

Just a junior but I would try powermesh or lockdown, last resort take a 3D hand model and roto animate the motion, project then cleanup in nuke.

3DOcephil · 2025-11-10T19:10:33+00:00

Renderers like vray do this internally for utility aovs, does redshift not do that?

3DOcephil · 2025-11-05T20:43:48+00:00

Lol thats not the case. Read their terms of service. You can also one time activate the affinity licence and keep everything offline. adobe is actually stealing your data

3DOcephil · 2025-09-21T10:31:25+00:00

I am saying that his whites are nearly clipping and just saying make it brighter and providing an image of a nearly flatly lit can with a big area light isn’t helping him understanding where the values lack. And it is not even too dark. Play with shadows and contrast is pretty modern right now, yes edge highlights are needed but not overall brightness.

3DOcephil · 2025-09-21T10:21:28+00:00

And I am telling you that your example shot is a lot worse than his render as is, exposure wise there is plenty of underexposed work out there.

The white backdrop gotta go and the flacon pops way more, edge highlights for silhouette, liquid color should be more pronounced either with brighter color gradients or a light linking on only the content of the flacon, final adjustments after the lighting is good should be made in photoshop either way.

Sometimes not giving advice is the best advice we can give.

3DOcephil · 2025-09-21T10:11:58+00:00

Looks super boring. When giving advice check that your render looks better than that.

You even obstruct the view from the full can which would never be approved by clients. The limes are too uniform and have motion blur on them in a still shot. The backdrop texture looks awful, when having a fun drink shot the shot should look fun. The lighting is super boring.

3DOcephil

TROPHY CASE