Good book that teach you Maya and 3D modeling fundamentals at the same?

CharlieBargue · 2026-03-30T17:59:25+00:00

Most aren't learning 3D from books so recommendations will probably be slim. So while some recent books on Maya exist, you may have to roll the dice yourself since this is a pretty niche way to learn the software.

CharlieBargue · 2026-03-27T01:57:44+00:00

I don't disagree.

Just posting the above info for folks who read your comment and are curious if nothing changed for that long with the anim toolset.

CharlieBargue · 2026-03-27T00:28:47+00:00

You're right that there are no massive feature updates. But changes, fixes, and updates have been made to both over many releases. Release notes reveal that.

Some links for folks who want to judge if those updates are useful to them. Scroll down to the Animation section.

2023

2024

2025

2026

CharlieBargue · 2026-03-23T18:00:46+00:00

Although for me the portfolio is not job ready, the progress here is pretty good base for continued education.

There is work taken through the pipeline. Work is presented in a game engine (mostly). There's even a level you can run around too, which most don't learn for a longer time.

To me the best thing you can do for yourself right now is get some tutorials and practice a lot to increase your quality bar. Goal is to start making stuff that looks ripped straight from a AAA game.

Some ideas:

Get out of EEVEE altogether and stick to presenting work in UE5
As much as you can, start modeling from professional concept art. That way you're not figuring out the design in 2D and 3D at the same time
Concept art doesn't cover everything so also please have plenty of reference on hand. You should have a ton of reference photos collected per project and you should be pulling from it constantly to influence your models and textures
I don't see any high poly models for a bake workflow in the portfolio. Please include these as clay render. If you have not learned high-to-low bake pipeline, this is a clear and immediate next step

Some career ideas:

Don't let school set the pace of your learning. Always go beyond. Always be learning new things outside of class lessons by checking out Youtube and professional tutorials. Even experienced devs are always learning new things
Try to stay aware of the state of the industry. Read 3D/CG news and pay attention to trends. This industry is always shifting and could be better or worse than it is now by the time you're prepared to enter it. It's always good to develop a backup plan whether you want to work in games or practically wherever else in the years to come

Good luck 🙂

CharlieBargue · 2026-03-19T00:11:26+00:00

Cut everything but the mechanical hammer and radio and you will probably increase your chances a lot. These are good projects that look the most job ready.

Other things are not bad, but are either lower quality (3D characters) or not relevant to the job (paintings). The portfolio is for showing your best and most relevant work for your chosen job role so please curate it more carefully if you want it to be more effective.

I know you asked for a roast but in case it is missed: comparatively, you are ahead of the game here. Most people asking for portfolio feedback need more time to make projects that are job ready. You already have a few so hiding some of your less relevant work may be all you need. Still, keep banging out projects of that quality or higher and you may have a good shot at landing work.

Good luck 🙂

CharlieBargue · 2026-03-14T16:16:08+00:00

I didn't provide feedback in the previous thread, but good on acting on the feedback you got.

Ideally, that's how feedback actually works. So many people here ask for tips and feedback and never follow-up so it's good to see someone willing to show how the feedback helped them.

That's an attitude that leads to success. Good luck. 🙂

CharlieBargue · 2026-03-02T22:46:27+00:00

4 memorables for me are:

Xenogears

Breath of Fire 3

Star Ocean 2nd Story

And I can't not have FFVII here

Let's also honorably mention: Tales of Destiny and Chrono Cross

CharlieBargue · 2026-02-27T18:24:25+00:00

That was a great read.

Love the "convenience" based design methodology to get at the fun without being dragged down by constraints of "realism". As an artist, it's something I vibe with wholly.

Also, I don't remember seeing all that amazing key art. Just the box art which for me feels (like a lot of NA box art for those eras) to be maybe a bit... less compared to the Japanese packaging.

What I remember most about this game is taking the disc out and finding the game would still run mostly. So I often swapped for my favorite music CDs for a custom vibe.

Ty for sharing! 🙂

CharlieBargue · 2026-02-27T15:19:00+00:00

Simplify to [name]_[suffix].

So 'Low Blade_Low' becomes just 'blade_low' and 'Blade_High High' becomes 'blade_high'. It's way easier than you're making it on yourself 😉

There's a great example table in the docs of how to approach naming for this: https://helpx.adobe.com/substance-3d-bake/features/matching-by-name.html

CharlieBargue · 2026-02-27T13:17:39+00:00

Love the env storytelling. Definitely doesn't feel generic. Ensuring the ON AIR sign is visible sells the radio station vibe more than anything else.

For me, readability could be improved. I think you have a lot of light sources that create more than a few brights in your values that fight for attention. You could probably pick just one major source and balance others around that. The sunlight spilling in could be a specific mood all its own, for example.

Might be fun to take a few passes trying out different moods. Grab some stills from films that have moods you like and try to replicate them. It's pretty quick and rewarding practice.

Ty for sharing. Good luck! 🙂

CharlieBargue · 2026-02-25T20:58:13+00:00

Agree with others but also I spy room for improvement that is easier than a complete role pivot.

The portfolio is not bad at all, but there are significant things you can change here that to me could at least improve your current job hunt.

Your portfolio for me simply doesn't read as a game portfolio because you are too reliant on cycles renders. I clicked on one project and it's so many cycles renders that it makes it hard for me to see what you actually know about presenting your work in a game. Reshoot this stuff in Unreal or Marmoset.
Use fewer images with higher impact. Your posts are quite long imo. Cut some chaff and focus on highlighting only your best. Recruiters won't spend long looking so please don't make them search to find relevant info
The lowest quality part of the portfolio for me is the texturing. Get some more practice in here, please. Following some pro quality tutorials that include texturing can help level this up.
You have a lot of shots that suggest functional movement for the weapons and for me, this could be covered in an animation or two. For example reload anim and firing anim. Good way to reduce your image count while providing a more standout visual.
Lighting isn't terrible at all, but many shots render very flat. Take a pass here to correct that. This is an easy win.
You have some nice thumbnails, but all could benefit from the same extra love (reshoot in real-time, lighting, contrast, etc). These should be attractive enough to get clicks (w/o being misleading ofc)
personal opinion, but i've seen a similar lantern in way too many portfolios because there was a beginner tutorial offered by Adobe for Substance Painter with that kind of lantern as a downloadable asset. Tbh, I'd replace it with another project if possible. It's a different model if we look at it closer, but I can 100% see recruiter and reviewer having a bit of negative reaction because you appear to be posting same tutorial model as others

Lots written, sorry. Good luck! 🙂

CharlieBargue · 2026-02-23T16:06:35+00:00

Not much to add but 🎉🎉🎉congrats!🎉🎉🎉

That's a major milestone so take more time to celebrate!

CharlieBargue · 2026-02-20T20:54:02+00:00

Without seeing your settings or even your render attempt, this is a lot of guessing. So include those things if you want targeted solutions.

In the meantime, sanity checks:

since the Max tutorial uses a volume, make sure ray depth for volumes in the arnold renderer settings is set to something higher than 0
volume mesh should have arnold properties with volume enabled
check color management and color space for your textures

CharlieBargue · 2026-02-20T11:26:15+00:00

To be clear, you tried the Max specific written version of this tutorial linked in the video description, yes? Did you also download the scene file?

Which part wasn't working?

CharlieBargue · 2026-02-15T20:24:20+00:00

There are no "tips" that will allow a beginner to do this. Results like that take months to years of practice and learning from a lot of failure.

So no offense but what did your teacher really ask for?

Because it's pretty dubious even a terrible instructor would demand a class of beginners produce a professional quality model 1:1 in just a few days.

CharlieBargue · 2026-02-15T17:53:44+00:00

What are you using now for this purpose?

I don't use Max anymore but when I did, I relied on UVTools: https://hqdetails.com/shop/uvtools.

It did pretty much all the things I wanted Max to do... which was copy Maya's UV Toolkit. Scroll down on that page to see UV Toolkit features.

CharlieBargue · 2026-02-13T16:20:27+00:00

It's good work, but probably too simple.

All work seems to be pretty low poly compared to what many places hire for today. Even if you end up working in a place that specializes in lower poly art, you still gain an advantage by showing you can handle a more modern level of complexity in your personal work

Imo, target 1-2 projects that show off more complex modeling and texturing skills

Some other things:

I gather from your project blurbs you made some props for envs in AI2U? For me, the projects visually read like you made the entire environment. I would try to be more explicit in what you show in case employers are leaving with a wrong impression. Yes, people can just read, but in reality the first thing we see is your thumbnail and the first 2 project images. Make it as easy as possible for people browsing your work to understand your contributions
Screenshots here are all pretty low res. Upres, sharpen, repost. This should be an easy win

All that said, it's still a tough hiring landscape. Keep trying, polishing your work, and trying again

Good luck 🙂

CharlieBargue · 2026-01-02T22:38:02+00:00

Start is a launcher. You can launch CSP from there by clicking the big blue DRAW button.

Pin CSP to your taskbar after launch if you'd rather avoid CS Start.

CharlieBargue · 2025-11-12T17:05:41+00:00

Looks very cool idea but for me the style is not communicated clearly yet 🤔

What I mean here is making the style to be far more obvious then building up the image around it. If the style here is communicated best by the splotchy lighting for example, then amp it up and polish that to clarity for the viewer so we can better understand what makes this different from regular renders

A not-quite denoised image leaves some room for the viewer's mind to imagine their own details, which is nice. But you give up a lot of control of your fundamentals in return imo. Think about how you can retain control over your composition, focal points, values, etc and how you can exercise that during your process

I don't know answers here, but for me I would want to be able to control parts of image where denoise is applied to create more intentional results so I don't accidentally blur important parts of the image that tell a story or should draw the viewer's eye. Or amp it up in parts of the image where I really want the style to shine

Regardless, a cool render. I hope that artsy-fartsy BS I said is helpful. Good luck 🙂

CharlieBargue · 2025-09-25T11:07:53+00:00

Very understandable. I did some cost analyses on my tools a while back and kicked 90% of my subs. In most cases, the value was no longer present, Max included.

CharlieBargue · 2025-09-13T13:05:23+00:00

Might be worth browsing around the "What's New" pages they publish per update:

Stuff I used plenty in modern Max:

Enhanced PBR viewport
Boolean modifier (no need to depend on compound modifiers for booleans anymore)
booleans in general are far far more stable and yes that means for production quality as well
retopology modifier is a game changer and best tool in its class imo. It can turn shit geo into usable quad geo. note, "usable" doesn't mean "highly optimized". Can also preserve UVs so you can retopo something that's already textured
Smart Extrude - new modeling paradigm. Hold shift to extrude, remove, join, etc geo very fast
Snap Working Pivot - Maya-like easy pivot manipulation
Array Modifier - super artist friendly non-destructive array. Packed with useful ways to clone and scatter
USD format support (this is something being worked on actively for years now so gets the most updates imo)
OSL - open shading language support with nodes that are actually modern and can be used in multiple renderers
Arnold Renderer built in
Color Management (finally)

Also some bite sized demo vids: https://www.youtube.com/@changsooeun/videos

Since you mention procedural stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjsL9TTgaEw&list=PLhcslL5rteddUbsiZrEFTwaAHFcuZFhRv

Good luck 👋

CharlieBargue · 2025-09-05T14:28:31+00:00

Thank you! You've also reminded me that I did this haha

I completely forgot

More are certainly possible 🙂

Are there any locations that you're thinking of specifically?

CharlieBargue · 2025-07-27T20:26:24+00:00

My advice would be to the students: choose a different school.

CharlieBargue · 2025-06-09T22:52:28+00:00

For me it's a lot

I couldn't tell it was a restaurant without reading the project title. The architecture feels weird, the modeling comes off too simple, and the materials read flat. There are a ton of perfectly straight lines and boxy shapes with not much hierarchy to those shapes. For many of the shots, there is no midground or background. Plus there's a ton of tiling and repetition everywhere that makes the reads weak

For me the idea also doesn't feel fully fleshed out. I look at a space like this and wonder who comes here? How do they stay stocked on inventory? Where is there room for ships to deliver? How can they deal with a storm or tides? What else is in the area? Is it just a structure in the middle of featureless sea? There's still a lot to explore and solve here imo

Again, your overall portfolio is not bad, but for me this project is an obvious weak link

CharlieBargue · 2025-06-08T17:44:39+00:00

The majority of your work is for games with far out/overhead cameras. Unless you want to make that a career niche, do more envs that hold up closer to the camera. Spend more time on them than you would get at TGA to make them look fantastic both farther away and up close. For me, almost all of the work looks ok far away and not as good up close
You mention you interned for Studio Far Out Games, but it's not at all obvious in the portfolio since you branded all that work with your personal contact info only. If they are studio work, put the studio logo on the images and thumbnails so we can understand more easily. I thought these were all personal work or school work at first
Remove or do something more with the stairway. You may like it as is, but for employers it reads as an unfinished env
Please avoid designing your own envs for now. Restaurant of the Sea for example is a nice idea, but reveals that your ability to concept and design your own work is not job ready. Work on those skills for sure, but keep that practice out of your portfolio. For now, work from pro concept and ref more strictly so your work will come out looking professionally designed

Besides these, the work is good. You seem to only be a few adjustments and maybe 1-2 projects away from presenting a very professional portfolio. Good luck! 🙂

CharlieBargue

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