I'm nearly finished with my story and its accompanying script. I have a completed game design doc with info on mechanics, how to progress through the game, sketches of level designs, kept the technical aspect easy enough for me to handle with my past experiences plus some other details. I have an issue where I'd like to model, animate, and create textures myself if thats possible in order to keep the whole design within the details of how I envision it. I just don't understand the process for working on those 3 things, going from a model to a polished asset. When I've tried to learn with blender in the past, I struggle with learning between focusing on the model and having to tab over to a cheatsheet just to do what I want. I'm wondering if zbrush would be better for just focusing on sculpting? After that I don't know where to begin with creating textures, animations, or what baking and UV maps are?

That is a lot of stuff together there. Maybe look at creating an asset to import into an existing game as a mod, or at least an existing engine. You will find lots of guides for the steps needed, and an idea for the requirements of game models.

Probably start with simple static objects that can use pre-existing textures, like wooden/plastic/metal objects such as furniture to learn process with the minimal stages required (deal with material/texture creation, baking, etc. later) and get used to some of the software keybindings and such.

For textures, you can find most of what you want freely easily enough (you want textures that come with everything needed, e.g. probably tileable/seamless and with a normal/height map, and possibly others.) as getting into how those are made (either from photos, or with tools like Substance) would be another entire topic.

You might see references to different workflows, e.g. the use of metalness/roughness vs specular, and terms like PBR (Physically Based Rendering). This mostly changes your materials and textures, probably start with whatever you are importing into to practice.

As for cheatsheets, when learning new things, I almost always found them worth the small expense of printing out, even with multiple monitors.

Tanizaki said:

I'm nearly finished with my story and its accompanying script. I have a completed game design doc with info on mechanics, how to progress through the game, sketches of level designs, kept the technical aspect easy enough for me to handle with my past experiences plus some other details. I have an issue where I'd like to model, animate, and create textures myself if thats possible in order to keep the whole design within the details of how I envision it. I just don't understand the process for working on those 3 things, going from a model to a polished asset. When I've tried to learn with blender in the past, I struggle with learning between focusing on the model and having to tab over to a cheatsheet just to do what I want. I'm wondering if zbrush would be better for just focusing on sculpting? After that I don't know where to begin with creating textures, animations, or what baking and UV maps are?

There are a variety of workflows but I generally will do:

1. Blockout concept / Base mesh
2. High Poly version
3. Low Poly version (manual retopologize - very important if animating/deforming the mesh)
4. UV Unwrap
5. Bake High onto Low (Convert to Tris prior)
6. Texture - Custom Material Creation, ect…
7. Rig / Animate (This can be done once you have a low poly)

I work in hard-surface, poly modeling, and sculpting but depending on what you do some clean-up is required. You can also mix and match. It's not uncommon to sculpt something, then poly model a piece, and bring them in together.

If you want to work in zBrush you'll still have to make a low poly, and if you want to animate then automated tools are not recommended. I also believe hero pieces should all be done manually.

Baking normals is just taking your high poly details and recording that detail into a normal map by casting rays, then you can use that normal map on your low poly while achieving similar results factoring in the quality of the bake, texel density, and your texture resolution. You can also bake other maps too.

UV Maps will need to be made as your baked normals will be captured in your 0-1 space. Then you'll need to have UVs to texture with as well.

As an added note, not all meshes require High to Low workflows, some hard-surface work can be done without going through that process. I also use varied workflows between - organic / hybrid / hard-surface.

Be prepared to invest a lot of time into this.

Thank you both for your advice

Be prepared to invest a lot of time into this.

I expect too, I struggle with drawing as is but there are things I really feel are really needed to display the characters in a story driven game, to capture weight in things that can't appear dialogue. As with every other attempt in the past, I doubt that I'll finish this one too but at least I'll start dabbling in the skills for art and hopefully be able to move on to sound design in a year or two.

Tanizaki said:

Thank you both for your advice

Be prepared to invest a lot of time into this.

I expect too, I struggle with drawing as is but there are things I really feel are really needed to display the characters in a story driven game, to capture weight in things that can't appear dialogue. As with every other attempt in the past, I doubt that I'll finish this one too but at least I'll start dabbling in the skills for art and hopefully be able to move on to sound design in a year or two.

Drawing is not a required skill for 3D work and is a misconception. Yes, it can assist with concepts, but now with sculpting workflows you can do rough concepts in there without the need to render an image in 2D either digitally or by sketching. Even blockouts with booleans can give you a general concept. Then you have the vast amount of reference images available online. Texturing is also done by a mix of procedurals, blending existing materials, scans, and painting within a 3D environment using alphas, but you don't have to be great at drawing to do this.

Even my alpha creations I do now are in 3D by sculpting. I used to make them manually in Photoshop prior. I'll still make stamps in illustrator for example, but majority of the work I do in 3D doesn't depend on my drawing ability.

FYI, I know many 3D artists who cannot draw well as 3D is a different beast.