Quote Originally Posted by Nekomata View Post
Maya is the industry standard these days for the most part. It's a very complicated program that isn't user-intuitive at all. Got an error? BEST OF LUCK FINDING THE CAUSE. It can be one of a billion tiny insignificant problems. xD

And the modeling process you're describing is NURBS modeling. Why the hell would you do that to yourself? xD Polygon modeling is far more user-intuitive. That said... my hell professor is making us do all of our modeling in NURBS. RIP us.

Surfacing can either be easy or hell. Depends what you're doing and what method you're trying. I know renderman has some REALLY good presets for certain common materials. I also know how to paint seamless textures when I need to- it's a process. My friend is good at procedural texturing, so she usually covers that.

3D animation is very much a trial-error process. Iteration after iteration until things look good. I can dig up some older screenshots from that project later if you'd like to see what the early stages looked like (big difference). xD It takes a huge amount of people to make quality work. Seriously, there are people dedicated to making sure someone's scarf moves properly in animation. Another person may be in charge of just facial animations. It's a process and a huge undertaking. It's one of those fields you have to love your job or get out.
NURBS! Yes, I totally forgot the name of it but that's what it was. It was hell. I think the reason why your professor is making you use it is because it goes into the deepest level, as if you were modifying things on a pixel by pixel basis with 2D art. It's so ungodly slow, though. It makes every project feel like it's something you're going to need to hand down to your grandchildren to complete.

Surfacing and textures felt a bit like gambling. Sometimes, things looked good even on the first try and even after you poked around and looked at it some more. But then other times, Satan jabbed you in the eye with a middle finger each time you tried to fix it and make it look good. And you could try a dozen other textures and still get crappy results, making you wonder if the shape was wrong or if the textures were wrong. You could only just keep messing around on both fronts until something seemed to fit. It was a trial and error jamboree.

I haven't done 3D animation on a serious level, but I have worked with Flash animation and blaurgh, it's not fun either. You play the same scene over and over and over again messing with it over and over by the tiniest bit just to see if you're on the right track toward fixing the mess. Sometimes you make progress. Sometimes it only makes it worse! It's agony. You can only make the modifications you think will work and then test them to see if what you did was right or wrong. It was so tempting to just settle with results less than what you were hoping for, but that just doesn't point toward the quality work you want. And usually the perfectionist in you would scream to try again despite the moans that your brain was making.

But you're totally right. You've have GOT to have the patience, love, and passion for this stuff. I know you have it, though. You know what kinds of rewards come out of doing things the right way no matter what it takes. It makes all the mind-grinding worth it in the end. :3