Jordan, we have established that you are quite young. So, I beg other people to go a little easy.
But here I am going to offer advice to you, please pay attention. It includes both forum and 3D advice
1- Listen to what people say first, if you're stuck with something and haven't read what everyone has said, you may have missed something, by posting a question that has been answered to you, will wind people up.
2- Try to be descriptive with a problem, referring to your Zanoza thread, we didn't have a clue what your problem was until we squeezed at it, most people won't offer that very often, leaving your problems unanswered
3- If you post without thinking, it may come up to bite you in the rear end, I am patient and understand how people post like that, but not everyone is that tolerant, meaning it will seem people are having a go, pick out the stuff from what they say, now matter how offended you feel and try to understand what advice could be taken from that, so you can avoid it. So you live and learn basically.
Now onto the 3D.
When learning to 3D model, it isn't as easy as drawing and then animation can be harder than 2D animation, but has its advantages where 2D doesn't. Its more hard work, but not the kind of hard work you get too frustrated with like teaching a penguin table manners.
So, I'd take the world of 3D in slow steps, as you would in drawing, think as an infant, you'd do finger painting, in 3D, you make random works to try and make something that looks rather like something, following tutorials is the best thing to do, my 3D model was god damn aweful, so will yours, don't worry. Then once you are happy, you will know how to do things better, so you can learn the making of a 3D model properly, follow tutorials again, pay attention to detail.
Then Practice.
Then learn how to apply materials and textures, again, tutorials are very helpful, then you can learn the basics of animation, then move onto more advanced animation. And then rendering, rendering isn't a major need, something more of an artist's/video dude's tool, game makers don't really need to worry about rendering.
So to recap in easy to understand bullet points.
- Step 1 : Play with your program, make a random mess
Like you would with finger painting
- Step 2 : Follow tutorials on how to make a model, start small, like a torch.
Like learning to draw, you start off with a basic house, over time, that will turn into portriats of people and then what your imagination decides.
-Step 3 : Learn to make materials and textures.
Like learning to colour things and later how to make colour detail on your picture.
-Step 4 : Basic animation, using tutorials.
Like doing a flip book stick man dancing in drawing
-Step 5 : Go more advanced on the animation, with things known as IK.
Like making bigger animations, where the stick man is a cat chasing a mouse around the sofar.
-Step 6 : Rendering, worry about that later
So until your reach step 4, then this question isn't necessary, as you will find it a bit difficult to start, as they say, learn to walk before you run. 3D isn't as hard as I proberly just made it sound, once you get started it feels easy, you will start off with things that don't look so good, but give it time, your work will improve, once you have learnt to 'walk' in 3D, then the advice of people on the forum will be very useful for improving your work faster.
Good luck and welcome to the 3D side of things. Have fun
