Hello again.
Sorry about the long wait, new year festivities got me a bit side-tracked.
Happy 2021, by the way!
I decided to follow your advice and tryed to apply for an apprenticeship anyway.
They were quick to answer, there are no openings for someone with my experience at the moment, but they might contact me if the need arises in the future.
I don't hold much hope into this but I do realize that I was probably dreaming too big.
I will keep messing around with the programs you talked me about, just in case.
The best thing to do, is download Blender, and register for a couple months of Blender Cloud. The tutorials on there are incredible. These range from character modeling (including sculpting), rigging, world building and more. The 2 most broadly used programs are Blender (for small studios) and Zbrush for larger ones. Not many use 3D studio anymore. If anything they use Maya. I say it is best to start with Blender because of the community, and their incredible rigging. Once you learn blender, it is very easy to migrate over to Zbrush because they are very similar.
If you want an apprenticeship, you need to work on a demo reel. This could include some of your world building, cityscaping etc. Just do a search on Youtube for 3D demo reel to get an idea. But without at least some kind of demo reel, no one will really consider you.
Although I use Gimp, the truth is, compared to Photoshop, it is crap. It is hard to learn, in no way intuitive and just terrible. It gets the job done, that is about it. I still use Photoshop CE because I refuse to pay a monthly sub for Photoshop, and frankly I can do what I need to do in CE.
Video editing software is needed, I mean you have to be able to edit together your clips right? Add a nice little sound background and some fades, Honestly a lot of people use Premier, but the industry standard is Avid Media Composer. But the basics of video editing is pretty standard among all of them. there is plenty of free ones available. Once you learn how to properly cut a good video, how to balance your audio, it works the same in them all.
I am actually getting back into 3D modeling and game development, and I have to say the tools today are SOOO much easier than my days of 3D studio max. I mean Blender is so intuitive and as powerful as the most expensive 3D modelling software. My personal favorite game engine is Unreal 4 (which btw you can make impressive city scapes and worlds in there as well), and it is basically all GUI. I find it funny when people think it is all code, but it is not. Unless you are modifying the already installed physics or something, it is very easy to pick up, and has great tutorials as well. Not to mention it is free to use (just if you publish a game they get a percentage of sales).
Hope this info helps...
