Kickstart Your Creative Journey

with CG Fundamentals

In the inaugural month, we lay the foundation of your 3D adventure. It begins with an exploration of basic modeling, sculpting, and rendering techniques in industry-standard software like Maya and Zbrush. These skills will form the cornerstone of your journey. As you delve into the intricate world of 3D, you’ll discover that every polygon, every brushstroke, and every rendering is a brushstroke on the canvas of imagination.

By the second month, we start delving into more complex terminology and workflows. We’re still focusing on the bare basics of modeling, UV Unwrapping, and concepts of good workflows

In the 3rd Month, we start to piece everything together and create fully fledged models with good topology, UVs, and Textures. This is the first time we encounter Substance Painter and what it is used for

Now it’s time to step up our game. We’ll revisit everything we’ve learned so far and expand on that knowledge. We’ll also learn how to set up rendering scenarios for our models with software such as Marmoset Toolbag.

In the 5th Month, we’ll cover what it’s like to create a prop, similar to an artist working in a studio. We’ll cover all necessary steps to follow proper guidelines and prepare ourselves for our first portfolio project

During this month, you will get to choose from a myriad of options on what you want to be your first personal project. We’ll go over inspiration, references, workflows, and everything needed to create your very own prop

This month is heavily dependent on feedback from the Instructors, and it’s the first time you will encounter serious pushback and hardships. But do not worry, we will be there every step of the way

Halfway through the year, we’ll start looking into how game engines work, more specifically, Unreal Engine. We’ll learn the basics of the software, what it’s used for, and how we approach it as artists

In the 8th month, we’ll take a look at Substance Designer, a software used to create your very own materials that can be used in any software.

By combining Unreal Engine and Substance Designer, we’ll take a look at the fundamentals of Environment Art and how physically based rendering works. Here is where we dive deep into more complex setups to achieve amazing results

In the 10th month, we circle back to characters. This is where we encounter our first anatomy classes, proper blockouts, and great topology for characters

After we revisit creating forms and shapes for characters, we’ll take a look at some more advanced workflows to bring the other aspects of the characters to life, such as hair creating, realistic skin textures, and more.

By the end of the year, we’re going to close it out with a little bit of Rigging and Animation. Every single artist should know how to bring their work to life, and rigging and animation allows us to do that.

After a full year of studying, it’s time to start choosing how we want to focus our efforts. For the next few months, we’ll cover the 3 Major areas where you will be able to specialize, and choose together what suits you best. In the first month, we’re going to start off with the basics of Environment creation

After revisiting Environment Art, we’ll circle back to Character Art. We’ll be going over the full process of creating our first full character, from blocking to shading to rigging and animation

At the very beginning of the CG Fundamentals curriculum, we’ll take a look at the basics of programming and coding with Unreal Engine. While this may not suit all students equally, it’s important to try out the Development process and choose whether or not you would like to specialize in it later down the road

Once all is said and done, over the course of the next 3 Months, we will work very closely together to create your very own Environment, Character, or Game! This is the point where we focus all our energy on finding what we truly love doing. After we finish the Portfolio Project 02, you’ll be on your way to specialize in one of the 3 major routes at M3DS Academy.