Devoted Stories 14: ANNA DANCHENKO

3D Environment artist

“There are no really big secrets of how to bake normals, it’s all about practice”

Meet Anna, a 3D Environment artist .

Honestly it was my boyfriend who inspired me to do this! He is a programmer and he can do so many cool things. I looked up to him and I just decided to learn something new. I was thinking of combining IT and creativity in my future job. That’s how I came across 3D modeling.

Probably the biggest obstacle for me was to understand how to bake normal maps. Guys in Youtube tutorials did it so fast and so clean while I was really confused about it. But I would recommend not to worry about it and just practice. It was a surprise for me that there are no really big secrets of how to bake normals, it’s all about practice actually.

But also you should remember a few simple things: high poly models should resemble low-poly as much as possible, make wise overlaps and don’t locate objects too close to each other. I think that one of the best things 3D artist should learn as a beginner is hotkeys. Don’t ignore it, because it makes life so much easier! There are probably hotkeys you never know about, you really should search for them.

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