Workflows

Ill just spend some time talking about the concept of a workflow from my perspective in the 3d design industry. In your quest to become a well rounded 3d artist, or game model creator, you no doubt must have encountered the term. You would have read tutorial after tutorial accessed and downloaded from various sites. Basically, a workflow is the path of actions or steps usually involving the combination of one or more software, that a creator would implement in order to arrive at the stage of product completion.
What we are aiming at as 3d artists, is to achieve the perfect workflow. Believe it in this industry, time is money, and as far as time is concerned, it is an extremely time consuming process of churning out 3d work. I'm going to approach this post assuming you are a new artist, who has been trying his or her hand at various 3d software packages, working from home. Even if you are not in this category, and are already an established person working for a 3d games company, you would both agree that the hours do fly on the most basic of projects.So what is the perfect workflow, you may ask, and Ill tell you now, it doesn't yet exist, in theory, as long as software developers are constantly releasing new software that surpasses current ones, but because you may need a proper answer, Ill say the perfect workflow is the fastest, and most stress free one you can put together at the time in question, with the fewest amount of software, to reach your goal.
Tips for increasing speed of work are
(1) Invest time in learning about your chosen software: Many people tend to purchase or download 3d software, spend very little time reading the manuals, and just jump straight in and start to model. The approach may be that the user wants to learn a little bit at a time, on an ongoing basis, that is good, but what is better is a solid amount of time invested on learning what your software can and can not do.
Once you have this rough idea of the programs capabilities, you would know which other programs, free or commercial that you would need to speed things up.
(2) In any software bought, always learn the keyboard shortcuts needed to perform a given action. Keyboard shortcuts literally cut the production time down on a long term basis.
(3) Always plan before any project just what you want to create, and outline the steps you are going to take. Stick to this general pattern on projects of a similar nature, do not deviate, as your knowledge of the software's used increases, small modifications would be made naturally without even thinking about it.
(4) I know in this blog, Ive mentioned a few free software, but the truth is you only really get a full set of professional tools when you buy a commercial package like Softimage xsi, Maya, 3d Studio Max, or Rhino. These are robust programs, you can use free software, but you would have to pick carefully to ensure that the tools presented work in conjunction with each other.
Try to compact together the little features that each free program has to offer, eg you have 4 packages A, B, C, and D.
Package A can model and unwrap UVs.
Package B can unwrap UVs and paint them. The UV tools are not as good as A's
Package C can model only, but is better at it than A
Package D can paint but not as good as B, but it has the best rendering tools of the lot
Your workflow should be (1) Make the model in C (2) Import it into A where its unwrapped (3) transfer the unwrapped model into B for painting, and finally (4) transfer your completed work into package D, where you can make use of the rendering tools to print screenshots of your work at its best.
Now of course this looks like a very tortuous and convoluted path to take all for the sake of producing a bit of 3d art, this doesn't by all means implies that free programs are not good, theres a whole different type of thinking process, and a world of effort that went into planning the release of these open source items that you've just got to admire and respect. The closest to a complete free 3d package is the almighty Blender, which I have downloaded many times. It has become better with time.
Ill stop here now, as I have a few other online commitments to attend to, and erh.. those tutorials I promised