I have never done art before, but I am trying to make my game visual appealing. So, far I am using a model I got online as the player and working on the gameplay with the model for now. Just wondering if I should bother making my own character player and animations, but I have no idea on how to do any of that. I know how to do all the programming stuff and I do prefer programming. Just wondering what can I do to get some models with animations, or something very basic to use in my game.

I just want to simple archer, to be idle, run, shoot, jump. I have a model that is an archer, but has no animations. The other problem is I don't know if I can even make an animation for it because there are no children nodes on this character model. It is just one big model with no rigging or anything.

Just looking for some wisdom and how to approach this. I am currently focus on getting my game play down, but eventually I will need to get my animations down.

3D modeling is fun, addicting, and easy once you get the hang of it.

Just grab a copy of Blender (free for any purpose), and follow the tutorials at BlenderCookie.com to learn the interface and some basic modeling.

Then there is a great tutorial series on youtube to model and rig simple game characters: Peter's Massive Blender Tutorial - http://www.youtube.com/user/PXstriker/videos?flow=grid&view=0

My only concern with Blender is that it is open source meaning it evolves very quickly, so what I learn now, many not be the same in a year or 2. Unless, the changes aren't so drastic. The thing is I am taking courses for graphics, like learning OpenGL and some aspects of how to create a simple game engine

My only concern with Blender is that it is open source meaning it evolves very quickly, so what I learn now, many not be the same in a year or 2. Unless, the changes aren't so drastic. The thing is I am taking courses for graphics, like learning OpenGL and some aspects of how to create a simple game engine

[quote name='Daaark' timestamp='1358483465' post='5022768']
3D modeling is fun, addicting, and easy once you get the hang of it.
[/quote]

This.

It's easy to get started and once you do making things like scenery objects, guns etc is all very easy. The hard part is finding good reference images or coming up with original ideas. Also, I had fun doing 3D animation because it gave me an excuse to buy foam swords and swing them at stuff to get an idea of how things should look. The hard part is modeling things with intense detail at high polygon counts, or making very detailed/long animations.

Just like anything else, it takes time to get the hang of, but once you do it's a valuable skill to have as a programmer. It gives you a glimpse into how artists work and what kind of workflows they expect, among other things.

If you want to get your hands on Autodesk 3DS Max, Maya, or Mudbox and you happen to be a student then you should check this out: http://students.autodesk.com/

Under free software are tons of products by Autodesk. I've used the latest 3ds max from here for various student game projects when I was in college. The best part is you can experiment with Maya and all of the great tutorials for it on 3dBuzz.com.

I've been making all my own models and it's been really fun. It can be easy, but it can also be extremely complex the greater detailing the model is. I actually think texturing a model is much harder (from an artists standpoint). I tend to just want to paint it a color and use some random photoshop filter on it, but I digress.

I think if you are going to try it out, blender would not be my first choice. It's extremely confusing, and you have to know a lot of hotkeys. I'm no artist, just a programmer, but I've used Maya, 3ds Max, Blender, Game Space, Milkshape, and Wings3D. 3ds Max was really nice, but unless you want to spend that kind of money, I wouldn't bother. Maya I didn't particially like. Gamespace was my favorite modeler. It made it really easy to extrude and shape models. It's texture mapping was ok. The program would crash all the time tough. Gamespace was like $100 or something when I bought it.

The free modelers.

Milkshape - I used it years ago and couldn't get a hang of it

Blender - The most full packaged free modeling software programs out there. I dislike the UI and the hotkeys, and it has a steep learning curve.

Wings3D - OMG I love this Program.

Very little UI so its intuitive. You pretty much right click to bring up menus to do things like (rotate, scale, add vertices, etc......). Their Texture mapping is confusing at first but is REALLY easy and better than gamespace if I remember correctly. But as a programmer, you can model so fast with this software, and its cross-platform. It doesn't do animation, so once you move onto that, I just export my models from Wings3D to Blender, and use that as the tool for animating.

Hopefully this helps give some insight on your question. Because Like you, I learned how to do some (basic) modeling for my games.

Once you get the hang of the basics in any modeling program it's easy to do quite a lot. Generally it's the simple tools you use the most, or I do.

It's fun and addicting but just like MarkS I just can't get the hang of organic modeling. Anyway you should try it, if not just for the fun.