Is it critical to know how to paint?

[BlenderFan]

I wouldn't say it's a must, but having some training in the principles of art sure helps, regardless of medium. Being able to draw is also nice when conceiving scenes, although many artists work entirely in 3D and without a sketch.

I will let the more experienced fellows give you their ideas, but those are my thoughts.

Cheers and God bless.

[DanteHR]

Drawing/painting skills are essential if you want to design, model or texture anything because its from drawing and painting that you work out how to make something beautiful/appealing to look at.

The only people who don't really draw or paint are the people who are exclusively technical (code stuff in C++, Python etc)

If you aim to work in the technical side of 3D then at least have a go at painting (after all, its fun), but if you are interested in any aspect of 3D that is artistic then drawing and painting as often as possible is a must!

Examples of jobs where knowing how to paint is a must:
-Character Designer
-Modeller
-Texture Artist
-Matte Painter
-Compositor


How to learn to paint from scratch?
My best advice is to start by imitating the paintings you like the most. Gather together a collection of your favourite movie stills, matte paintings, photos of landscapes, animation stills. Basically imitate, but make sure you are imitating the best, as this will mean you develop more rapidly.

Once you've imitated you'll have understood how the images you like have been constructed. Then you can apply what you've learned to your own ideas.

[Katzenminze]

DanteHR is right here.
I think traditional skills are so much more vital than any 3d trick you can learn. if you dont know how to draw/ hwo to paint/ and especially how to SEE correctly (which is trained a lot by doing painting studies) you will have a hard time creating something convincing in 3d. in the end the output is usually an image so its necessary to knwo about composition, color theory, mood, cinematography... ect..ect. try to learn everythign you can from other disciplines than CG. watch movies, study comic books (great comics have excellent ways of telling stories in a visual way, if you dont have to read the text bubbles and still get the story it is a good comic)
Also if you apply for a job in CG people will be interested if you know both, the technical side of 3d but also traditional arts. you are more applyable when you knwo both.
im still studying but we have a high emphasis on drawing as well, unfortunatly not so mcuh with painting but i try to do that on my own. bot digital and traditional. i recommend you getting some paints (oil and acrylics) and doing some still lives. i bet after 10 still lives youll look differently at the world around you. it also helps a lot when youre texturing objects. a lot of studios require hand painted textures (e.g pixar :P ) usually if you know how to paint, you understand how to extract different information fmr an object/photo to create a clean color map, spec map, bump map ect.

hope this helps :)

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