I’m in the same boat. Been learning 3d game dev past few years seriously after dabbling for half a decade. I even released my first few tiny 3d games in the last 6 months and they’ve made hundreds of dollars! That alone was a dream come true.
I picked game dev specifically because I wanted to build some things I had envisioned and found it challenging. And in the beginning each new concept within 3d modeling, optimisation, shaders, physics, lighting, shadows & rendering felt intractable and unmasterable.
Now, I have a basic working understanding of nearly everything that goes into traditional 3d game dev. Except the very cutting edge stuff. And have mastered things I was struggling with 2 years ago.
And recently I felt something that scared me. It was the feeling that within 2 years, I’ll have lost the excitement and challenges that learning game dev has brought me with these past few years. And I could see how to someone experienced this was as boring as full stack web dev was for me.
this mirrors my experience too. I’ll just add that some times taking a complete break from work is necessary to find the mental clarity to reach the state where learning, stability and happiness are possible.
I used to be able to do this but after having kids they always seem to reset the clock before you can make any headway. I still have not figured out how to regain the clarity. There is no substitute for unobstructed long stretches of time to focus on something. Being unexpectedly interrupted or put on a schedule just ruins it.
I have a kid and I get it. I'm actually a bit scared about long vacations and weekends nowadays. But I hope we will figure out a way when kid grows up a bit. Right now, it's all luck. I'm even thinking about getting rid of my hobbies and find new ones that match kid's education and activity, but not sure about that.
This. As much as I love listening to JB, graphics wise he’s not doing anything ground breaking, it could even be done on the web. But I understand for him the architecture for his games being perfect is what makes it worth it for him.
This sort of thing keeps me skeptical of AI quite a bit. ChatGPT also has non sensical errors messages for random failures, Gemini too. These companies have infinite compute and yet they haven't been able to implement reliable/graceful error handling in 2+ years for a chat app? Why are they promising us they can replace all developers?
Can you tell me about how you use AI for baking and texture refinement?
I’m a beginner making small 3d webxr experiences, so tooling is a bit scarce outside of blender. Recently started making my own models and doing stuff like ao mapping and lightmapping. Editing texture maps using AI sounds helpful.
I’m not sure how these work, but AI accelerates the refinement of realistic textures. As an example, we just switched to Metahuman for human rig building.
The devs building the rigs use real people, and Metahuman uses AI to actually increase their imperfections.
We then shift into Blender where we construct hair and clothing. The hair uses internal AI that accelerates the process of individuating hair behavior we then export into unreal where the hair responds to physics.
It’s a well known fact that some types of astigmatism (the kind I have too) causes light text on dark bg to look blurry i.e. the text to be somewhat doubled.
I got a pair of glasses made that only fix my astigmatism to use with computers.
Same. My myopia is minimal but the astigmatism bad enough that I have to squint super hard to read non-giant text without glasses and even then it’s 30% guesswork. So the computer glasses correct only for astigmatism. But it’s almost equally bad in light mode and dark mode.
I have separate distance glasses (also with astigmatism correction) for driving and such, but they give me headaches if worn indoors.
In 2014, when I was 18-19, I was one of the “nothing to hide” crowd. But over the years seeing privacy erode has become concerning. Th second last paragraph hits home.
> When we say we have "nothing to hide," we're not really talking about transparency. We're talking about trust. We're saying we trust the watchers to never misuse what they see, never misinterpret, never change, never be corrupted, never be hacked, never expand their scope.
Why not do both (or all 3 including music) at the same time while giving yourself 2-3 years to start slowly ramp up your focus on the game dev or music side as you keep on learning while reducing your involvement with the management work?
I'm personally someone attempting to find a balance between my full time job, music & game dev/3d graphics. I don't see the latter two paying off any time soon but I see myself doing them for the rest of my life. The one thing I can say that after attempting to give it a go for 2+ years, a certain type of synergy between the different goals start to emerge. Skills & ideas I gain in one area help me do better in the other two in unexpected ways.
The experience & skills you've gathered from running a company would not go to waste and can be your source of strength. And just starting by dipping your toes is the best way to find whether you'd really enjoy being involved in these areas.
I think GP meant that at least very with Ambani, the money stays in India and is circulated inside the country. The services are provided to Indians, we are paid to do the work, and we spend it in India. It's better because the wealth of the country isn't leaking away, or at least leaking slower.
Services provided, persons employed, employees paid etc is all the same whether Ambani owns the shares or Chinese VCs do. Ambani would no more share his profits with other Indians than Chinese VCs would. Both would be subject to the same taxes on income earned in India. Maybe Ambani reinvests some of his profits in India; but for all we know he might choose to do so outside India.
I picked game dev specifically because I wanted to build some things I had envisioned and found it challenging. And in the beginning each new concept within 3d modeling, optimisation, shaders, physics, lighting, shadows & rendering felt intractable and unmasterable.
Now, I have a basic working understanding of nearly everything that goes into traditional 3d game dev. Except the very cutting edge stuff. And have mastered things I was struggling with 2 years ago.
And recently I felt something that scared me. It was the feeling that within 2 years, I’ll have lost the excitement and challenges that learning game dev has brought me with these past few years. And I could see how to someone experienced this was as boring as full stack web dev was for me.
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