I've been feeling really bad in my progress in cg thus far, and even more with how many wips/ deleted failures I have, opposed to real still renders I can look at and be in awe or at least be proud that I saw it to the end and could look back on my workflows and see things to improve. But also, i've been afraid of that, because it feels like rather i'm just repeating mistakes and not retaining things.
Regardless, I tried to set up this "One render/mesh a day" thing for myself where I make a mesh/render of something every day, and document what i've learned, what I don't know, what I don't know I don't know, and what to generally improve on. Today, I made a bed. I just put a few lights in cycles to render it. I wanted to push this further, but I didn't know how. I wanted to add felt and textures to the blankets, I wanted to give more detail to the bedframe. I circled some of the problem areas in blue. I also wanted to make it less grainy. I also wanted to use radeonprorender, but I wasn't sure how to do that when it runs very very slow for my laptop. What could I do to make it more bareable?
Also, generally, what would you suggest for learning from your mistakes in cg? It often feels like- not only do I not retain information, I don't retain mistakes in a productive light. I often don't know how to categorize what I don't know, and just flimsily try again, while making the same mistakes. What do I do for actually making things better, when self learning? Thank you!
I tried doing that, but I quit because after a while it felt more like a chore than something I was doing for fun.
I would advice you to set a long term goal (that you can reach in 6 months or so) and making a small project every week. I think making an artwork every day is usually not a very good idea, since you're still learning. What I mean by that is that in the beginning, you will work slowly, but you have to learn the right workflow, and speed will come later. The past 4 weeks I've been doing this and I feel like I've been improving fast, and I'm sure you can too!
PS: This video by Andrew Price helped me a lot, the consequence part is uncomfortable, but it is the thing that drives me to work even harder.
My advice is to not focus on doing one render/ mesh per day since you won't really improve, at least that's what I experienced. The best way of learning or getting better I found is to focus on one thing. For example: Take one course for modeling and shading a car and try to create a few cars on your own after following that course.
A car propably will take longer than that but I would also suggest to finish one project per week or every two weeks. Setting a goal is helpful too. Of course that can be anything you are interested in but a single mesh like a bed, a chair or table won't bring you further.
Challenge yourself with something you like or are interested in and that's beyond your current skill level!