Careers Advice, Help Will be Much Appriciated

[richard_cousins]

This is my frist post here. Well guys im finally back at university doing my final year, but before I or anyone can start the course, the whole class has to do a bridging unit and write a 1000 word essay about what they want to gain from the course and what skills they need to learn to help them get a job in the industry.

Apart from looking at many job posts for 3d modellers and reading articles from 3d total and 3d world, I was wondering If I could gain some info from the guys on here who are already working in the 3d industry. What kind of skills where required of you when you went for a job and if you were to employ someone for a 3D job what skills would you deem required or desired.

Example: Im confident with 3dmax and have been using it for 3 years now. I feel can model most things of an inorganic nature my weakness is organic modelling. Rendering I have good understand of scanline, mental ray and vray. When it comes to texturing if it involves materials on a multi sub object, im good at that. Im still getting to grips with Unwrap UVW. Lighting I have a basic understanding of lighting scenes but nothing too advanced.

For this year im going to focus on the side of visualisation, the area of vechicle modelling, interior modelling and product visualistion. As I would love to focus on character modelling as I feel the above is what I would/can be best/more confident at and would lead to more job opportunities in the area I am in.

So what advice would you give me on the kind of skills that I should focus to achieve this goal to stand a good chance of meeting the criteria for the jobs im looking at in the future.

All adive will be much appriciated.