I wasn’t good in painting when I was a child. I don’t even know photoshop, I always did programming. I did GUI design, but mostly learned others’ design if it was complex (with animation for example i did in WPF C#).
I am not good in painting AT ALL. But I am really good in imagination. I can make a great game in mind, but I can’t implement any part of it, unless I search in web and see how you design this thing in a software.
Also, what software should I learn? I want to develop in Pure C++ (like in Opengl/opengl es/SDL), not through game engines. Platforms are not important. But I want to do one game needs less time, so, I probably want mobile. 2d is probably harder, unless none of it is by pencil painting. Otherwise, if it is Learning to do using software, it is ok. What Software is best to design game assets for someone like me who has no good graphics design experience? Should I do it? Can I do it? Is blender good? Is photoshop good enough? Do you have any suggestion?
You’re sort of asking which brand of hammer will turn you into a carpenter.
Probably half my career has involved working with programmers, most of whom have been fantastic at, well, programming, but much less than fantastic at design or UI/UX. Generalizing a bit here, but programmers’ and designers’ brains seem to be wired differently. I know just enough about programming to know I’ll never be good at it, and most programmers suspect they might not be great at UI/UX. Working together as a team, however, can produce some really great work.
Case in point: I’ve been doing lots of work recently for a 3d simulation company composed of programmers and mathematicians. Their preference is that I work in command-line environments and build their website out of a Git repository using a bizarre (to me) content management system called Hugo. It’s comfortable for them, but utterly alien to me. It’s taken me twice as long as it would have done otherwise in a WYSIWYG GUI. We’ve both compromised some, and it’s turned out OK, if not ideal.
Maybe you’re one of those rare programmers who can bridge the gap between visual design, user experience and the programming necessary to make it happen. Your question, though, indicates otherwise. Design isn’t about which tools to use — it’s more of a mindset thing and the ability to put oneself in the user’s seat and view the problem from their vantage point. And from that viewpoint, designers use their skills to design an interface that is intuitive, functional and attractive. It’s only then, that the right tools are selected to do the job.
Design has little to do with painting, so I’m not sure why you mentioned it. There really is no one best software to learn. You mentioned Photoshop and Blender. Both are certainly great software applications for what they’re meant to do, but they both do entirely different things (2d as opposed to 3d). There are many other applications more specifically geared for game and app UI/UX development. A Google search will turn them up faster than I can list them.
So coming back to which hammer will turn you into a good carpenter. The best answer I can give is none of them will. It’s necessary, first, to be a good carpenter before deciding which hammer is best for the job.
I probably haven’t answered you question in the way you wanted, but it certainly won’t hurt for you to learn more about the UI/UX side of things. For that matter, it will give you the skills and language necessary to have constructive and collaborative discussions with designers who, like you, know just enough about the programming side of things to have productive discussions with you. Good collaborative relationships with people who have complementary skills sets can produce great things that neither person could have produce on his or her own.
Then again, you might be a polymath who will turn out to be equally adept at both sides of the puzzle — I don’t know. Just from experience, though, the odds don’t favor it.
Stanley makes a durable hammer for carpentry, the framing hammer is 16" from tip to bottom handle to measure the distance between wall studs. the angle pry part is more acute to pull out the most bent nails.
Did you hear about the toothless nervous carpenter? he always was biting his nails!