I think I'm about to jump into modding, Anybody have advice?

Do what feels right. Trust your instincts.
Pretty much start with Sapien and Guerilla, mess around with some values. Learn the tag structure, and how to navigate around it etc.

Get a mac, use maya, don't take crit, have bad topology, merge everything into a single mesh, cut your mesh up or tessellate it to give it more polys, that will make it look better. Stick with planar UV maps.

For terrain:
Make a high poly plane, use a displacement map, call it done,

For scenery, merge everything and make sure it is a single mesh with no holes, tessellate the mesh more, it will look better.

For everything:
Use rips, that way people will think you are pro, and even if you are an underachiever like some of the people here, you will still feel good about your self.

For weapons:
Make high poly sub-div models and then be lazy and release it so that someone else can make the low-poly.

Also, make a mapping team that dedicates its self do not finishing the intended project. People will still think you are pro since you are known as the guy that almost executed something cool.

Have fun.

10/10
Edited by iizahsum on Oct 3, 2010 at 10:13 PM

ya, pretty good generalization right there.

oh dee, u seem to have summed up what ppl do here quite well. i congrat u....rofl

Start where you can and get better. I do advise at some point to be more creative. After you have had some time to learn Get gmax/3ds max, take some tutorial’s on making basic box maps and the rest is history. You can only get better, well most follow that path anyway. lol
Everyone starts somewhere, even the people in this thread had to start somewhere.
Good luck and have fun with it.
Edited by xsnoder on Oct 7, 2010 at 07:27 AM