3D career/industry

[Joeslucher]

So I'm thinking of making the leap from pen and paper gaming illustration to 3D. I've been using Zbrush to create many of my maquettes and am looking into getting actual training.

Are there plenty of opportunities out there for people who are good with Zbrush? How about opportunities for 2D artists with a strong knowledge of Zbrush?
Or is that program too far down the list of preferred 3D programs?

[dpaint]

Doesn't matter what program you use really if you understand concepts of 3d.
Most companies are looking for good all around knowledge and abilities across multiple disciplines so concepts, model building, textures, and enviro's. Those will land you a job faster than specialization.

[Qitsune]

There are good possibilities for someone who is good with zbrush and can turn these maquettes into textures and shaders. Texture is turning into a complex specialty, it was already complex due to bump maps, displacement maps, dirt maps etc but with each generation of console it's going to become even more complicated and generalists won't be able to cut it anymore.

[ikken]

z-brush knowledge is an absolute must for today's 3D artists, unless we're talking about lo-poly or really stylized stuff (and it has some use there as well)
the problem is that there're too many z-brush artists already, but not many of those understand the studio pipeline.

if you really feel like going into 3D, learn both zbrush and a major modelling package like 3dsmax or maya, so you will be able to bake your sculpts and get game-ready models with normal-mapping and diffuse/spec/etc maps.
prepare to invest at least a year into studying, but at the end, you will have much better oportunities than a concept-artist with z-brush skills.