I've been into 3D modelling in the past weeks and I started to work on my own project in Unity 3D. I already know the most important functions, because I've been an internal tester for a game that was made with Unity. You can find some screenshots of my work here: http://imgur.com/a/TPpov I'm far from being a professional, but I'm doing my best to improve my skills.
Hey me too! I've only just started the 3D aspect of my university degree. Your stuff looks fantastic. I'm working in Maya currently and I haven't really begun texturing or anything like that, but here's a concept poster I made. It's for a fake animated film based on the life of Salvador Dali. Do you know what the difference is between working in Unity 3D and Maya? I'm fairly new to the 3D element of animation and modelling.
I think it's hard to compare Unity with Maya. Unity is a game engine and Maya is a modeling tool. Of course you can use your created models from Maya in Unity to build levels & environments and there are even plugins that integrate modeling tools into Unity. I'm working with Blender, a freeware modeling software. Your Salvador Dalí clock is really impressive! I'm still struggling with dynamic objects, everything I created feels too static... May I ask which university you are visiting? I'm planning to start to study in the near future and I'm currently on the lookout for universities that teach this kind of stuff.
Sure! Unity 3D is a very easy accessible game engine. Everything is cleaned up and there are a lot of tutorials in the engine itself. You can easily add models and textures via drag & drop, adjust the shaders, add normal-, specular- and heightmaps and much more. There is also a huge marketplace, where you can offer your projects and creations for free or even sell them. The community is very friendly and you can quickly create prototypes and such with basic knowledge of modelling and programming (I sadly don't know how to write a single line of code yet). Unity will also be supported on Next Gen platforms and you can "bake" your project with one simple click for Windows, Mac and Linux. If you are interested in this stuff, I can highly recommend that you have a look into this great tool - the basic version of Unity is free, and contains everything from Direct X11 support to complex shaders. The only thing that is missing are real time shadows (which isn't a big problem because of the great lightmapping tool). I hope that this answered your question! Please excuse spelling errors and grammatical mistakes, English isn't my first language.
This is such a marketable skill. Any company that is involved in production or manufacturing needs pretty rendering and mock ups to impress clients. We have two in house people that focus on 3D renderings full time. It may not be the most exciting use of the skills but it does pay well and gives you a different project to work on everyday.