Yeah, proficiency in 3D is something which takes time, a lot of time. I have been working with 3D for motion graphics in the audiovisual industry for almost 9 years (untill I changed for Web Design for earning a living). So I have been working with 3dsmax for more than 10 years (including the last 4 years studying 3dsmax specifically for game development with UDK).
I am far away from being an expert in modelling, texturing, rigging, animation, and so son. As I work alone i learned the basic of each one of these disciplines and I learned to work with ready to use assets.
Over all these years I built a huge library of 3d models which include characters, objects, mocap files, and so on (from various marketplaces and assets stores), because it is almost impossible you develop a game from scratch doing everything from model, animation, texturing, rigging and so on. So I especialized my self more in getting assets ready for game like reduce polycount, bake normal maps, change models, editting animations and so on to be able to use on my game development adventures 
instead of creating them from scratch.
I think my last work on creating something from scratch was on my time of working with audio visual (I used to create 3D characters for TV Shows and Commercials).
And a proof that proficiency in 3D takes a lot of time, I even tried to change for Blender recently just for using something up to date, because my 3dsmax and motion builder software are from 2009 and 2013 whenever I last purchased a permanent license from Autodesk, however, I have seen that the learning curve in Blender takes too long, and I was not able to do in phyton for blender the same automating tools I created in maxscript especially for level design for UDK, as I do model my map completely in 3dsmax then export to UDK (like automatically created collision models, unwrap models for lightmap, break/attach models), so in the end I will stick with my pipeline with 3dsmax and Motion Builder.