Wondering who are the fellow forumers out there who dabble or are serious in the world of 3D graphics and CGI?

I started on this road about two years ago and have been learning Maya, Realflow & Nuke. I already knew quite a bit of After Effects and have been dabbling in zBrush and Mudbox. Now though I am turning my attention to Houdini, which seems a very exciting prospect.

What have any of you been been up to?

Looking for fellow nerds to chew the fat...!



5DN

I can't say i really dabble in 3D, but I directed photography on a friend's 34 min short film that was all green screen minus a few props. Using Maya he created an entire apartment and a few city blocks. He taught me the basics of the program (Maya goes deeeeeep and has such a strange non-intuitive interface of nodes and such) and I went on to learn the lighting and lit all the created spaces in Maya. Very interesting experience - lighting virtually is very strange. You can break a lot of the laws of physics: light can travel through objects and walls and you can place lighting "fixtures" invisibly wherever you want even inside objects. No need to hide lights or place them off-camera, so you can get really creative! But, strangely, light does not behave as it does in the real world (inverse square law, bouncing off walls and objects and filling the room etc.) until you choose to plug in the parameters, which makes it very time consuming.

Cheers,

JBArk

Sounds cool. Yeh Maya is also a bit buggy I discovered. It has a personality of its own. Sometimes I've had to spend two days trying to figure something out that really shouldn't be. Its so vast and complicated though even the writers of it struggle I guess.

I think what you described about your experience is definately true, it is time consuming, but the benefits of it not following the laws of physics is you can get really creative and create effects that would not be possible in the real world.

Wish I had the time and patience to get into the new breed of soft...
I delved 30 years ago, running psychedelic cgi with 16mm loop projection in the 90's underground rave scene but it moves too quickly now.

classic stuff

Simply mind blowing cyb. It would be incredible to see what these guys could do in a fully surreal scenario when their grip on realism is so astute.

I'm very new to 3D (as to art overall), but I've been ZBrushing pretty religiously for the past two years now. I'm halfway through a(n online) Intro to Maya course at the moment. It's tedious as hell and intimidating in the extreme, but I need to know it to get to the next level, and that's where I plan on goin'.

yeh i'm on digital tutors for cgi stuff.

That's what I'm doin'. It's a great way to learn - except that there's no one to ask the million and one questions that come up about every minute.

Still, if you're motivated and good at holding yourself accountable, I figure Digital Tutors can probably give you a pretty solid foundation in every step of the pipeline used in creating the pieces above.

This is my year to soak it all in.

REALLY COOL CYB