After watching movies such as Harry Potter and Avatar, I became interested in the CGI effects used in movies. I realize that these are done by huge teams, but I want to learn about how the effects are created and how to create simple ones myself. I'm a fairly experienced programmer, but I don't know much about graphics programming and absolutely nothing about 3D modeling. Can anyone suggest some resources to learn about this? I don't even know where to begin.
It's a long time since I had a play with 3d tools but you could do worse than start by grabbing a copy of Blender: <a href="http://www.blender.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.blender.org/</a>
www.fxphd.com<p>www.videocopilot.net<p>www.digitaltutors.com<p>www.thegnomonworkshop.com<p>Many More...<p>For the tools:<p>www.autodesk.com ( Maya, 3DSMAX, Softimage, Mudbox )<p>www.pixologic.com (Zbrush)<p>renderman.pixar.com (renderman)<p>www.mentalimages.com (mental-ray) Nvidia company<p>Many more....<p>Dev:<p><a href="http://developer.nvidia.com" rel="nofollow">http://developer.nvidia.com</a> (lots of resources)<p>Lots of stuff all over the net