beginner 3d animator

[Tuffgong4]

If I were to start as a hobby to learn 3d animation what program would be best to start off with?

Also are they any books/websites with tutorials and easy guides to learning?

When I learned to use photoshop I only used web tutorials and even started a thread here with all the ones I used.

Also when I learned Director (how useless) I had a great book that had great tutorials and great text.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Cosmin]

Well , I would try Cinema4D or 3Dmax , maya seems so difficult . There are a lot of books/tutorials .. just search on g'le .

 

[LordOfLA]

blender. its free. no 100% sure it does animating though. Autodesk Maya has a personal learning edition too.

 

[Aprox]

There are a lot of people with different opinions on this subject... and all of them are biased, Including myself. I say use 3dsMax and stay away from the Prosumer low end products. All you will be doing is inhibiting yourself from reaching your true potential (limited by the software) and using the simplified tools as a crutch.

Autodesk offers a free version of 3dsmax you can try out, the same with Maya. (Autodesk bought out Alias Wavefront a couple years ago). I recommend picking up the Max 9 Bible, has a TON of info as well as tutorials from beginner to advanced if you choose to go the Max route.

http://www.amazon.com/3ds-Max-Bible...7611964?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1187736510&sr=8-1

Some people swear by Maya, with its superior nurbs modeling tools, but lacks in polygonal modeling tools. Which 3ds Max excels in, as well as video compositions. 3dsMax can have quite the learning curve, but once you master the basics you can carry over those skills to most of the other applications. I also personally find that 3ds Max has better third party render engines available. I personally use 3dsmax 9 with Final Render Stage-1 R2.0 with a few other various plugins and its all you ever need.

 

[melon]

I'm very late, but I thought I'd chime in on this subject, in case someone might be interested later.

I used Maya 5/6 fairly extensively, and I currently use Blender. Maya is, as expected, a very powerful program, and you can certainly do whatever your mind and skill allow you to do with it. The downside, mainly, is that all of that comes at a cost. Maya, itself, is very expensive, and anyone using this platform should obviously expect any third-party add ons to be expensive too.

Blender is free and open-source, but can't compare with Maya in terms of total features. However, it does come pretty close in most respects, and probably only the most advanced of advanced users will ever feel like they will hit a wall. A common complaint leveled against Blender is that the interface is "too difficult," which, frankly, I think is asinine. There's this general expectation amongst a lot of people, I think, that if it is "free/open source," then it should act as an "imitation" of paid software--i.e., Linux should be a "free" imitation of Windows. Instead, Blender, like all of the very different and proprietary 3D programs out there, has its own interface, and I frankly prefer it to Maya's interface. The simple keyboard shortcuts alone, once memorized, are fantastic.

Of course, I'm not going to say that Blender is perfect, but what's really going for it is the fact that it has a very driven and dedicated team of developers, who have made an awful lot of progress in a very short period of time. Blender in 2007 is vastly different than Blender in 2002; you generally can't say the same about Maya or the other programs in terms of these past five years. And I'd say that those obvious shortcomings that Blender has are very quickly going to be history over the next year or two.

And, yes, Blender does animations.

I know that some people are afraid that learning a program like Blender will put you at a disadvantage if you try and look for paid 3D work. I, on the other hand, generally enjoy learning new software, so I'm glad I know Maya and Blender (and I might potentially start learning Cinema4D this coming year, since it is used in broadcast TV quite a bit). Knowing Maya, as I did, made it easier to pick up Blender, since I already understood how 3D software works.

I hope someone finds this useful.