3D Animation Dream

well to make a 5 min good video it takes ALOT of time and alot of those 3d films you can see on the net is made in 1-1½ year if we talk really good stuff

and if you never workd in 3d before i think you need to start in the small objects and lern how to model first and then animate.

but i think alot of us have the same dream as you.

Hi there,

I would advise you to stick to making a thirty second sequence at first. As a beginner, you should allow yourself 3 months to learn a package and make it.

In making it, you should be aiming to learn how to use your package (e.g. Maya PLE, GMax) rather than just find other people's tutorials & copying them without understanding what you're doing.

You should start with free learning packages like Alias Maya PLE (Personal Learning Edition) or GMax, rather than their expensive full price professional counterparts Alia Maya and 3DSMax7.

As for modelling & animation, start with basic shapes like squares, triangles etc and learn how to construct & animate these, before you move on to more complicated things like animals or people, where you'll be using all sorts of things like IK (Inverse Kinematics) etc.

My advice would actually be to check out 3D Modelling & Animation courses online at websites such as www.gameversity.com and www.gameinstitute.com etc. Sometimes there are free trial weeks of a course before you have to pay. I notice that you are in the UK, so you will be able to take advantage of the weak dollar right now and so an 80 dollar course will cost you about 42 pounds. Maybe you could suggest someone buy it for you as a Christmas or birthday present?

Anyway, that would be my strategy, make a thirty second sequence first. That way you'll learn all about modelling, texturing, lighting a scene, etc.

As for links, I'll have to do a bit more work to dig any useful ones up, but of fthe top of my head 3DCafe used to be a good website. In any case, you should also be learning how to use search engines to find some of the obvious stuff like where to download Maya PLE and GMax :-) so fire up Google and see what comes up. You'll also uncover lots of resources that way, sites that you otherwise wouldn't get to hear about.

Wow....thanks dude that really helped actually :P I guess a 5 minute one would be over the top . And you seem very knowledgeable about this topic. If you would be intersted in helping me make this 3D Animation company real then email me at tomdeveloper@gmail.com , As soon as i can make good animation after doing what you have said and so on i am going to create short films like 5 minutes. and Get a team and create more interesting things and films getting longer as the team grows until in the end its a real buissness where i must pay. Money at the moment with my family is not trouble at all seen as my dads buissness is flying with colours.

But thanks again and think about taking up my offer doomhunk.

for a 3d keyframer and sequence maker a good free one is caligari true space 3.2 i make small vids in it for school projects

I've been working on a short animation also. It's taking me forever because my life is so busy.
You can check out my project page on it here if you want. There's not much, just a few of the models and a couple of test renders.
It's a lot of fun and I wish you good luck in it.

OK some hopefully useful links:

http://www.3dvalley.com/ has a link to free 3D model links available to download: http://www.3dvalley.com/phplinks/index.php?PID=11

http://www.3dvalley.com/tutorials.shtml has two tutorials

http://www.3dcafe.com/asp/meshes.asp has lots of free models

http://www.3dcafe.com/asp/tutorial.asp has lots of tutorials

http://www.greatbuildings.com/ has lots of 3D buildings




You can get GMax from here: http://www.turbosquid.com/gmax

You can get Maya PLE from here: http://www.alias.com/eng/products-services/maya/maya_ple/index.shtml



OK, that should keep you all busy for a while :-)

I found the video tutorial modules over at 3dBuzz really helpful when I was looking into modelling and animation. They have tutorials on both Max and Maya, sometimes in the context of games but the skills are certainly transferrable.

Oh and good luck :)

Keep the help coming. Ill be making good 3D Models in no time with all this information :P Do remeber if you want to help with the Animation company just say and when i model well we can make movies! about 30 seconds long to start :P

http://www.blender3d.com is another good free tool