Redundancy approaching

[SteveH11]

Hi,
I have been working for my company as a retoucher for 19 years. I have survived redundancy over the years until now. I am looking at adding another skill to my skill set. I have a good knowledge of Adobe Creative Cloud mainly Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign. I would like to go on a course and learn a new product/program. I have considered learning Cinema 4D or something similar. I am in two minds as to whether to go on an Adobe Ace course or a Cinema 4D or Maya etc course. Has any anyone got any advice as to what would be a good skill to learn and add to my experience. I look forward to your input.
Thanks

[klev]

Re: Redundancy approaching

You would have to look at your local market. I don't really suggest investing a lot of dollars in software initially. If you determine you would benefit from anything offered by Autodesk, sign up for an educational license, which includes (last time I checked) any kind of educational use. The terms mostly dictate that it is not for commercial use. Otherwise the cost of the initial license + maintenance are quite high. Cinema 4D comes up more often when motion graphics are involved.

Do note that like in retouching, the software is just a toolset. You have to actually know what to do with it. It's interface still has some amount of legacy baggage, so it will take you a while to get used to it.

There are a lot of details that aren't necessarily obvious to a beginner. An example would be that generating a tweak node on a vertex can corrupt your history due to the order in which these things are applied. You have to build up an idea of when to delete history when modeling. Setting up simulations or rigs requires some things that might be part of history, so you don't want to mess that up. Also unlike photoshop, undo doesn't always work perfectly.

[SteveH11]

Re: Redundancy approaching

Thank you Klev,
I will investigate a bit further and like you say initially see how I get on with the software. I am good at learning new software so I will see how I get on.
Thanks

[Luma]

Re: Redundancy approaching

Hi SteveH11,

I found learning 'compositing' using Adobe After Effect very rewarding. It's like retouching for moving images and if you're familiar with Photoshop layers and filters, then After Effects is quite forgiving to newcomers.

Another idea could be becoming a 'colourist'. A colourist specialises I grading images and movies and giving it that final 'polished' look. DaVinci Resolve is a fantastic high-end bit of software used by a lot of professional colourists. It's also a free bit of software (they make their money from the hardware that can be used with, but it still works well without it).

Anyway, they are a couple of ideas that might take your fancy.

Thanks

[klev]

Re: Redundancy approaching

Thank you Klev,
I will investigate a bit further and like you say initially see how I get on with the software. I am good at learning new software so I will see how I get on.
Thanks

You may want to know your way around certain software, but that doesn't help you unless you can do something specific with it. Modeling and setting up shader stacks are totally different from just interacting with the software. You should have a very good idea what you hope to accomplish or it won't provide any benefit.

You mentioned Cinema 4D and maya. Both have vast toolsets. Maya has modeling tools, a rendering plugin called mental ray, rigging and animation tools, and several ways to interface with its API. It also has various solvers (fluid, cloth, etc). There are other rendering packages that are commonly used with Maya, such as vray and PRman. Cinema 4D has the same list of things, although some aren't included in the basic package (Autodesk merged maya unlimited and maya complete many years ago after they acquired Alias).

It's easy to drift with large software packages if you have a pretty good idea what you want to do but aren't quite sure. Some of it isn't that intuitive. Modeling has a very top down approach. You have to be careful that you don't get into the habit of tweaking vertices one by one too much, or you'll run out of time. There's a lot of other stuff. Also be careful not to spend too much time in orthographic views. You need to twirl things around to get an idea of how they will look from various angles.

[SteveH11]

Re: Redundancy approaching

Hi Luma

Thanks for the ideas. I have just been watching some compostiting videos on YouTube. Looks really interesting, cheers for the info

[SteveH11]

Re: Redundancy approaching

Hi Klev,

I think I would like to try Cinema 4D and see how I go and what work I can get. Many thanks

[Luma]

Re: Redundancy approaching

Hi SteveH11,

Best of luck and I hope you have fun with the 3D software. My advice (and this completely supports what Klev was saying), Cinema 4D a huge programs that can do a lot. Just as an example, we use Maya at my place of work but we have people who specialise in modelling, others that specialise in lighting, others that only render. These guys have spent years just studying these aspects of the software.
While its good to have an overview of the whole lot, I strongly recommend learning Cinema 4D by picking a project to work on rather than just picking through the various tutorials out there. You need to have an end goal otherwise it will be very overwhelming.

Have fun!

[Shoku]

Re: Redundancy approaching

This is a great place to start:

http://www.digitaltutors.com/11/index.php

I picked up Maya at version 5.0 and over the years drifted into Lightwave, which I found much more user friendly and efficient. But whatever software you choose the concepts are the same, it's just the procedures that may be different.

[SteveH11]

Re: Redundancy approaching

Hi

Thank you both for your help and advice. I will look at the link. I appreciate your guidance everyone