@Hi_Everyone:
Welcome…The time to get comfortable really depends on the amount of effort you put into. But its not the only factor. You need a smart decision making alongside hard work to really accelerate your progress. As you mentioned you are new to CGI, so I believe the current job you have is not CGI related. So it all depends on why you want to learn 3D. You said you want to make a short movie, so first thing, what is your goal with that movie ? Is it all about fulfilling your dream or you want to make more of your movie, like using it as a demo reel to land a job in CGI industry?
Well in the first case, it’ll be much easier journey for you, but again smart decisions are needed even in learning. Mostly what happens is beginners usually get stuck in the tutorial land and its much more prevalent in Blender community. Don’t go about searching tutorials in random but go through the basics and make your way up. You’ll find some very good tutorials especially for beginners in Blendercookie site. And another advice regarding tutorials is once you learn something, don’t go into another tutorial without actually doing the previous yourself. It makes a whole lot of difference. 3D is a complex thing, and you’ll realize it can be really hard to actually memorize and understand the tools and fundamentals by just watching them. And take it from the very basics, not just the Blender, but about general CG. You might find the tutorials very much scattered all around the web but don’t just search and watch anything you find. Do care about the author and his/her experience as there are lots of videos out there that don’t deal with how’s and why’s of things but rather just present a way to do a thing. And before doing something, make sure if it is the intended way of doing it; its good to know workarounds and hacks but you should be clear about what a tool is meant to do in the first place. After that its just a matter of how much time you can give to learning.
From what Ive seen, the beginners who are from the second category seem to take a lot more time learning blender than it actually takes. And the reasons are very indirect. Its when someone wants to work professionally in the industry, and comes across blender, all sorts of problems arise. Even if someone starts fairly well, the progress halts when he comes across sorts of things, like the usual comparisons between softwares, X is better than Y things, this sucks and that rocks kind of things, and the most decisive stopper being talks about very low chances of getting a job with the knowledge of blender. And so most of the progress takes a major halt and in some cases perpetual halt. And many jump ship here and there trying other apps, and end up without a sound knowledge of one. But once you have an advanced knowledge of even a part of the whole process of CG, say for example modeling, it would be much easier for you to transfer your skills into other softwares, so don’t leave something at the middle. Go advanced and once you reach that level, it’s usually matter of months to transfer your skills to any other apps.
I’m still learning blender myself, I would put myself at an intermediate level, or early intermediate lol. I’ve Known blender for about 4 years now, but only seriously went into it from a year back. I mostly work in Photoshop, making matte paintings, and have now learning to integrate 3D elements more and more into paintings. So it takes time, depending on what you want out of the blender.
I hope this helps. have a good time learning.
