Just to keep it short essentially I’m looking at using already made assets or using plugins to help me get over the physical modeling hump as I am not minded in that way.
I am a cinematographer/sound design guy and would like to use assets to make short films and bring my scripts to life. I suppose my desire is to learn rigging/lighting/animation…etc and come up with a custom work flow for my needs.
Could anyone recommend how they would tackle this in my shoes starting as a beginner. Also any plugins/asset libraries that you feel are absolute must haves on my scenario?
I just purchased the super hive blender essentials to start learning.
I think you should still know the basics of modeling if you want top learn the rest, it’s necessary to have at least some basic notions of it for rigging.
If you are starting from scratch, I would like to make sure you have realistic expectations. If modeling is hard for you, just be aware that rigging, animation and rendering are each as difficult as modeling and there are people who have made specialist careers in each. It’s definitely possible to learn those topics, just don’t expect it to be quick and easy.
For a beginner, I would suggest approaching Blender without expectations at first. You won’t be able to make the movie of your dreams as your first project (and even if you could, it would be a shame to waste your dream project on the time period where your skills aren’t worthy of it).
At first, I would say just start learning tools and workflows for the sake of it, making small projects that can make use of what you have studied. Eventually, you will have a good idea of what it means to make an animated movie in Blender and if it’s a good art form for you and then you can start to think bigger and bigger.
If your main skill is script writing, maybe you could find more experienced artists to team with to make a movie. That would make a production easier and possible sooner. Though even in that case, it’s still a good idea for you to know the general process first so you can structure the production in a way that makes sense and so you can have realistic expectations about what can and can’t be done.
And don’t hesitate to ask for help here, we can point you to more specific ressources if you have questions about a topic in particular or help with problems in your projects.
As a cinematographer you’ll enjoy setting up environments and lights and materials and will get far with less headache.
As someone with scripts for short films you probably want to start with animating things that are already properly rigged. Then find free well modeled characters online that aren’t already rigged and try rigging those. You will find not-so-well-modeled things that you want to pose or animate and you’ll have to cleanup the geometry so you can rig them. This will send you into the realm of modeling.
