I’m am currently working on a game of my own and though the game is 2D I am considering doing cinematics. on average would someone learn enough in about a year to make decent cinematics (about like final fantasy 7). If I’m not able to do cinematics then I’ll probably just use hand drawn stills, it may even be better for the atmosphere of the game. but I’ll decide that when I can see what cinematics I can do.
Blender can make sweet movies! (Albeit short, unless you have a render farm…) Here’s the link the Blender movies page: http://www.blender.org/cms/Movies.160.0.html
I can’t help you aside from that, since I’m still learning to, sorry :P…
ah final phantasy uses some dynamics and render options blender cannot suport you with.
what in detail do you want to do?
Cekhunen brings up a good point, Blender is not as far along as some of the proprietary tools that Square, Pixar, etc. use. However, time and time again, we learn that most of those effects are possible in blender, you just have to learn the program, know it front and back, and then start experimenting.
As for the learning curve, I would say it depends on how much time you want to put it. If you put in one hour a day to learning it for the next year, then the next year you may be able to start. I caution against what I just said though. I have been using blender for 2.5-3 years now, and I am no where near capable of producing anything like Square or Pixar. And thats given that I took a short break a couple of years ago, but prior to that I was putting pretty much all of my free time into learning blender (anywhere from 3-14 hours a day). So I might have been a little slow, since I was completely new to 3D.
On that note, if you are coming completely new into 3d expect a different learning curve than what you would experience if you came from say Max or Maya, which are fundamentally similar to Blender in the aspect that they are all 3D applications.
So could you produce something like Square?
-Maybe
Could you do it in one year?
-Yes (Provided, you have the software, hardware, and know-how, not to mention time)
Could you learn to do it in one year?
-Maybe (If you can put in the time)
So, I guess in short the answer to your question is Yes, you can learn blender in one year. But don’t forget that you will always be a student and have to get up to date on the most current stuff.
I hope that helped!
well then I’ll probably go the hand drawn approach and still use blender for fun. because even though I can’t do much with it yet it is still pretty fun. but since I’ll be spending most of the time making the game I might not have time to learn much else.