anyone here made the leap to 3D/CGI ?

if so what steps did you take towards it , currently looking into developing my skills in this area .

My son is a master of Maya. He made the body, between the model and the fin, for the mermaid in my portfolio. https://www.modelmayhem.com/portfolio/pic/35035502 We have made numerous "borg" with this program. I always used a real model as the basis of these images. The CGI blended seamlessly with the photo, in every case. You can use drop shadows, etc.. I installed Maya on my computer, and got some pointers from my son, but the learning curve was very steep, and I had already invested the better part of a decade, at that time, in learning everything I needed to know about Photoshop. I hope you have better luck, (and more rigor than I had), with your CGI program. It can expand your possibilities dramatically.
-Don

still learning the 3d part. A lot of hours into training is what to expect for making the leap. We're still working with freelance 3d artist while we get better and more confident and start to producing it in house. But overall is a great experience to combine photography and CGI.

Check some of our work before and afters Photography and CGI at

http://www.addigitalworks.com/casestudies.html

^ Very nice work! I've seen that rivers monsters one somewhere before, good tv show as well. The bridge is the Samuel Beckett bridge in Dublin, i've taken a few photos of it myself, it's a beautiful design and shape.

No idea about cgi but looks amazing and tough.

Are you looking to be a generalist or do you want to focus on one thing?
The main areas:
modelling/sculpting
texturing
lighting/rendering/compositing
rigging
animation
simulations (hair, cloth, fluids, particles, etc.)

Back when I had a little bit of experience but not too much I decided to create a project with specific goals, mine was a rigged, textured, animated character- so for modelling I wanted it to be low poly and deformation friendly, for rigging I wanted IK/FK switching and a face rig, etc. Each goal helped me to learn a lot but more importantly become familiar with the software and help manuals. Trust me when I say a 3D program will make Photoshop look like MS Paint.

For my backgrounds and props I model in Maya. Sometimes in ZBrush.

I texture, light and render in Maxwell.

For print work, those are probably your steps:

Hard surface modeling / Organic, complex modeling
Surface material descriptions and texturing
Lighting
Rendering.

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Integrating 3D with photography (compositing)

Used to work with Lightwave before returning to photography.
Planning to move to ZBrush/Maya for human model works in the future.

If you want to add 3d elements to your works you should learn Maya/3DS Max and ZBrush (of course you can also try Blender, Modo, Mudbox and other stuff  but these 3 are the most popular at the moment). Then you can add some another software like rendering engines (Vray, Arnold etc.), nDo/dDo, Substance Designer/Painter, MARI etc.

For learning you can try for example video tutorials from:
- Digital-Tutors
- Gnomon Workshops
- Eat3D
- 3D Motive
- ZBrush Workshops
- Viscorbel

And take some online classes from:
- CGWorkshops (I think it's from CGSociety)
- CGWMA
- Gnomon Online School
- CGMA 3d Academy
- ZBrush Workshops Master Classes

Personally I make my 3d works in 3DS Max, Vray and ZBrush with some help of nDo, dDo and xNormal. And if I must choose the best site for start learning I will choose Digital-Tutors. After that you can try something from Gnomon/Eat3D.

If you would like to see some of my works there are my 2 photo manipulations with self-made 3d elements:
http://www.lukaszliszko.com/portfolio/oriental/
http://www.lukaszliszko.com/portfolio/t … r-fan-art/
You can also check my other 3d works in "3D" category

Vray for anything

I've been trying to get comfortable with Zbrush for quite a while now. Reason I chose it is because it lets you start and be creative faster than maya and max which seem a bit too technical and way too powerful for a beginner.
Zbrush is also more fun to learn but things get complicated soon enough and you will have to study alot.
And then there is anatomy which you will also have to learn at some point as well as creature and mech logic for character design.

Good luck

In my experience zbrush's strength is in creating the materials for objects, and artists will use it solely for that while creating their scene in other software and rendering with their preferred engine.

I think it would be wiser to start learning how to do this in Photoshop's 3D, considering Adobe's going to be evolving this.  There's not many apps you can paint directly on your model.. Much less use the healing tool, etc.

Materials, rendering, texturing, polypainting etc. are a whole different world.
But creating a dragon, a mech, an alien, a monster, a human, or whatever else that does not exist in real life that you cannot take a photo of, starting with just a sphere and dynamesh is priceless especially when starting

its a pretty big learning curve.  I taught myself for a few years as a kid. There are plenty of tutorials and docs on the internet. Then I TA'd at university for two years in a 3d modeling class. I'd say take a class. It will cut through the weeks of tinkering time.  And most of all realize that it is definitely a form of mixed media. 3d work is nothing without strong art foundations.

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I tend to think that, with a retoucher's background, you should better go towards matte painting….