Where did you learn CG

[Cesar R]

I began to play with CG back in highschool when i was a freshman. And through the 4 years of HS I taught myself 3d max 1.2, then 2, then 2.5... and so on. Once out of HS, I went to IFAC, a specialiced college to get a deg in computer animation. However I left there to persue a deg in architecture at an university. I can say that I basically taugh my self CG, even though I had some formal studies, most of what I know is self taught. What's everyones' story on learning CG ?

[STRAT]

i havent had 1 lesson in my life. (other than tuts, which i dont often use)

 

i started off on Autocad rel 9 about 14 years ago, learned all the 2d bits, then when rel 10 came out i learned all the 3d bits too.

 

i helped beta test 3dstudio rel 1 dos version when that was released about 10 or 11 years ago, learning that thoughrly from scratch. thats how i got into the world of 3d basically.

[nisus]

Hi all,

 

Héhé... I got very funny story!

As a kid I was always fascinated by architects allround knowledge and skills (DaVinci etc.), so being 5 or so I knew I wanted to do 'calculations and drawings', or become an architect.

At that age, extremely fascinated by drawings and paintings, I searched techniques to make them myself, but since I didn't knew how to start, nor attended artschool at that time, my drawings didn't look the same as the masters pieces.

I found one 'solution' to my prob, where I could stand up against the 'masters': - hum hum - knittery patterns! I loved to color the squares on mathematecial paper. I created lots of images that way, and since my mum knitted them afterwards, I even wore my designs.

To create 'complex' images in these days (mostly of our three city towers: St Nicholas Church, Belfrey, St Bavo's Cathedral) I had to solve all kind of different tricks like simulating gradients/many colors with a very limited color palet (i.e. dithering), creating smooth gradients

(i.e. anti-aliasing) or curves (i.e. resolution).

Later on, I abandoned thes ideas (mainly because I didn't want to wear these home-made-sweaters anymore... lol!)

A few years later the amiga (and eventually dpaint) woke it all up again, seeing demo's and early games. Fascinated by the early animations, I 'discovered' that those images where made up of an array of squares (i.e. pixels) just like my old-time-knittery-patterns. But I didn't had software to draw pixel per pixel until a few months later I bought a pc with a soundblaster to receive a free copy of PCAnimate: a 2d cel-animaion packet of only 1.44Mb! This program had the ability to zoom up to 1600%, so I went pixel-painting for a year or so. I also tried small animations, but as this was sooo hard to do and very time-consuming that I figured out another way.

Some time later I set my hands on 3dsdosR2 but it was too complicated for a kid. I knew 3d was the way to go, but I didn't understood it yet. I started to learn early isometric drawings (once again on mathematical (squared)paper, got a few classes on how to draw through different views and kept on doing these things a lot as a hobby.

While studying architecture I was introduced to Autocad R10 and R11 but these classes really where crap. Things where so blurred at the time, teachers who only knew 'star' (cad on unix) had to teach Autocad which they barely managed. In those days, there was no-one around to ask these things to. I bought books on Autocad and studied those. Doing lots of research on the computers of our local bookshop I managed to import not translated books on Autocad that were more up to date to the software. In one of those books I've seen an image created in 3dsdos and started looking for a version. Finally I got the link between the 3d of autocad (vector) and the pixelpaintings I used to make (bitmap).

Once I set my hands on 3dsdosR3, I modelled and designed things in autocad and rendered them in 3ds. Photoshop replaced my pcanimate and I was off. I ordered every available book on 3ds and photoshop(new riders rocks!) and studied all of them.

 

So this is the story of my early years...

 

rgds

 

nisus