Upon completing this segment of Blender education, I'm seeking a logically ordered series of video tutorials that could guide me through the subsequent stages of a full project—specifically the animation, camera work, sound, lighting and compositing aspects not covered in this course. I see there are a few courses mentioned above, however, I was hoping I could get some advice on the order someone would implement the remaining items for all things not in this tutorial as a numbered or bulleted list of some time.
Could a compilation of such resources be assembled, reflecting the likely sequence these topics would have been presented had the course continued? My goal is to progressively build upon this course, blending various educational materials to craft a CG clip akin to those seen in professional workflows. This structured approach would greatly assist in organizing the tasks ahead and provide a clear understanding of the entire process from conception to completion.
All of those stages of the pipeline, modeling, texturing, animation, camera work, sound, lighting, compositing, are each a whole world on their own, it's going to take a while to learn. We usually have the choice of being a generalist, knowing enough of each topic, or focusing primarily on just one and having a lot of expertise in it. For example lighting, you can place lights on a 3D viewport easy, but to light scenes, the technical challenges, the thought process behind the choices to make an appealing composition, that's a whole profession right there. So much goes into animation as well that takes a life time just to be a so so animator. So that is to say it will take time and it's more about practicing a lot and developing artistic skills than it is watching videos.
But to answer your question, courses that go through a full production cycle are hard to find I'd say, they take a lot of time to produce and then the material is so dense that they take so much hours of videos. You would normally find a course hat covers some parts of each topic and put together you get a generalist sense of it all. Here on CG Cookie there are a couple of courses that might interest you, some are old, some are newer. Linking you up:
Animation:
https://cgcookie.com/courses/animation-bootcamp
https://cgcookie.com/courses/make-your-blender-character-run-how-to-animate-a-run-cycle
https://cgcookie.com/courses/acting-for-animators
Modeling:
https://cgcookie.com/courses/sessions-minimalism
https://cgcookie.com/courses/sessions-macro
https://cgcookie.com/courses/blender-mesh-modeling-bootcamp
https://cgcookie.com/courses/modeling-a-sci-fi-helmet-in-blender
Big size Courses:
https://cgcookie.com/courses/short-film-character-production
https://cgcookie.com/courses/compositing-transformer-vfx-in-blender
https://cgcookie.com/courses/pothead-create-a-hard-surface-character-in-blender
https://cgcookie.com/courses/human-realistic-portrait-creation-with-blender
https://cgcookie.com/courses/game-character-modeling-with-blender
Camera:
https://cgcookie.com/courses/directing-the-camera-in-blender
Lighting:
https://cgcookie.com/courses/fundamentals-of-digital-lighting-in-blender
Shading:
https://cgcookie.com/courses/shading-the-sci-fi-helmet
This is perfect, thank you! Can I ask you or any of the instructors for that matter if this course were to continue what would the natural progression be?
i.e First camera, then lighting, then sound ect... I understand this might vary and is mostly up to the individual, but it might help me lay the guide lines for what I could/should target next.
I think it goes as follows:
There is an artist with an idea, he wants to see it be a reality, so he goes to the big suit and tie guys to ask for money. This guys have no artistic skill but they like making more and more money and the artist convinces them to finance the production for his idea. Great, deal is sealed, it's a go.
First thing is the concept artist, you need concepts visualizations to go by off. So the concept artists are the first in the line, they produce the look and feel, how the world is going to look. After all of that is defined, now the modelers have concept arts to start modeling, so the building of 3D models begin. Now the models go to the texturing department, here texture artists make all the models look cool with awesome textures and shading.
Now that we have lots of models all textured and with materials, you can pass it along to a couple of places. Previsualizations of the shots can start taking place, layout artists can build where the camera is going to go, how a shot is going to be framed. Riggers can start rigging so animators can start animating, they have the models linked in, they can work an animations even as the texture artist are texturing models and the layout is taking place. Look Dev is taking place at the same time, lighting the shots, making appealing compositions. Voice actors are getting their scripts and making characters come to life. Sound is starting to get added. We are in the middle of the hurricane production. It's a synergy of departments feeding of off each other. And the suits and tie people want to know how their budget is being spent, so now they also want to make choices and changes, but the director says they should keep their paws away.
And now shots can start being rendered so it can be passed to the compositing department where it will all come together. As I understand it there is little editing when it comes to 3D animations. Editing basically takes place during pre-production as you plan what shots you want rendered. And now in the end those sequences of images are finally coming out, after the compositing department made some good old compositing magic. Voice acting is getting placed, music is getting placed, color grading. In the end, hopefully the movie is going to be a success and the investors will make a profit. You never know, after all the hard work hopefully it has that magic to it.