ALEXANDRE GINNSZ

Note that if you plan on making a career out of this: In every "serious" post facility, CGI and 3D compositing are in two different departments. In other words, those who work with Maya usually don't work with Flame and vice versa. Rarely will you get to do both. So I would start off specializing in what you want to do most, 3D comp for ex, and just get a basic knowledge of 3D modeling/animation (or vice versa). This industry is ultra competitive (and equally underpaid btw). So if you want to land a job in it, you need to be the best at what you're going to be doing. Being the best at one of these things is hard enough as it is... Some one wrote Flame was high-end and yet "old school". #1: Make up your mind. #2: Yes, it is high-end, top of the line even before getting into proprietary software by WETA or ILM, but "old school"??? LOL! It's the gold standard of any top post production company! But I agree, this is probably not what you want to start with! Start with something like Combustion instead. It might be discontinued but you can still find it online. There is even an Apple version of it. Better yet, give Smoke a shot. As for 3D modeling, I'm gonna stick with Maya. Yes the manual is very thick and there is a lot to learn, but start playing with it a little and you'll find that it's very user friendly and you'll be making pretty cool stuff pretty quickly... Good luck. Alex Ginnsz A.G. Productions

For 3D compositing: I'm surprised no one suggested Flame or Inferno, which I believe are the top of the line. Smoke is nice too. It's a VFX and NLE in one. All of these programs have jumped from one company to another. Right now, it's Autodesk. I believe they'll give you a fully functional version of at least Smoke to learn. The new Smoke is only available for Mac, unfortunately. I had never even heard of Nuke until now. Shake came and went, it seems. I have not checked the latest version of After-Effects but back in the days (5 years ago) it was more of a motion graphics/2D compositing software. I think it's a great program though, affordable, very easy to learn, user-friendly GUI, lots of effects and plugins, and support for render farms. For 3D modeling/animation: I'm not too much into this, but I would go for Maya because it is the easiest one to learn, it's a standard in the industry, and you could make something that looks like it came out of Pixar with it, seriously. Just don't expect to be able to do it for at least 10 years. Also, I think they can give it to you for free to learn but with limitations. Coloring: DaVinci seems to be the standard at the moment. CONCLUSION Maya + Flame (+ lots of expensive hardware) and you should be all set.