Good Intro to Animation/Graphics Material?

An anonymous reader asks: "My wife, who is not at all a computer geek, wants to get more into computer graphics, with a desire to get into 3D and animation. She knows Photoshop well, but doesn't have much in the way of a computer background. I keep our computers running, but am graphics- and art-challenged. I'd like some recommendations on how to get her started: Books, URLs, software packages. For software, Linux or Windows doesn't matter to me, but I'd prefer free or relatively inexpensive. Please, help me turn my wife into a graphics geek!"

OpenGL?

[krs-one]

You didn't specify if she was interested in learning how to program graphics, or just make pretty pictures. Personally, I would rather program them rather than just make them in a program like Lightwave or other 3D package.

First, if she wants to learn to program graphics, I suggest she visit my site, openglforums.com [openglforums.com]. I think its a pretty good resource on OpenGL programming.

However, if your wife just wants to make pretty graphics, there are a few free or inexpensive programs available. For example, there is Blender 3D [blender.nl] (for Linux), or MilkShape 3D [milkshape3d.com] (for Windows). The latter is about $25-30USD, and well worth the money.

Hope this helps.

-Vic

Maya Personal Learning Edition

[Troodon]

Though a professional tool costing several thousand dollars AliasWavefront [aliaswavefront.com] offer a free version of Maya, which is a stalwart of the CG animation industry. You can either download it for free or buy a cheap cd with Maya Personal Learning Edition [aliaswavefront.com] on it.

This recommendation comes with a proviso, the PL edition brands everything with an obvious watermark and isnt as fast in rendering images as the full product. But its more than sufficient to play about with.

Another item which may be of interest is Learning Maya | Beginner's Guide [digitalriver.com], A DVD tutorial with a copy of Maya PL edition upon it, $20 or so. Looks a rather handy introduction, however the plain Maya PL edition comes with good tutorials and a pdf version of a book introducing CG animation.