CG for Photographers?

#1

Hello everyone! I found this site through this Kotaku post and I was hoping for some guidance through what seems to be a very complicated and multifaceted field.

I’m a photographer (www.zackdezon.com), primarily focused in portraits but with a few still-life clients, and I’m starting to notice a lot of the high-end work going to CG renders (IKEA, Apple, probably many I’m missing due to the incredible detail these days). Rather than end up on the wrong side of a technological sea change (I’ve seen far too many film shooters dig their feet into the sand and lose their careers to digital upstarts like myself), I’d love to start learning about what goes into creating CG still-life photography (and perhaps high-end CG portraits, too).

Where do I start? Are there affordable programs I can use to teach myself (currently learning Blender on Lynda.com)? Good tutorials I can follow? What workflows should I know if photorealistic product images are to be my bread and butter? How much of it involves 3D capture, and how much is built from scratch (or a mix of the two)? Are there reputable continuing education/community colleges in NYC for this field?

Sorry for the flood of questions; I’m just a little overwhelmed by the scope of it all.

Thanks so much!

#2

You should look into downloading Maya. It’s free for educational use, and it’s also industry standard. There’s some on Maya on Lynda, but if you’re serious, try a digital tutor subscription. It’s not too pricey but you will learn almost every aspect you need to know.

Even if you don’t get a subscription right away there are a lot of tutorials on youtube as well to learn Maya, but it doesn’t follow an organized course list like digital tutors does.

I’m not sure what you mean by 3d capture. Most of the models are built from geometry in a 3d scene, and then images are basically projected onto them. Sometimes a high dynamic range panorama image is taken of the scene so that you can fake realistic reflections. There are special material types that allow you to change refraction or reflection of objects, as well as color and texture.

I do warn you once you go down this path there is no stopping point, there is an infinite amount of things you can learn in 3d.

#3

An uncle of mine works for Renault as a product photographer. He has been doing it for years and in recent times it has shifted more away from all photography and towards CG. Now instead of doing all the photos for the brochures, most of my uncles work is taking reference photos and sending them to CG people so they can make the models, textures etc. I think he also takes the photos for HDRI environments and backplates, but making the actual HDRI is also done by CG people.
So while the photographer and his high end camera equipment are still needed to take quality photos with no distortion, noise or burnt-out highlights, the role is more secondary than main now and is probably serving the CG department with whatever it needs in the way of images.

#4

Some people use 3d scaning services for realistic models

http://www.3dscanstore.com

You can buy models from other places that already come premade .

But most photographers I know rather use photoshop.Why CGI really?