How to Learn VFX or Visual Effects
I know you got inspired by watching the visual effects shown in movies and TV shows and want to create your own to express your thoughts and story in a completely different way than usual.
I got interested in visual effects by watching behind-the-scenes of how VFX in movies was made. The layer-by-layer breakdown was really mesmerizingly cool to watch and even now!
So, How one can start learning VFX?
First, you need to learn the basic tools, I would recommend the following:-
- Adobe Photoshop
- Adobe After Effects
- Blender 3D
You can say that by learning the above tools, you can almost create any sort of visual effects and CGI you want. One can only do enough, so you have to be good at a single thing, I’m not talking about the above tools but the subfields in the VFX industry that includes commonly:-
- Compositing different elements together
- Modeling and sculpting
- Rigging and Animation
You can’t be good at all things but one. But you have to learn all of these, even the basic knowledge would help. You have to be the jack of all trades to be able to produce your own VFX shots.
The most important thing you want to consider is that the VFX is a fusion of both science and art. So, it does not have a repetitive or defined way of doing things, not to be confused with a pipeline which is another thing that we won't discuss today as our main focus is how we can learn VFX as a solo creator.
Interactions Iterations and Iterations
The more we iterate and the more we experiment with things in tools, the more we get to learn the art of VFX. We just can’t sit back and watch tutorials only but we have to do experimenting things. It will ultimately be creating our mindset.
It’s a mindset game!
Our main goal is to build the mindset of a VFX artist. In simple words, we have to experiment to a degree where we can do anything we want on any type of software. We do not have to depend on a particular software. If we know how things work then we can easily adapt to any tool.
That was it! Also, it was my personal opinion of how you can learn VFX as it's how I learned. So be open-minded do research and do what you feel is a better way of learning visual effects.
