In the age of Computer Generated Graphics and media, one can clearly see the importance of CG not only in feature films, and TV shows, but also in short films and advertisements.
CG is especially useful in print or screen media.
With the advent of mass media, CG not only helps media companies in portraying scenes that may be dangerous for actors but also scenes that requires props that are impossible to acquire due to financial or logistical problems.
These are evident in large films especially Hollywood Films that have huge budgets of which a huge percentage goes to the hiring of companies for special effects that use CG.
Perhaps, the most popular of which is George Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic or more commonly called ILM.
Visual Effects Companies like ILM are responsible for many jaw-dropping scenes in Hollywood Films such as those in the Transformers Films, Star Trek, Avatar, Pirates of the Caribbean series, among others.
One of the first major decisions one has to undertake when choosing to learn CG is the software to use.
There are many softwares available that can aid students as well as professional CG artists in their chosen field.
Two of the most popular commercial software is 3DS Max and Maya, both of which are produced by the company, Autodesk.
I cannot speak for myself when saying which of these 2 I prefer more because each of them have options not found in the other.
Both of these softwares are quite expensive costing about $3,500.
00 but fortunately, there is a free open source alternative which can be more than helpful in aiding CG beginners.
Blender is available free of charge from their website and is available for 3 of the most popular OSs - Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.
One may feel that the best investment to mastering CG is through enrolling in a CG course.
Other people may see differently.
There are literally tens of thousands of free tutorials in the internet about CG.
A simple search in Google about "blender automotive modeling tutorial" returns hundreds of tutorials that aid beginners in modelling a car from starting with the modeling of the first polygon to making finishing touches to the car model.
Anything can be learned just by searching from a variety of CG dedicated websites in the internet.
And most of the tutorials under these websites contains categories depending on the software used in the tutorial.
Although self learning CG with the aid of the internet may be seen as slow to some, many professional CG artists started this way.
Serious CG beginners may feel that enrolling will give them the fastest route to a professional CG career, but the beauty in self learning is that it can be applied to anyone, even people in totally different careers.
After familiarization with all the CG processes such as modeling, rigging, texturing, painting, lighting, and animation in Blender or any other software, it will not be difficult to adapt to other software to broaden your portfolio.
These are just a few tips to help you plan how to start a career in CG art.
Hopefully, you will realize soon enough, that learning CG is fun and exciting.
You only need to start practicing and the fun follows.