CGI and Special Effects - 3D Environments and Models

Computer Generated Imagery has come to dominate nearly everything we see nowadays, nearly every major film release contains considerable amounts of special effects.

The best way for me to cover this subject area is by presenting what I see as the main processes making up the basic backbone to all special effects and CGI.

Fully 3D environments and models:
I like to think of this area of art as my personal favorite, but only in the concept of it as a medium, not an actual art form in itself, something i will only agree to in rare circumstances. I perceive 3D modeling and digital visual generation as what should be the main attributes of a digital artist. Though I have always personally preferred to classify a better digital artist by the amount he/she experiments with mediums in the most unusual fashion.

But for this post I'll be briefly looking into the more well established methods of CGI, where everything you see has been crafted using software. The main points to consider about fully virtual images and movies:

- The process requires no real actors, or anything captured in real life, usually with the exception of textures. However, textures and voice acting can be generated/emulated if so desired.

- According to the complexity of technology, skill and budget (for major films) available, scenes with ultra-realism can be achieved (a nice example)

- Modeling can take on many forms, the processes I am familiar with are polygon editing, particle/metaball compostions and spline modeling. Though modeling can take on higher forms involving computer algorithms for generation of shapes, organic or abstract. Fractal art is a good example of this.
This is a good opportunity for me to link to some basic free software available for modeling
polygon based modeling - wings 3D
Spline, polygon, particle editing/generation - Blender (this can be used for polygon editing and many many other features. one of the best free 3D editors there is, as you may already know!)
Fractal generation - Apophysis

Since joining deviant art a long time ago I have mainly worked with still images, creating abstract shapes and environments, some of my influences have come from websites like http://www.cgsociety.org/ and http://www.depthcore.com/ .