Say I had the next year with an extreme amount of freetime, How

>>508660
A very powerful renderfarm

>>508660
Depending on what you're going after. Do you want a cartoony thing like ice age, or realistic fantasy like the wc3 trailers, how long do you want it to be? You need mocap in any case, an animation capable 3d program, a renderfarm, a very good pre-production. Seriously, you need to decide everything at start, so you can do it one by one and render it one by one, you need to start rendering as fast as possible, preferably after the first month. You need to have scenario, a sound editor, a good workflow.

>After Effects seems to be the best video rendering/editing program

Nuke is way better than AE.

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What are the easiest and hardest types of CGI to make?

>>508691
>What are the easiest and hardest types of CGI to make?

I'm gonna answer your question with autistic accuracy:
2016 the easiest CGI to create is probably that you get if you open a 3D software, create a mesh of your liking and hit 'render' using the default settings.
The hardest type of CGI to make is bleeding edge stuff where you have to actually invent new methods and algorithms to realize what you're trying to accomplish.
Like the best of Hollywood-tier CGI that pushes the envelope of what's been done up to today's date.

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>>508691
>easiest and hardest
i think you should expend a few months just getting familiar with the basics (eg. sign up for an online course or just torrent one). some people that start "everydays" projects tend to progress alot faster (since they must post different stuff each day)
http://beeple-crap.com/everydays.php
beeple also let people download his projects (maybe try to dissect some of 'em)
you could also try learning other things like photography (helps ALOT with photorealism/understanding camera stuff, etc) and maybe even some >>>/gd/ for composition/typography/color theory and also some >>>/ic/ basics will help you alot)
-pic related
b.t.w AE is not really for "rendering" but for video editing,
Zbrush + KeyShot + Photoshop

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>>508664
>>508665
>>508678
>>508691
i think you guys are way ahead of OP
>>508694
this guy gets it, but I would argue that Keyshot is a bit lazy when it comes to rendering

>>508660 (OP)
OP, it depends of what you want to accomplish. If you have a team of 3 people, I would suggest that one concentrate on modeling (Zbrush + Maya or 3dsmax), one on textures, shading, lighting and rendering (Photoshop + substance, Vray or Arnold or Renderman), and the last one on rigging and animation if that's what you guys aim for. After that, it's a matter of rendering passes and compositing in a nice way, which is easier with any Adobe tools than with Nuke (even if it is more powerful, AfterFX can suit your needs nicely)

Learning about color, composition, photography will greatly help your process, watch a lot of tutorials, learn from the best (ILM, Pixar, WETA, etc.) and read about "classic" art, movies and comic books. It's a long, long way, but very interesting, and you will be amazed of what you can accomplish after a single year. Godspeed anon!

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>>508660
There's literally thousands of 3d tutorials on you tube for any give software.

Seriously fuck school, fuck a 3d vfx team. All you need is the computer power - massive ram, massive gfx card, software (Maya,3DS Max, Zbrush, PhotoShop) on multiple computers, and the persistence to learn as you go to make it happen.

There's full body 3d scans available online.

Basically you need $6,000 and you're good to go.

>>508660
>million dollar budgets and huge teams
motivation and man-hours are the main factor for results

>>508660
bump