I played around with Blender when I was in college back in 2012-2013. Cycles render was just introduced back then. Blender and it's community has come a long way since then in this short span of time.
My starting point was http://www.blenderguru.com/ (for general tips and tricks), reading about ray tracing(for understanding why my renders were not up to the mark), anatomy of physical shapes(for sculpting) and watching a lot of behind the scene VFX breakdown videos(to understand their construction). Frankly, my humble computer back then was not capable of running 3DS Max or Maya.
Apart from this, a lot of articles regarding photography helped. A keen attention to detail and huge amounts of patience is required(while watching your renders take hours if you have the wrong graphics card).
My starting point was http://www.blenderguru.com/ (for general tips and tricks), reading about ray tracing(for understanding why my renders were not up to the mark), anatomy of physical shapes(for sculpting) and watching a lot of behind the scene VFX breakdown videos(to understand their construction). Frankly, my humble computer back then was not capable of running 3DS Max or Maya.
Apart from this, a lot of articles regarding photography helped. A keen attention to detail and huge amounts of patience is required(while watching your renders take hours if you have the wrong graphics card).