Reply To: This lesson is going way too fast…

Thanks for the clarification @ohem and @punkrockpea. Again I admit that yes, after 10+ years of doing this stuff I’m skeptical of my ability to relate to and convey CG concepts at a purely beginner level. So surely some of the issue is me. But in watching the video, I still stand behind my approach.

I believe the beginner context is merely introducing the idea of “texture baking”, which I think I did and which is evidenced by your feedback. However once we get into the specifics of types of map baking we’re entering into intermediate and advanced levels, which this course is not intended to teach – just point toward. The specifics of what a normal map is or multi-res is less important in this course. My goal was to demo the concept of those things in the context of baking, which I think I did well enough. After watching again I don’t know how I could have better demo’d the effect of a normal map and baking high-resolution data from multi-res.

While I’m not a perfect instructor and the course is certainly cannot perfect, perhaps on your end there’s some incorrect expectations for this course. I would argue a beginner shouldn’t come to this course expecting to learn all the ins and outs of normal maps or multi-res. You should only come to this lesson expecting to learn the concept of baking. However in order to execute a baking workflow on your own – which is maybe your expectation – you’ll need to understand the specifics of normal maps and multi-res. We have other content aimed at those specific things, but this course is not in that scope. This blog article details normal maps and this lesson explains multi-res.

As for the “as you remember, requires a light source” bit, I [obscurely] touched on that idea in this previous lesson of the course starting at 1:30 (where I mention the lighting information thanks to the default lamp in the scene). To your point, it’s not likely viewers will remember that reference..but I also mention that several times in other courses covering texture painting in the viewport. Making so many courses, my memories can weave in and out.

Anyway, I hope this explanation helps. We’ve had a lot of people learn well from this course and the Learning Flow it’s part of, so I know it a solid curriculum to some extent. If we get an overwhelming amount of criticism like this, rest assured we’ll re-record it. We’ll likely have to do that anyway once Blender 2.8 is released.