Reply To: Very bad

[Derek Chestnut]

@Kent: expert response. I’m working on my submission for CORE | Fundamentals of 3D Mesh Modeling in Blender, and I’ll be seeing you soon in the CORE | Fundamentals of Digital Sculpting in Blender course, which is one of the courses I’m personally most excited for.

@Topic: it blows my mind just how complex 3D art really is…

I remember getting frustrated when I was just starting out, about each of my models having flat shading and not understanding why my projects didn’t look like others. Then, I discovered smooth shading but became exponentially more frustrated when, after applying it, my models looked like aliens from another planet; with perseverance and instruction from the team here at CG Cookie, I learned how to get the results I was looking for by explicitly telling the program what needs to be identified as a sharp edge, etc…

This is to say…one of the hardest truths I had to come terms with as a beginner is that Blender is a tool; when wielded with inexperienced hands (like myself and my aliens) it yields inexperienced results. Kent and the other instructors do a fantastic job of teaching Blender, the tool (use this command here for this result; akin to your frustration with shape keys, etc) but where they excel, in my opinion, is teaching concept and theory, which is the knowledge base you can take with you to other platforms like Maya, etc and achieve the same level of success.

It’s kind of like learning multiple programming languages. Each language uses its own syntax (a combination of braces, brackets, colons and semicolons, etc in predefined places) to achieve the same thing, but the syntax isn’t the marketable skill, as every language will have its own documentation for syntax reference. The marketable skillset is defined by your understanding of the fundamental concepts and theories existing within the subject; i.e., why does every language utilize looping, conditional branching, variables, and constants, etc? The marketable skillset is understanding what looping is and how it is utilized; implementation will always be just a few steps away if you understand the fundamentals, because every software has documentation to refer to.

In 3D, we have modeling, sculpting, texturing, lighting, etc, so laser focus on the fundamentals, and once you’ve a solid foundation, come back to HUMAN and blow your own mind with how much easier it is than your first go around.