This lesson is going way too fast…

[Sid Lilja]

Hi!

This lesson is going way too fast without explaining most of the actions you do, you click through and through but nothing is really conveyed. It appears to me it you had a hard time explaining this part of the fundamentals and just went for the accomplishing methodology. I’ve no analogy to go by in relating what most modifiers do and why enabling & disabling some settings you perform works and others don’t. As of now I won’t be able to complete the quiz.

I think you should redo this lesson and make it longer for the sake of a more comprehensive and pragmatic approach.

But if you planned to have this lesson slightly incoherent you should instead focus on showing baking but with more demonstration and explain what the use for it is.

[Kent Trammell]

I apologize for the confusion. Honestly I’m afraid I do have trouble relating to absolute beginners. But I get a variety of feedback and I’m not sure how to juggle it. Literally one day I get “[your tutorials are] inspiring in their relentless thoroughness” and the next day “this is too fast and not comprehensive”.

That said, I think what’s going to help us both is understanding where you’re at with Blender and 3D in general. How would you describe your experience level?

[Sid Lilja]

I’d say beginner, while this lesson is fast and pragmatic in the context of getting “things done” it leaves fields and maps you only now touch upon as opposed to prior without conveying what their roles are; The different bake modes for example, but you do mention few will be covered later on so I don’t have to reserve myself wondering what they are – and what difference they could make in my capabilities or end product. But it still left me without the functional definition of the used mode as well what Multires means (I can go by deduction and assume multiresolution, but I shouldn’t need to guess).

The thing is; You seem to project the expectations on “us” (i.e. the beginners) knowing what those aforementioned fields are. While you guide through you’ve sequentially gone through one area after another for the sake of pragmatism. You also leave the viewer in confusion on how, and maybe why, the “weariness” on the model high res isn’t applied to the lowres. This lesson feels more fit being a practice for the texturing and shading sections.

I hope i was clear enough, I tend to repeat.

[punkrockpea]

Same. IMO This lesson went way too fast with very little explanation.  What is a ‘normal’? What does baking actually do? What is ‘multires’? I mean, from watching and following the video, I think I get a vague idea, but I’m not sure how helpful me having a ‘vague idea’ will be :\

I think most of us here are here *because* we are beginners, trying to learn… and because you know what you’re doing and talking about, I think you forget that most of us are following the learning flow and don’t know what you’re talking about!  I think the general order of this course is OK [I think it changed recently, and this version is definitely much easier to follow – I remember it just jumping to textures from something 100% unrelated before] and so far I haven’t had any problems understanding anything else but this particular lesson was very hard to follow.

There’s also a bit near the end where you say “as you remember, requires a light source”… where would I remember this from? lol I don’t recall covering any of this previously xD

[Kent Trammell]

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.

[Sid Lilja]

“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’ll admit I do enter a lesson with certain expectations, with 1-2-3 steps with clear and concise explanations to boot. This lesson comes with a surprise when it’s no longer in the same pedigree, hence my harsh(?) criticism. But oh boy does that sentence invite the thought “It’s either no one’s fault or its both”-route.

Since this lesson includes methodology it easily fools the student to follow every step of the way, copying yours – and if I’m allowed to create an analogy here: Jesse Pinkman from the TV serises “Breaking Bad” delivers a line where he conveys he doesn’t know HOW to make phenylacetic acid, he just goes to the barrel with a “P” on it.

To me this lesson would make more sense without the methodology and just present the results, explain why (which you already do at a later point in the video) and correlate it to a “facial transplant”.

I don’t mean to escalate the discussion, so apologies if I come excusing my own shortcomings.

[Erik Meyers]

As this is discussion is already fresh I’ll simply add an extra piece of perspective for someone who is also new as well. My expectation was to come into this with an idea of what is baking and why use it and hopefully get an idea of how is it done partially.  

The flow of the video starts by seeming to have me have an understanding of what is baking before getting directly into talking about various settings of the tool. Along with going into other topics I am not familiar with such as GLSL shading, Highres Modifier, Ambient Occlusion, and some other stuff. There are many questions and it becomes apparent this is not a just follow along video and I’ll understand everything. I need to learn some topics and come back to this video series at a later time before trying to implement baking. It is a more complex topic than say UW mapping.

The main thing I feel I was able to take away from this is that baking allows one to bypass render time calculations by doing it ahead of time and store the information in a source which can be made readily available (image file). As retrieving information is probably faster than doing all new calculations. I think when I attempt to render a scene all baked objects do not have to be recalculated and speeds up the final render time. You can seemingly do this with a variety of things judging by the list and the biggest function of baking seems to be for storing calculations on lighting.

In any case this is my take away from the video and how I will have to adapt to the content material given how it is structured. I am not sure if that is your intent, but I think it achieved the goal of introducing baking’s existence and giving me some idea of what it is and how it is implemented in Blender. Though I feel there is certainly more to learn before I can start trying to implement it at all in some meaningful way.

[Kent Trammell]

I wouldn’t say your criticism is harsh @ohem nor do I think you’re escalating at all. You’ve been respectful and valid with your crits. I’ve heard criticism like this enough that for whatever reason I decided to dialogue more in this thread than any other. Mainly because I want to understand better the disconnect between me, beginners, and this course/lesson.

You’re hitting on some interesting points about methodology. I grew disenchanted with the term “tutorial” soon after beginning to teach full time with CGC because computer graphics isn’t a step 1-2-3 kind of thing. While that method can be used to teach anyone how to get a result, it’s much less helpful for teaching the concepts that people need to understand to do something in Blender without a tutorial. We’re devoted to the latter which is why we actively avoid the step 1-2-3 method.

That line from Breaking Bad is perfect for people we’re less interested in teaching because that type of person isn’t interested in learning. For example, when I need to replace the headlight bulb in my car, I go to youtube for a “tutorial” in the strictest sense of the word. I want a step 1-2-3 video to tell me exactly how to swap out my bulb. But I actually have zero interest in understanding the process more than this isolated instance. Once I finish swapping the bulb that info is deleted from my brain and I’ll never consider it again until that bulb blows months/years later.

All that to say, while I understand that our use of the word “tutorial” has evolved into a shot in our own foot, it’s truly not the kind of teaching we aspire to. In this lesson I use demonstration to illustrate the concept. That’s different to me from 1-2-3 methodology because it’s illustrative more than it’s strictly instructional.

If you’re expectation is more 1-2-3 methodology, my question would be “What are you trying to do with Blender? Have fun with a new hobby? Do a cool thing that you saw someone else do? Or learn the trade at a professional level?”

[Kent Trammell]

Thanks for contributing your perspective to this thread @valevorena! What you describe as your take-away is indeed what I’m trying to convey with the lesson: Introduce you to texture-baking at a conceptual level and illustrate with demonstration 👌

[Sid Lilja]

I believe we both have different outlook on the Breaking Bad analogy as what you’re telling doesn’t fall in line with my conveyance. I have been forthcoming with how “incoherent” this lesson is and if you still feel it’s within what you think is best – then alright, I’ll trust your judgement.

When someone asks what my motivations are, then it’s getting personal and that rise red flags for me. So I’ll leave it at that.

[Kent Trammell]

@ohem I apologize – I mean no offense. I often ask those questions of our members. It’s important to know how our members are approaching our training. A video or course is very different depending on the answer to that question. Youtube is full of hobbyist-oriented tutorials that simply offer a method to achieve a result but teach very little in terms of an adaptable understanding of workflow. Whereas we strive to teach the latter; in a way that produces professional-level Blender artists.

I was asking you genuinely not as an accusation. Yes it was personal because we have a huge spectrum of demographic. For this conversation I need to know how you are approaching our training because you’re going to be unique compared to others approaching our training.

My apologies again for any offense – I thought my affirmation of our conversation as valid and respectful at the opening of my last message would have put to bed any suspicion that offensive inclinations were at play.

[Mahir Tasin]

For everyone in this discussion I would like to state my perspective as I have experienced blender modeling for like 6-8 months already. Despite my experience I have never used a normal or displacement map even though I have quality game assets made before I got membership here which I will be selling very soon. Even though you all are fresh to blender the intimidation and difficulty of  learning new stuff like normal maps and displacement maps are same as mine. Even if you have a spontaneous experience of adapting to lessons then at first you will feel overwhelmed with the lessons as you are feeling right now. At this phase i’d recommend to practice with what they are doing even if you don’t know what you’re doing. Even though you may feel the process i stated is useless but trust me I’m speaking from past experience. This helped me to get over a ton of problems like these. But when all the pieces start coming together everything that you thought went over your head will become self-explanatory. If learning 3D was not a hurdle then everyone would be an artist by now. I have watched a lot of tutorials on these maps like literally the whole YouTube, but trust me no one explained in such a way that Kent did. Just repeat what he does and I’ve seen that library of this place contains everything so even if you are not able to understand the topic this time later on you will encounter the same topic with different context. And also you can ask as many question to them and they are bound to answer you.

I hope this helps and if you get what I’m saying then I think you have got your answer.

[Sid Lilja]

Alright you seem genuine enough so I’ll set my caution aside, it’s otherwise how I protect myself from further manipulation(s).

What I meant with the BB analogy is that when I refer to the process “goes to the barrel with a P on it” is what I relate to regarding this particular lesson, you show how you do it but I don’t understand the process. And so with the 1-2-3 is what I relate to with the lessons prior to this one, where I learned and understood.

What I want to with Blender can vary, if I spent enough time to accomplish good enough results sure it may come into more professional level – until then it’ll be focused on my own creativity. Some ideas are homages, others entirely original, few are game assets for prototyping, the rest are really dark humor. (See Cyanide & Happniess, example http://explosm.net/shorts/328/who-gets-the-dog )

[Kent Trammell]

@ohem Thanks, that example and explanation helps me better gauge where you’re at and how you’re approaching our training/this course. If 2D animation more what you’re interested in, you may find this course/lesson interesting.

[Sid Lilja]

Good that my point “finally” came through, but it’s not as much as 2D animation I refered but the type of humor that resides in me and only used C&H as an example.

[Author]

Posts