This lesson is going way too fast…

[Jacqui Houghton]

I’m feeling better after reading this thread. I had assumed it was just me who was completely lost by the sudden transition in style between the videos.  With the UV mapping and painting I had Blender open on one screen and was pausing the video and trying things out – this is a valid teaching/learning technique, it’s not just copying moves 1,2 and 3.  I tried out different things, made mistakes etc.  I’m a complete beginner here.  To me baking is something to do with cakes!  In the other videos new terms are explained.  After a first watch of this video and realizing I had no idea what was going on, I googled some of the terms so know a bit more now.  To me there is a real jump with this video and no clear relation to what has gone before.  I tried to “bake” what I had previously created, so a painted texture on the monkey, it looked odd.  I then created a blank bake image as you did and got that to work again on the monkey so that was a success. However, I’m still not really sure what baking is achieving in terms of the model work flow.  I’m really enjoying these courses and have learnt a lot in a short amount of time, so this definitely is not a complaint, just a request to slow this one down a bit, include a bit less info and maybe link to what was done in the previous videos more.

[darrenburns]

I’m in agreement with the other comments here: As a beginner I’ve spent about an hour on this video, frequently rewinding and re-watching small 30 second clips to try and follow what’s going on. This is the first video I’ve reached in this learning flow where I’ve had to do this.

It’s not a huge issue for me personally, I don’t expect to understand everything the first time, but I just thought I’d mention that I found that this went a little too fast like the others mentioned above.

[Kent Trammell]

My apologies for the frustration you and others are experiencing. I put a lot of work into this course; my best effort to teach introductory Blender/3D concepts like texturing and shading.

We’ll have to redo this course when 2.8 comes out. I’ll make sure someone else teaches these topics in the introductory context.

[eromivus]

EDIT: Getting to the ax painting exercise forced me to come back and give this a second watch. The struggles of actually doing the thing gave me a focus that was lacking on my first watch, and I got a lot more out of the second viewing—particularly the painting videos. Teasing the ax at the beginning of this course might be a good idea, that way I understand right up front that I’m going to be learning some concepts and techniques that will build up to creating that thing. Absent that context, I think the videos on the first go around seem a little random.

Hi Kent. I’m not here to pile on; rather, I think I can help provide a little more perspective that may help you guys out when you redo this course for 2.8. First off, I definitely understood the gist of this course, so it’s not like this was a failure. That being said, the specifics of watching you demonstrate and explain things in this section of the beginner flow made me think I had missed a few videos, or that I was viewing it out of order. I really think the only problem is how things were framed. Taking the baking video as an example, I think this may have been more useful as a higher level demonstration of the consequence of not baking (when it makes sense to do so) by steering us into the actual problem first and then introducing the solution that is baking. While then demo’ing how we would do this and showing us the end result, stress that it’s not important for us to fully understand the details and methodology yet. Doing so frees the user from the anxiety of not internalizing every jot and tittle of what you’re doing and instead allows them to focus on understanding the big picture view of WHAT this is and WHY it’s good to know going forward.

To sum up: it’s perfectly ok to introduce more advanced processes or ideas while explaining a beginner concept so long as you make it clear which parts are not yet important to understand. Without those prompts, the beginner has to assume that everything being shown is vital to know before proceeding, and then they’ve immediately hit a wall and frustration follows. I think in this case it’s not so much that you introduced advanced things, it’s more that the HOW overwhelmed the WHAT and the WHY, where a little reassurance that the HOW wasn’t too important right now may have been all that was needed to get the intended message across.

Not to beat a dead horse, but I had another thought that kind of connects up to what I said above. Sometimes it can actually be helpful to show more advanced things when they’re easier to relate to than something that is so simple it’s not even practical. I think as beginners, we’ve all come here with ideas in our head of things we want to make, and it’s that inspiration that can get us through some of the early barriers. Something that I struggled with on the texture painting videos was that there was a disconnect between what you were showing and what I would hope to some day create. Obviously my ultimate goal is not to be making low poly monkey heads with splotches of paint thrown on it, so while I knew what you were showing had a point and you wanted it to be simple and unintimidating, I wasn’t sure how this was actually going to help me down the road. When I think of professional assets, I wondered how what you were showing would actually be used, and then I feared you were showing methods that are going to be quickly overshadowed by more advanced texturing approaches. That disincentivized me from wanting to spend too much time or thought on those videos.

Hopefully this is received as constructive criticism and helps in some way. I’m definitely loving the site so far and have learned quite a bit.

[Kent Trammell]

This is extremely helpful feedback, @eromivus. Thanks so much for taking the time to type this out! There’s a lot here that I will certainly take into account 🙇🏻‍♂️

[zeriel]

I think the problem is this is being taught as a co-worker would teach a 3D professional coming into Blender for the first time but this course is one of the beginner courses in the 3D modeling fundamental learning flow. Most people start here, they don’t know what baking is, what normal maps are etc. etc. and this just dumps a TON of information on the unsuspecting student that until now haven’t even modeled anything yet. Now combine this with the completely new interface of 2.8 and you have a recipe for disaster. I think UV maping and Baking should have their own sections at least.

I’m coming here from Maya and Substance painter, I know how to bake and have modeled and textured complex objects, still I ended giving up at this lesson and my free trial ends tomorrow. I can’t continue because I try to follow the steps and don’t get any results. For example Blender 2.8 doesn’t have Blender Render, the options are different and I keep getting an “Object not selected Error” even tough I selected all faces on the scenes and made an Image file.

I think this tutorial needs to be completely remade and slowed down. It needs to start with a project the student can follow and teach what baking is, why you need it, what are the kinds of maps, what are they used for, how/when to make each one etc. Just dumping everything at once into someone who is just starting doesn’t work.

Hope this helps, and I enjoyed the learning paths even tough I didn’t get far. I hope they fix them because right now I’m sorry to say that Youtube may be the better option since I can imagine how more complicated subjects will be a lot worse to follow than this.

Thanks

[zeriel]

“However once we get into the specifics of types of map baking we’re entering into intermediate and advanced levels “

I have to disagree slightly here. If it’s a beginner course where we don’t know what baking is or what types of maps there are and what they do, I think it’s exactly the place where you want to explain this. Showing texture baking from a bird’s eye view would work as part of an explanation to what baking is but you can’t start baking normal maps when we don’t know what they are or what they do. I think the main problem is pacing and Baking should be it’s own section separate from UV mapping.

Sorry not trying to come of as preachy but it’s really frustrating because even knowing what the types of maps are I still feel lost.

Thanks for taking the time to read feedback.

[Kent Trammell]

Thanks for the feedback. We will be re-making all our fundamental courses for 2.8 and this mass of feedback for map-baking will not go unheeded.

[Baneminj]

I’m going to offer my perspective as respectfully as I can.

I appreciate the frustration that some have experienced while watching this, but I personally feel it’s down to a misinterpretation as to the purpose of this course. Granted, a lot of the other videos you could follow along as it progressed and recreate the steps, but that wasn’t really the intention, in my view, of this course at all. It’s an “Introduction” to Blender which, using someone else’s analogy of a new starter at a company, is like the first part of the meeting where your new manager quickly goes over “these are your responsibilities”. They wouldn’t expect you to be able to go off and fulfill your job, it’s just an overview of what you’ll be doing with more in-depth and detailed looks into your responsibilities following later.

This course is the same, it’s just introducing the concepts to you, covering the Blender set of tools and features available to you and giving you an idea of their application and results. Whetting your appetite for what other videos/courses will be covering in detail. I think we can all agree that an Introduction is not meant to fully detail something, more to give us a brief overview of something before we engage with that something and learn about it properly.

I’d recommend people simply watch the video, listening intently, and maybe making notes about what’s covered, to understand what Blender is capable of. Then, as you move on to other courses that are more specific, you will suddenly learn a huge amount more about a particular feature and have the “oh, I remember this!” moment.

3D modelling is a vastly deep and complex discipline, and fully detailing all of these features in the first course for beginners wouldn’t be an effective way to create engagement and spark interest. A video fully detailing all of the ins and outs and options of baking would be hours long and would likely fail to properly impart any meaningful knowledge without context. This course is to give you an overview, with in-depth and context rich courses continuing the topic separately when it’s applicable and appropriate.

[Kent Trammell]

You hit the nail on the head @donalds. Thanks for contributing your perspective as it aligns with my intention when recording the course.

This is however the most constructively criticized course of mine and I hear it loud and clear. Aligned perspectives is important for this specific course to be understood but I realize now that I should adjust my perspective to more closely align with the intended audience rather than expect them to adjust theirs to mine. We will be rerecording / restructuring this course for 2.8 in the coming months with this feedback in mine.

[Baneminj]

Hi Kent! Glad my reasoning/rationale wasn’t too unresonable or irrational! I do understand the feedback, though, and agree that rerecording the course for Blender 2.8 is a valid and worthwhile investment. My answer was merely an attempt to alleviate frustration on all sides and give my perspective.

I just wanted to say thanks to all of you at CG Cookie for the great content! Times have changed a lot recently and you guys are doing an incredible job of improving your communication and value of the content, keeping it relevant, fun, and informative.

[Kent Trammell]

That means a lot @donalds! It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster for us  to keep prepared for 2.8’s release and all the changes happening within as well as how to best guide this community through it. It’s very encouraging and motivating to hear your feedback. Thank you!

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