Hi CG Cookie Team,
I wanted to give you my feedback on this class specifically because I found it so confusing.
I have completed Blender Basics, Fundamentals of Mesh Modeling, Fundamentals of Sculpture, Fundamentals of Lighting, and Fundamentals of Materials Shading.
And I have been extremely satisfied with the classes and Jonathan is a great instructor.
But this class was really confusing.
It's also almost a repeat of an earlier class in the Fundamentals of Materials.
I had to watch this class 7 times before I got the gist of what I needed, which was really just:
-enable Node Wrangler
-import an image as a texture
-CTRL + T to automatically add Texture Coordinates and Mapping nodes
-use generated or object coordinate
-use box mapping with blend
What made this class difficult is that these bits of crucial information is scattered in short non-sequitor chunks, hidden under a lot of digressions on stuff that Jonathan says "you probably won't use this"
I usually enjoyed in depth dives into options and other features AFTER I have been given the crucial stuff up front.
The information is there but I really did have to watch this 7 times to pick out the bits that were needed. Which was really about the first 4 minutes and then the last 1 minute.
Also there's a particular part in the class when the CTRL + Shift hotkey is mentioned and suddenly all the models become rainbow colored and I am trying to figure out what did CTRL + Shift do? LOL
I laughed at myself when after the 3rd time through that I realized that it had directly connected the node to the output. But that was not explained so very confusing.
Anyways, I am putting this here to be helpful. And again I am loving the classes but this class really needs to be re-structured.
-Give the simple 1-2-3 up front all the way through without wandering around or dropping into digressions
-AND THEN deep dive into all the "probably won't use this"
-Also editing the video to just jump to different spots when the setup has to be altered greatly
When it started to go into projecting the texture to a light, and I had to watch the setup for that I got completely lost and was like why are we going here? And then after all that... "but you probably won't use this as it's really only for a very specific instance that you'll never see and won't use because this is a beginner class..."
Anyways, hope my feedback is helpful. Keep up the amazing work, Jonathan.
Thanks.
Yeah I know the feeling of being lost and having to watch things a handful of times with Blender open and trying things out as I watch the lessons. It's just the normal learning curve of a complicated 3D software. The important things is to keep at it and watch it as many times as needed. Good thing is, you can ask questions here when you get stuck, we help each other out the best we can.
That course is JAM PACKED, i went through it one time, and i am certain i am going to repeat it because there are a lot of tips and tricks. I could usually predict the next movements when doing the other courses, but this one had a lot of addendums that forces you to slow down and really learn how deep the texture engine runs. I appreciate that he goes through unwrapping on several passes because that is the core skill, i feel, he really drove home well. I found myself screen shotting the more complicated node trees so i could diagnose them at a future time, because its like one of those dance mats with feet and numbers, only there are like 100 steps and rotations haha.
Hey, thanks for the feedback! I think those are valid points. I also agree that explaining what the Ctrl+Shift hotkey does would have been very helpful here and that I should have had screencast keys enabled. While I definitely say "you probably won't need this" quite a lot, I do still think those are important ideas to see and be exposed to right away. I used that phrase to separate the things that you will want to use right away from the seeds of more abstract fundamental ideas that will unlock the true power and freedom of the software, but that you'll need to see examples of over and over and over throughout many tutorials and over a long period of time before things truly start to click. Those are the ideas that are generally skipped over because they're difficult, but missing them will keep someone at the beginner level for way too long. I'll try to do a better job of making that distinction clearer in future videos.
Also, please don't forget that you can ask even simple questions and we'll be happy to answer! If you've watched a video more than once and are still stuck, you don't need to figure it out on your own.