Kaizen asked for a post to the community with the materials as of the end of the 4th video in chapter 3, here is mine. I see an issue with the emissive material now that it's been rendered where part of it is black and the other half emissive white~ish-blue... I went back in and found out it was because the mirror modifier was before the bevel modifier, and moving the mirror modifier down in the stack fixes it.
So far I've been following the course more-or-less to the letter, other than it appearing that version 4.1 of Blender doesn't seem to have the "Shade smooth - Auto" option any longer; this made me have to spend a little more time on the area around the button to get the shape right.
I'm enjoying the course so far. I'm not a complete novice in Blender, but I only play around in it for a couple weeks at a time each year. I'm hoping to buck that trend for the rest of 2024, but we will see! I know that I'll be completing this course some time this week, and hope to work on having something to submit for the ongoing challenge by the deadline!
Looking good. I like the paint chips.
As for the auto-smooth - it got replaced by "shade smooth by angle" and a modifier "smooth by angle". The shade smooth by angle from the context menu does mark edges on you mesh as sharp, wherever it finds sharp edges and you won't be able to smooth those anymore. If you want to smooth it similar to the old way I recommend the smooth by angle modifier after you shaded your model regular smooth. In said modifier you can specify the angle at which the smoothing changes to sharp. It allows for better control of the smoothness. You might have to play a bit with that angle for bevels etc until you get the desired result.
One important note about that modifier is that it needs to be at the bottom of the stack at all times to work correctly.
