It's likely that I'll come back later and update this after going through the Texturing and Lighting sections of CORE.
As someone who has done some amount of material work (so I'm not a complete beginner) this course felt simultaneously sparse and dense.
While the course is full of useful information, at times it felt more like going through the Blender documentation than an interactive learning experience. The course shines when it demonstrates practical applications of the topic. It felt less strong when topics were presented in the abstract or discussed purely in terms of software capabilities, rather than applied examples.
While those pieces of information were useful, they felt less memorable to me, and I suspect I'll need to revisit the course when I need them rather than retaining them immediately. The course could be even more effective if it included more lessons geared towards real-world situations an early user might encounter, guiding them through the process of building shaders to solve specific challenges - concrete, grass/dirt, wood/painted wood, plastic, cloth.
The course does this particularly well when discussing how to achieve glass or plastic reflections. The use of the sheen material for cloth was particularly helpful piece of information - I don't see that node getting referred to much. I loved the part about using materials to change the darkness of the shadows from glass - that was REALLY cool and useful.
Incorporating more of that approach - guiding learners to build shaders alongside the video - would make the course even more engaging.
Overall the course is valuable, but adding more guided exercises alongside the explanations would make it even stronger. I'm looking forward to seeing how the Texturing course in particular marries with this one.
