This lesson is going way too fast...

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.

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

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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 )

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.

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.

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.

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