Wouldn't it be an idea to open a pinned thread in which users could suggest things/ topics they would like to learn more about? There propably would be a huge variety of ideas and a course takes some time but it might be helpful for instructors to see if a large amount of users want to learn more about a specific topic. I for example would love to learn more about creating game assets (similar to the weapon course) or how to build an atual scene full of assets. Also a course on how to create an interior visualization and use textures and lighting to make it look as photorealistic as possible (similar to the architectual visualization course) would be awesome.
Just an idea on how the website could be improved.
williamatics Sorry my mistake, I should have mentioned "exterior" arch viz. Similar to this. But thanks for sharing that link!
Cheers
yyaz2019 Check out the Fundamentals of Dynamics course. It has a section on fluids
jgonzalez Is there a tutorial or a course on CG Cookie that covers how to setup a LOD system in Unity? And I don’t mean manually creating 4 models with different LOD in Blender and swapping those out (because that would mean wayyy too much work and not a smart approach), but a system that does this automatically for you within Unity (like Unreal has).
And does CG Cookie have a tutorial or a course that covers how to only render what the camera sees?
If so, could you point me into the right direction? If not, maybe an optimizations tutorial that covers these kind of techniques would be an idea 😊. I’m sure there are even more that I don’t know about yet!
I would eventually like to create environments with lots of game objects, aiming for AAA quality, so they would become pretty heavy scenes I presume, and these techniques would be very useful.
Unreal has them build in as far as I know, as they have many tools to make your work easier (for example I like their prefab system where you can change it visually in a separate viewport. They seem to have lots of tools that work out of the box and it makes switching tempting...). I’m hoping there is an easy solution to use them in Unity as well, because I think it’s not default... but maybe I’m totally wrong 😅
ssmurfmier1985 Automatic LODs are something that Unity is working on. It's been a while since I've looked into the LOD system Unity has so I can't really say whether or not this is already included in the latest versions but I don't believe it is. Creating a system like that isn't something I'd teach as it's a pretty technical process. There are tools available currently that can provide that: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/modeling/automatic-lod-43652
For rendering only what the camera sees, this is known as frustum culling and is already done by default in Unity. I wrote about the different culling systems used with the camera in this article: https://cgcookie.com/articles/maximizing-your-unity-games-performance . Take a look at #5 within the list and you'll see an example of it. Here is the gif from there:
I haven't covered occlusion culling in a tutorial but it's fairly simple to go over. I can probably post a small video on it or create a post here on how to do it.
As far as working with prefabs, you can do the same thing in Unity. If you click on the prefab in the project panel you can opt to work on it in a separate window, or if you have it in your scene you can make changes it to directly from there. Bigger changes like removing a part of the prefab will require you to "unpack" the prefab by right clicking on it to unpack it then make your changes from there. The prefab system has been improved quite a bit lately and can also include nested prefabs which is a big deal.
jgonzalez okay cool so thats a very welcome update since the old prefab system shown in the beginner courses.. great!
Will it all work out of the box or is it a preview package that I have to activate like HDRP? I have the newest version of Unity installed downloaded it fresh yesterday 😊 (which was quite a hassle btw because downloading & installing has changed a lot from how you showed it in the beginner course, and I had to get the standard assets via the asset store because I couldn’t select them with the main installation...)
ssmurfmier1985 Everything I mentioned is standard within the Unity editor. As far as installing Unity you can do it using either the Unity Hub or installing Unity directly based off a specific version. I personally use the Hub as I like having multiple versions of Unity, usually an alpha version and a stable build. I believe you're using the alpha version based off your screen shots so it will be a bit different.
jgonzalez okay maybe that’s why I got a lot of error messages throughout installing and setting up everything.. I downloaded the hub btw that is probably why I was a bit confused at the start haha. Thanks for your response clears up a lot
@theluthier 
tbrbn It seems that Aidy Burrows has figured it out! 😃🎉
Procedurally Converting Bump to Normal Map
17:50 – Bump To Normal Map
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YsXe11YA7AM
https://gfycat.com/powerlessantiqueinganue
Game Animation for Unity and Unreal 4. It is essential for those animators who wants to work for a game studios, whatever they are indie or AAA!
ssmurfmier1985 YAAAYYYYY!!!!
[He said before trying the technique...]
Based on my tests, there's a major limitation in Aidy's method: it only works on flat planes facing up in Z. The reason being that the bump node seems to output object space normals only where a flat plane facing up (like in the tutorial) is the correct direction for the typical blueish/purple normal map hue (tanget space normals).
For a 3D object using this method you get a variety of colors based on the various directions, as per object space. So it only appears viable for the flat plane in Aidy's video. However we could just bake the "Normal" data via Cycles baking. It easily converts the object space procedural bump data into tangent space.
In the end, this technique isn't really what I'm looking for with Eevee. I want a node-based solution to converts black and white color data into tangent normal data in real time (to avoid the ugly pixelation with Eevee's bump node).
@theluthier
Darn it! I was sooo hoping this was it... but let's face it, I want the node-based solution too.
There must be a way... someday there will be people smarter than me who figure it out and then I will steal like an artist 😇
Still a handy technique for some cases though 😊
I think a course on how to collaborate with a team to work on a large blender project will be helpful. Things like sharing ideas, scheduling, organizing files and other things I don't know about because I have not worked on any large project yet.
Course covering the workflow of making a model and texturing in Substance Painter to be Unity/UE4 ready.
Maybe a course like Shader Forge, but for troubleshooting and dealing with bad geometry? I know there are vidoes scattered here and there, but thought maybe it could be collected into one place. Then when you have some issue you could just easily look up that video dealing with that specific topic.
Maybe it's not useful to create a course for that, but lately I find myself always having some kind of issue whenever I choose something to model outside a tutorial or course. Usually I am able to hide the issue enough to render it out, but the geometry is a mess, lots of pinching and shading problems, ngons and triangles everywhere, that whenever I try to deal with it, just makes it worse. Sometimes I can spend a long time just trying to find a tutorial to help me out.
And maybe videos on how to create common shapes and forms would be really useful. There are so many things I'd like to model, but I have no idea how to accomplish that particular shape.
Anyways, just really wanting to stop being a complete noob.
thebergh That's exactly what I wanted; I just didn't know how to say it. Thank you!
thebergh I think a "debugging for topology" would be a fun course. Would include a variety of unique models that have problem topology and we'd go over how to clean it up. Could also include various exercises of the same type to help you all with that as well.