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High quality tutorials


Do we have enough high caliber tutorials  

15 members have voted

  1. 1. Do we have enough high caliber tutorials

    • yes
      1
    • no
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As much as I like 3dcoat, its getting hard to get people into it without good training materials on par to the output quality of zbrush training that has tons of high quality training.

The companies now almost all require zbrush as a prereq for employment like how it is with maya, max. Its alarming how every job post I see have zbrush listed and no mudbox, 3dcoat.

A high quality training from creating a base character>sculpting details>retopo>texturing>baking>final would be great.

 

I'm sure people are willing to pay for professional training with high quality output.

 

Since 2012

http://3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=10015

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The trick is to get more and more experienced "high caliber" CG artists using it, and of those, you need content showing their work. I personally think the thing that has hindered this more than anything is the lack of sculpting layers in the Voxel Room. Both Mudbox and ZBrush have had this feature for years, and when they come to 3D Coat to try it out, they get somewhat put off by this...leave and don't come back, at least for a long while.

 

It's up to par with them in many facets, of sculpting, but not having this is like having all the tools in Photoshop at your disposal, but only having the ability to work on one single layer. It's practically a necessity...that's been ignored. Sure, the dynamic subdivision throws a wrench into this, but when you create a layer, 3D Coat can lock the mesh state. Andrew said that this was high on the "To Do" list, but is working in the Paint Room now. So, who knows. But once that is accomplished and working well, 3D Coat will be more inviting to long time ZBrush and Mudbox artists. As they come, so will all the additional training resources. But right now, it's largely viewed, in the industry, as a good retopology toolset + a good texture painting app.

 

Remember, Modo was in a similar position....having to basically provide their own training until the Foundry came into the picture. Mudbox got tutorials from Digital Tutors early on, even though it was less advanced than 3D Coat is now, because it was developed by Weta artists. So, having a BIG name affiliated with the software helps. That's why Lightwave still isn't covered by Digital Tutors, Gnomon or Lynda. There are plenty of good LW training resources aside from that, but it doesn't change the work prospects much at all.

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right now, it's largely viewed, in the industry, as a good retopology toolset + a good texture painting app.

 

 

Indeed. But these features might not be so special soon. Looking at some of the major 3d packages now, they're all developing built in retopo and texture painting. 3dmax, c4d, modo are getting close to fill these gaps. And in a well managed pipeline its best to keep the number of apps to a minimum. 3dcoat might not be needed for these one day. But high quality sculpting is still far away for the major 3d packages. So 3dcoat needs to demonstrate it can do this now. The models in that link I posted are doable in 3dcoat. But unless someone can show and document how its done, artists and companies are not going to invest their time trying out 3dcoat when zbrush is already becoming standard. Btw a friend who's a mudbox user is switching to zbrush because he applied to several companies and got turned down because they prefer zbrush artists. Lol. So its no better to know mudbox right now imho.

I just wish LBJ, artman, beat would someday make a tutorial series since they clearly demonstrate the highest quality 3dcoat can achieve.

Digital tutors is always hiring mentors btw if these guys are interested.

Edited by geo_n
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The trick is to get more and more experienced "high caliber" CG artists using it, and of those, you need content showing their work. I personally think the thing that has hindered this more than anything is the lack of sculpting layers in the Voxel Room.

 

you hit the nail on the head man, you hit the nail...

 

to take note:

Pluralsight acquires Digital Tutors

http://blog.pluralsight.com/pluralsight-acquires-digital-tutors

 

And Pluralsight partnerships are Autodesk, Wacom, Maxon, The Foundry and Pixologic.

http://blog.pluralsight.com/press

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Recording tutorials and adaptation of a software package has some, but very little to do with studio usage.

 

Recording full length high quality tutorials for 3DC is a nightmare, at best. The software still has a ways to go before it's rock solid enough to do that kind of thing. It's one thing when you're working on a project and 3DC crashes, or you hit a bug that ruins your workflow. But if you're recording a tutorial and hit any of those things, your entire video is down the shute. Greg and I have discussed this at length.

 

On the other hand, I've recorded videos for The Foundry, covering Modo, and it is rather quite pleasant. They spend more time bug fixing and making a rock solid program, and thus a pleasant experience in comparison, when it comes to recording videos using it.

 

If Andrew and Co. spent more time bug fixing and nailing down workflows, I am absolutely certain more tutorials will flow. What would help this and would be cool, is if Andrew did automated tested for some stuff. It would be a simple matter of making a macro/recording feature in 3DC (or external for that matter) that records everything in 3DC the user does. Then we can send the macro/recorded file that reproduces our workflow to Andrew. That would help cut down on all the alpha bugs we have to deal with, making it much more stable.

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I just wish LBJ, artman, beat would someday make a tutorial series since they clearly demonstrate the highest quality 3dcoat can achieve.

Digital tutors is always hiring mentors btw if these guys are interested.

 

 

Ask them why they don't.

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Recording tutorials and adaptation of a software package has some, but very little to do with studio usage.

 

 

Maybe, but since there's no school teaching 3dcoat :) we have to start from somewhere...on the net. Autodesk has strong educational roots and provided free software for students to learn. Thousands of graduates every year are highly trained in maya, max and zbrush in specialized cg schools. There's thousands of vfx, game, general cg studios in tokyo area alone hiring every month by the hundreds(if you speak japanese :D), but there's little market for lightwave, no market for modo, 3dcoat. Not enough work is showcased for studios to even take a second look at anything else but AD.

In comparison Adobe just dominates the market even though Nuke, Fusion are more powerful compositors its just not there in market penetration. Localization has something to do with it  and e-learning resources, good samples is a part of it. Tons of stuff for adobe are out there so it dominates.

 

Its too bad its buggy to do screencaps with 3dcoat and losing a recording session. That would really be a deterrent to someone willing to do a video tutorial. Anyway I hope it won't take another 2 years to have 3dcoat training at digital tutors, gnomon, etc.

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Maybe, but since there's no school teaching 3dcoat :) we have to start from somewhere...on the net. Autodesk has strong educational roots and provided free software for students to learn. Thousands of graduates every year are highly trained in maya, max and zbrush in specialized cg schools. There's thousands of vfx, game, general cg studios in tokyo area alone hiring every month by the hundreds(if you speak japanese :D), but there's little market for lightwave, no market for modo, 3dcoat. Not enough work is showcased for studios to even take a second look at anything else but AD.

In comparison Adobe just dominates the market even though Nuke, Fusion are more powerful compositors its just not there in market penetration. Localization has something to do with it  and e-learning resources, good samples is a part of it. Tons of stuff for adobe are out there so it dominates.

 

Its too bad its buggy to do screencaps with 3dcoat and losing a recording session. That would really be a deterrent to someone willing to do a video tutorial. Anyway I hope it won't take another 2 years to have 3dcoat training at digital tutors, gnomon, etc.

Leigh said he is in communication with Digital Tutors, so maybe something will come of that. Plus, you have Liberty 3D tut's as well: :D

http://www.learn3dsoftware.com/3dc_4_vol_8_voxels_II.htm

 

They are harder to make than you might think...even when the software cooperates. Plus, the way 3D Coat is laid out, it makes it so very difficult to explain the whole application in 5 minutes......like most people expect. Some will fuss if your pace is too fast...others if you take your time, so new users can follow along. Some want you to explain why your are doing something. Others want you to hurry and get to the  :mad:  #2!@&*-ing.....point.You catch fire from every angle.

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Maybe, but since there's no school teaching 3dcoat :) we have to start from somewhere...on the net. Autodesk has strong educational roots and provided free software for students to learn. Thousands of graduates every year are highly trained in maya, max and zbrush in specialized cg schools. There's thousands of vfx, game, general cg studios in tokyo area alone hiring every month by the hundreds(if you speak japanese :D), but there's little market for lightwave, no market for modo, 3dcoat. Not enough work is showcased for studios to even take a second look at anything else but AD.

In comparison Adobe just dominates the market even though Nuke, Fusion are more powerful compositors its just not there in market penetration. Localization has something to do with it  and e-learning resources, good samples is a part of it. Tons of stuff for adobe are out there so it dominates.

 

Its too bad its buggy to do screencaps with 3dcoat and losing a recording session. That would really be a deterrent to someone willing to do a video tutorial. Anyway I hope it won't take another 2 years to have 3dcoat training at digital tutors, gnomon, etc.

 

 

I absolutely agree about localization. I had a friend of mine that was going to translate all of my tutorials to Japanese, for example, but he couldn't understand any of the technical stuff. So I had my native Japanese tutor look at, she had an easier time but was also was having a hard time with the technical language, and gave up. I'd really like to penetrate the Japanese market, especially.

 

One day I'm sure we'll see 3DC tutorials on the big tutorial sites. I couldn't guess when. But having the new programmer on board to nail down these long standing issues, general bug fixes, and I hope also solidifying work flows.

 

Get those things down, combined with my squeaky clean English fixes, should be good. All this stuff takes time though. I am cautiously hopeful.

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  • 3 months later...
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Tutorials are a great marketing vehicle IMHO... I purchased the pro version after seeing Bojana Nedeljkovic use 3DC in a character modeling workflow over on DT. So what started out as a quick look-see technique for MODO, rapidly turned into being able to augment my toolset with 3DC. So, having invested so much already in various tools, I for one would invest another $40 - $60 on a video set, or even (gasp) a quality textbook. ;)

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I make tutorials for cinema4D, and really want to start making tutorials on how to integrate 3d coat in my workflow, just need to do some more 3d coat practice first =)

 

also as mentioned major apps are introducing sculpting and retopolgy tools in their new releases. But they are still quite far behind in many important area's.

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I want to make tutorials for coat too, but for me it is hard to understand some features of coat. My first tutorial (german) was about manual retopo, before that I had a nice videoconference with digman which was very helpful.

 

 

The problem of coat is the weak documentation. I use cinema4d too and there the help system is brilliant. The help is contextsensitive, if you move with your mouse over a button and click the shortcut for help, then you get info about the function of this button. And the description is very good with many pictures. In most other applications it seems that some kind of nerd created the help files or they don't give an effort. In coat there is a short description in many cases when you remain on a button, but often it is to short.

 

The most complicated thing for me in coat is painting. You have to switch several rooms, there are many baking functions that seem redundant but they are not, depending in which room you use them. And you have to decide wether you use per pixel painting, microvertex painting or ptex but the advantages or disadvantages are not described very good. There are many videotutorials about coat but they are often very special and partial. To understand it you need to watch step a, b and c. But in the tutorials you only see step b und don't know how to integrate it in your workflow.

 

And there are to many hidden features. If you have a look at the changes with every bugfix, these changes are not documented in the helpfile. You only have one line of information in the download section.

 

Cinema4D is not the best 3D application on the market regarding fx because of many workflow limitations. But it has the best help system of every software i know and is the easiest to learn 3d application. Usually developers underestimate the value of good help files and tutorials and then wonder why nobody would buy their software, but many of these problems are homemade because of a bad documentation.

 

CU

 

Ansgar

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I agree the documentation is weak. What's there is slick and great quality, but there's so much in 3DC that the manual has to gloss over quite a bit.

 

Perhaps a Quick Start PDF would work... say, a main chapter on how to get up & running with Retopo and UVs (and so-on). That way anyone could dive straight in. And of course after that, they'd be hooked and WANT to play some more. ;)

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