Blender Courses and Certification Program

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
1

We all know that a book is a good learning media, but a course is even better and a course that provides a Certification is the best solution of all.

Blender has all the features that any small / medium companies need to enter the animation/modeling world.
But Blender lacks when it comes to learning, either a person spends a lot of time trying to figure out how to do something, or gets the Book and goes step by step and try to understand it, and any questions it may have it has to go to forums or search the Net (wich is not bad, but takes time), or, a person takes a course and any basic and direct question it has it asks the teacher and gets the response and would only “waste”(it is never really wasted) time to search for specific items it may have problems trying to figure out.

I believe that The Blender Foundation should gather some of their finest artists and developers and with them build a course (or more than one, as I will state below) that could be lectured in specialized companies and institutes, providing a Certificate to the Person that frequented the course and achieved all the course goals.

Discreet does this for their products and I see lots of people taking the Discreet courses (I am taking one right now for 3D Studio Max 6.0 and Combustion), mostly because if they achieve the course goals they will be Certified for that product by Discreet (and these courses are not that expensive as one might think).
Discreet receives a share of money for each issued Certificate, for all the manuals that are provided for the courses, along with other revenues related with the company or institute that provides the courses.

In my opinion, The Blender Foundation should make a Certification Program such as Discreet does, with at least 3 courses:

  • Blender Basics (Modeling and Animation) Level 1
  • Blender Basics (GameKit) Level 1
  • Blender Advanced (Modeling and Animation) Level 2
  • Blender Advanced (GameKit) Level 2

Some other courses also make sense:

  • Blender Advanced (Modeling) Level 3
  • Blender Advanced (Animation) Level 3
  • Blender Advanced (GameKit) Level 3
  • Blender Advanced (Lights) Level 3
  • Blender Advanced (Texturing) Level 3
  • Blender Advanced (Particle Engine) Level 3

This would give a lot of credibility to Blender and to the Person that would have a Certificate that stated their knowledge with that tool, and would also mean money for the Foundation, this money could then be used to increase the Foundation to other areas, even keeping a team at work to provide support for all the courses and the product itself.

I would be one of the first to take this course, since I beleive that Blender has all the functionality I need to produce all sort of animations for TV comercials and other type of 3d movies sequences.

The Blender Foundation would need to define the courses that would be sporting, the contents for each course, the Certification Program (even listing all Certified Persons on their website), the Support Team that would teach the institutes teachers and other companies teachers, as well as other issues.

A good chance to publicize an upcoming Certification Program and courses for Blender would be the upcoming Conference.

I would really like to hear your feedback on this issue.

A Mail with similar content has been sent to the Blender Foundation, but I beleive that the Blender Foundation are the users and their will, so your opinion really counts, and I would like to hear it.

If possible I request a sticky on this issue.

2

For those of you who answer / answered “Not sure, I didn’t understand the real benefit of it !?”, please post your doubts, I may be able to clarify some of this doubts.

Is there a possibility for this Thread to get Sticky, just for a while.
In order for me to gather has much information as needed in terms of users thoughts about this issue, so I can send an e-mail to The Blender Foundation.

Best Regards to all.

3

I don’t want to rain on your parade, but certification isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Being certified doesn’t mean you are good at anything. At most it means you attended class and turned in your homework assignments.

And yes I do see some benefits in your proposal, but employers look for experience not certificates. They want to see your work and what you can do.

4

I don’t think the community is ready for a certification yet, or that the industry would care if you had one. You are going to be better able to impress potential clients / employers with a good demo reel than a piece of paper.

5

I don’t want to rain on your parade, but certification isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Being certified doesn’t mean you are good at anything. At most it means you attended class and turned in your homework assignments.

And yes I do see some benefits in your proposal, but employers look for experience not certificates. They want to see your work and what you can do.

It depends on the Certification.

And since this Certification is yet to be defined, the purpose would be to guarantee that it was an easy to understand (it doesn’t mean it isn’t hard to do), but also to ensure that only those that really got the knowledge at the end, would be certified.

If you have to complete a timed project at the end of the course, that will serve to guarantee that you have learned the functionalities the course lectured, then it means that you know how to use the program, and have the knowledge to use the items lectured in that course. This way you have a Certification, but due to your Knowledge.

And has I posted previously, there could be several courses, like Basic courses and more Advanced courses, and the Advanced courses would also be a bit more difficult than the Basic courses, since the final project would involve much more advanced features. This to say that a Certification can mean that you indeed have the knowledge, you just have to make it work that way.

And yes, companies like very much to “see” experience, but that is something that the Certification can’t do for any of us, building a portfolio on your own after getting the Certification is always a good way. I’m sorry not to have all the answers.

Thanks for you post, it is very pragmatic and I hope I also shared my point of view on this issue.

I don’t think the community is ready for a certification yet, or that the industry would care if you had one. You are going to be better able to impress potential clients / employers with a good demo reel than a piece of paper.

I undestand what you are saying and it is very True, but the two can complement each other.

You can also get costumers and impress them if you after showing the good demo reel say: And this type of Demo is not so difficult to achieve, anyone who gets Certified in our courses whould be able to do this Demo in “nn” time.

The companies also like to know that there is a training area to wich they can rely on, that they have some courses to where they can send their Employees, and be sure that if the Employee gets Certified (this also depends on the Employee, of course) then the Employee would have the knowledge that the course lectured.

Thanks for you post, it is also a very pragmatic issue, has the previous one and I believe that my point of view is somewhat in conjunction with your own.

6

Until Blender reaches the same kind of industry popularity or influence, as Maya, 3D Studio Max, Softimage XSI, and other major packages, I don’t think certification will be worth the investment.

7

How about making this certification program in the same way as Open Source software. It should be possible to start a project with interested people involved, that will define the levels of knowledge and experience that are linked to certain level certificates. Then we can define a set of knowledge and experience for each certificate.

When we have a certificate schema in place we can choose to launch it as a framework for the development of training material, or even do that ourselves.

Why not 8)

8

nope… sorry - can’t see the point %|

9

Selling training courses and certification is a big money maker for commercial software companies.
I personally admire the open source software community because they are not trying to make money. They are working together for the sake of the thing itself. Knowing that, I’m happy to buy the occasional manual or ball cap to help the cause meet expenses.
So, if training and certification can be done in an open source spirit (non-profit) I think that’s ok.
Another aspect would be that you would be formalizing the user’s experience. I suspect many would prefer to keep it informal. I think that’s part of the open source atmosphere I was referring to.
Also, I agree that it’s what you know (or can do) rather that what credentials you have that matter. But there are a lot of people out there who rely on authority to make judgements for them.

10

Until Blender reaches the same kind of industry popularity or influence, as Maya, 3D Studio Max, Softimage XSI, and other major packages, I don’t think certification will be worth the investment.

This kind of software is good, but very expensive, and I am talking of small to medium companies as the target audience.
The popularity can be achieved in those markets, and as we all know SpiderMan 2 has already used Blender for Visualization of some scenes, so it has to be at least known.

You are right in your statement, and the popularity must be first achieved to make the Certification worth the investment. This is a good issue to be discussed more, and to discuss this we need to know the real level of popularity that Blender has today. I will focus on this matter, and try to get some feedback with The Blender Foundation on the Popularity issue.

How about making this certification program in the same way as Open Source software. It should be possible to start a project with interested people involved, that will define the levels of knowledge and experience that are linked to certain level certificates. Then we can define a set of knowledge and experience for each certificate.

When we have a certificate schema in place we can choose to launch it as a framework for the development of training material, or even do that ourselves.

Why not

This is indeed a very good ideia, at least to define wich courses to be lecture and the contents of each course, as well as building the course material. This would as well gather possible supporters that may find the Certification Program a matter that in fact is necessary and usefull for the grown of Blender.

But one thing we must always ensure, that an entity validates your knowlegde so that the Certificates are not issued for persons that did not achieved the goals of the course. This also is an issue I will take some time on checking where it would fit into and where to benefit from it the most.

11

Open Source has NOTHING to do with software being free from cost. As a matter of fact Open Source is big business (take a look at IBM, Novell, etc.). The point that is being made here is about the professional acceptance of Blender and how that could be supported or achieved.

The availability of training and certification for Blender would certainly give it a more professional image. If a company would be interested in using Blender in a professional manner it would also like to be able to hire people that are capable of using it. Both things TOGETHER make for a usable scenario for a company. If a company is looking at Blender to use it in professional projects but they have no measurement to what extend their personnel can use it, it is a definite ‘no thank you’.

OpenOffice is a good example: Companies will not switch to OpenOffice until there is professional support, including user-training, available to them on a commercial base.

12

Selling training courses and certification is a big money maker for commercial software companies.
I personally admire the open source software community because they are not trying to make money. They are working together for the sake of the thing itself. Knowing that, I’m happy to buy the occasional manual or ball cap to help the cause meet expenses.
So, if training and certification can be done in an open source spirit (non-profit) I think that’s ok.
Another aspect would be that you would be formalizing the user’s experience. I suspect many would prefer to keep it informal. I think that’s part of the open source atmosphere I was referring to.
Also, I agree that it’s what you know (or can do) rather that what credentials you have that matter. But there are a lot of people out there who rely on authority to make judgements for them.

I believe my point of view was already stated by tgremlin, but nevertheless.
The Certification itself would be defined by all of us, to make sure it would Certify persons for their knowledge with the Program and their knowledge on to workaround problems, it would provide them not only the knowledge on how the program works, but also how to workaround several design problems and so on. As an example, it could provide the knowledge on how to draw hair, and how to make it move like there was wind.

Much has to be defined and I see this thread is gathering several week point on a possible Certification Program, and I am very glad to see this.

13

tgremlin wrote

Open Source has NOTHING to do with software being free from cost.

Yes, I understand that the term refers to the freedom of anyone to do whatever they want with the source code. But for me (perhaps others as well?) being free from cost is part of what makes Blender (and several other open source apps) important to me. Also, I understand that there are a lot of people contributing to Blender’s developement without remuneration. This is something that I appreciate and respect.

The point that is being made here is about the professional acceptance of Blender and how that could be supported or achieved.

I can’t disagree with that. I was making a different point.

14

The point here is that there should be benefit for us as for The Blender Foundation, that has done a lot to keep Blender on track.
The money received by The Blender Foundation could even allow them to give those people that keep contributing to Blender’s development without remuneration, the courses free of charge, has a way to recon their work.

So if you had to pay for a Certification some of that money would go to The Blender Foundation and would provide you a Certificate that ensures before any company that you indeed know how to work with Blender.
But you know that spending 3 weeks teaching(as an example) you how something works does not come for free, it has a cost, so when you buy a course you are buying the 3 weeks of teaching, the manuals and the Certification (if you manage to achieve it).

15

Fair enough 8)

16

I just got a Response from Ton Roosendaal on this issue, and he says it has been on its desk a long time.

I will see what can indeed be done, and get to you as soon as possible.

Hope to see some more critics on the pros and cons on this Issue. And please all of you who didn’t vote yet and have an opinion about this, please make a vote, state your opinion.

And once again, can anyone make this Thread Sticky ? I believe it has relevance for that, at least until we came to a final conclusion on this matter.

Best Regards for all.

17

OK, I’ll tell something that I’m working on and that’s related to this issue:

As I posted not to long ago when I started posting here on Elysiun about the fact that I’m working on the concept to setup a company that works exclusively with Open Source software. I want that company to focus on Industrial Visualisation and use Blender as the primary app for production. My project on building an Open Source production pipeline is closely related to this concept as well.

We are going to setup this company as a student-project on a local school here in Holland, talks with the schooling institute are on it’s way. So, training and possibly certification might become a part (or even a neccesity) for this project. I was already planning to ask Ton (Rosendaal) to be involved with this. This project is fairly high profile as several local and regional governmental authorities are involved. I hope to attend the Blender Conference in Amsterdam and possibly report on this.

18

A company I’m working for is also excited with this and has stated that it would be interested in providing a training center, that would be lead by me (what a coincidence :slight_smile: ).

They trust my decisions and if this really goes into “production”, Portugal (my country) would also be sporting this.

The aim are the small / medium companies, that I believe to really benefit from an Open Source alternative.

Once I have some more on this issue I will post here.

(It seems I might be attending this year Blender Conference afterall)

19

Eh. :expressionless:

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Any questions or doubts ? Comments ?

I would really like to hear more comments, as well as see some more votes.

I will probably draw a solution draft during this weekend based on the feedback I get from all of you, and then present it to Ton. And will then go from there.

To tgremlin, I had already seen your website, and it is a good start base, a wider course could be something like a “Open Source Videographics” course that would have the “Blender Basic (Modeling + Animation)”, “Cinelerra Basics” or “Jahshaka Basics”, “Open Source Audio Tool Basics” and “Open Source Compression tools”. I will get back to you on this matter, since I believe that we could join forces along with Ton and prepare the base for the training of Blender. Sorry I haven’t mentioned it on the previous post.

Sticky ! Anyone ? Just for a few days.